Highlighted area remains after clearing text
Hello,
I've been having this trouble with my Macbook Pro for quite some time. I thought it was something weird that I had done to my system, but I recently got a new Macbook Air and noticed the same problem. I've since confirmed the behavior on 2 other Macbooks that aren't mine. Here's the situation:
Using my trackpad (wireless or built in), I highlight text using three-finger drag. Within about a second, if I hit a key on the keyboard to clear the text (backspace, or another letter, it doesn't matter), the text disappears, as expected, but the *highlighted area remains*. This seems to happen for every key that I hit during that second or so, which often causes me to butcher more text than intended. I think this is hard to explain, so here's some a simple visual example:
1) I type "123456789" and highlight "456" using my trackpad 3-finger drag:
2) Within a second or so, I hit the delete key on the keyboard. "456" goes away, but the highlighted selection remains, now highlighting "789" instead:
3) Naturally, if I press any other key on the keyboard, the "789" is removed also. At this point, I've waited long enough that the highlight is also removed as expected:
I believe this is strictly related to 3-finger-drag on the trackpad (both wireless and built-in). It doesn't happen with click-and-drag, nor does it happen with a mouse, nor does it happen if I use the keyboard to highlight text.
One other interesting thing, this happens in many, but not all applications. It definitely happens in Mail, Safari, and Chrome (Mail being the most reliable). It does not happen in TextEdit or Firefox.
So, down to the question. Does anyone know of a way to disable this behavior? It doesn't seem to bother other people I talk to (nobody has noticed until I instructed them how to do it), but it happens to me constantly.
MacBook Air, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)