Ubuntu browser builds can't select text on NYTimes articles

[Paul]

Note: this bug *may* affect touch screen devices only. Just a hunch.

Load an NYTimes article such as https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/10/science/trappist-earth-size-planets-orbits-music.html and attempt to select some text, either via click-and-drag or double/triple click.

Using the official Mozilla Firefox 53.0.2 build, this works as expected. Using the Ubuntu Zesty Firefox 53.0+build6 build however, the user can't select any text. Instead, click-and-drag scrolls some links to other articles in from the sides, while double click resizes the article text (equivalent touchpad and touchscreen interactions have the same effect). Android-style tap-and-hold does nothing. Caret Browsing also doesn't work, as the arrow keys are overridden. Only <Ctrl>+<A> still works as expected.

There doesn't seem to be an invisible layer above the text, since the mouse pointer changes between an arrow, finger, and I-beam cursor, and since clicking on links works.

This inconsistency violates the Law of Least Astonishment.

Affected browsers:
* Ubuntu Gnome 17.04 64-bit touchscreen: Ubuntu Firefox 53.0+build6 with clean profile, Ubuntu Modifications add-on only
* Ubuntu Gnome 17.04 64-bit touchscreen: Ubuntu Firefox 53.0+build6 with clean profile and no add-ons
* Ubuntu Gnome 17.04 64-bit touchscreen: Ubuntu Chromium 58.0.3029.96

Not affected:
* Ubuntu Gnome 17.04 64-bit touchscreen: Official Mozilla Firefox 53.0.2 with clean profile
* Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 32-bit: Ubuntu Firefox 53.0+build6 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
* Windows XP 32-bit: Mozilla 52.0.2

Bugzilla reference: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1363936

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 17.04
Package: firefox 53.0.2+build1-0ubuntu0.17.04.2
Uname: Linux 4.11.0-041100-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.4-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
BuildID: 20170509205512
CurrentDesktop: GNOME
Date: Fri May 12 07:47:00 2017
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-12-02 (159 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-GNOME 16.10 "Yakkety Yak" - Release amd64 (20161012.1)
SourcePackage: firefox
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Mozilla-org-8 (mozilla-org-8)]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:53.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/53.0
Build ID: 20170418122848

Steps to reproduce:

Load an NYTimes article such as https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/10/science/trappist-earth-size-planets-orbits-music.html and attempt to select some text, either via click-and-drag or double/triple click.

Actual results:

Click-and-drag scrolls some links to other articles in from the sides, while double click resizes the article text. Caret Browsing also doesn't work, as the arrow keys are overridden. Only <Ctrl>+<A> still works as expected.

There doesn't seem to be an invisible layer above the text, since the mouse cursor changes between a pointer, finger, and text cursor, and since clicking on links works.

This inconsistency violates the Law of Least Astonishment.

Expected results:

The user should be able to select text at will.

[Mats-l (mats-l)]

Selection works fine for me, using FF53 on Linux64.

Can you reproduce the problem also with all add-ons disabled? (if you have them)
Can you reproduce the problem also with an official Mozilla build? (it appears
you are using an Ubuntu distro build)
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

[Mozilla-org-8 (mozilla-org-8)]

Good idea. I've retested, results are as follows:

Ubuntu Firefox 53.0+build6 with clean profile, Ubuntu Modifications add-on only: same bug as reported above
Ubuntu Firefox 53.0+build6 with clean profile and no add-ons: same bug as reported above
Ubuntu Chromium 58.0.3029.96: same bug as reported above

Linux 64bit Official Mozilla Firefox 53.0.2 with clean profile: no problem
Windows 32bit Mozilla 52.0.2: no problem

This implies it's an Ubuntu-specific issue. Didn't realise they made any substantive changes. Shall I file a bug in Canonical Launchpad?

[Mozilla-org-8 (mozilla-org-8)]

All the above Linux tests were on Ubuntu 17.04. Surprisingly:

Ubuntu Firefox 53.0+build6 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS: no problem

[Mats-l (mats-l)]

Thanks for testing!

> Shall I file a bug in Canonical Launchpad?

Yes, please.

[Mozilla-org-8 (mozilla-org-8)]

Done: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/1690254

I wonder if Ubuntu's push for desktop/handheld unification led them to make some changes related to touch, because the failure mode somewhat resembles the way the site may be expected to work on a mobile phone. Except those have mechanisms to select text, such as tap-and-hold, which also don't work here.

[Wes (wesinator)]

Moving this to the Chromium browser package. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium/ is for the game package chromium-bsu, not the web browser (confusing, I know).

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

That reminds me of a similar bug we had with the Ubuntu Touch webbrowser-app, where text selection on touch devices wasn't working for nytimes.com (bug #1573620). This was fixed by adding a specific (android-like) user-agent override for that site. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a similar issue where nytimes.com does funny things to disallow selection based on user-agent detection.

[Nathan Teodosio (nteodosio)]

Is this still an issue in Chromium stable? Can't reproduce it on Firefox either.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

chromium-browser task won't expire due to other active tasks.
Mozilla report has seen no recent activity and refers to Firefox 53
Not reproducible in Firefox or Chromium
As per bug description "this bug *may* affect touch screen devices only"
NY Times website has probably undergo many changes in recent years
No reference to any Ubuntu release since 17.04, EOL was January 13, 2018.