Safari Desktop: Adding an empty span to an otherwise empty editable element, makes the element unselectable

[michael]

CONTEXT: As an editor developer I need a way to position popovers relative to a collapsed cursor. That's why I'm rendering an additional span at the cursor position with an anchor-name, so I can use CSS anchor positioning to position a popover/prompt (e.g. for adding a new link).

BUG: With the extra span in place, in Safari the field(s) are no longer selectable.
In Chrome and Firefox it works just fine.

See Repro: https://w3c.github.io/editing/repros/516.html

CONTEXT:

Behavior of empty fields broken on Safari at https://svedit.dev (v0.5.0)

bug.mov

Popovers anchored at selection highlight span, using CSS Anchor positioing:

create-link-popover-ew.mov

[michael]

Likely related: #499

[johanneswilm]

Call 2025-12-11:

08:24 johanneswilm: Michael will upload a video. we'll keep the Agenda+ and see if we have an idea for a cleaner solution
08:24 Michael: ideally — would want to anchor to the selection
08:24 (similar to how you want to anchor to a DOM node)
08:25 johanneswilm: might take a while to develop exactly what CSS anchor positioning relative to selection would look like. seems interesting to pursue
08:25 johanneswilm: let's see if opacity: 0 is a viable workaround

[michael]

08:24 johanneswilm: Michael will upload a video. we'll keep the Agenda+ and see if we have an idea for a cleaner solution

Done, video is part of the issue description now.

08:25 johanneswilm: let's see if opacity: 0 is a viable workaround

opacity: 0 to hide the br works but is not an option, as this will still render the cursor in the wrong place when placeholders are involved. See #498.

08:24 Michael: ideally — would want to anchor to the selection

Created a separate issue for discussing that feature: #518

[michael]

Official bug report filed: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=304143

[johanneswilm]

Call 2026-02-12:

08:11 WK bugs have been filed
08:11 michael_aufreiter: would be good to have an idea of progress..
08:11 q+
08:12 whsieh: what should we prioritize?
08:12 michael_aufreiter: we'll help prioritize