Here is a nice bug-not-bug to close out in 2019. One of my Trello cards detailed what sounded like an error:
When toggling between two options (yes and no) in a dropdown, entering “y” changes to yes and quickly entering “n” does not switch to no. However, waiting a second you can change between them.
Some initial debugging suggested this was not actually a bug in our application. But, I knew if I was going to get the ticket closed off as not a bug, I had to have an explanation.
It turns out that browsers (well at least in Chrome and Firefox) select dropdowns are searchable by offering a delay allowing you to type in long values. The way I highlighted this was creating a dropdown with four options:
- Yes
- No
- YNo
- NYes
To highlight the error I created a JSFiddle demo here. The first dropdown contains the above options. Try pressing “Y” and then “N” quickly after, the selected value will then be “YNo” highlighting the searchability. Similarly, entering “N” followed by “Y” will yield “NYes” selected.
There is also a second dropdown with some years from 1988 to 1993 in the above linked JSFiddle demo. Try selecting the dropdown and then entering 1993 (which is the last option) you will see the searching feature in the browser selects 1993.
So, not a bug, just a browser feature. Admittedly, I didn’t actually know you could search values in a dropdown this way. I usually use my mouse to select values in a dropdown. We have some people on our team who shun the mouse and navigate through our main app using their keyboard.