Tapping on cell during scroll view bounce highlights cell but does not select it

[lilyball]

When I swipe the article list, if I then try and tap on an article during the bounce, it highlights the cell while my finger is touching the screen but doesn’t actually select it, so the result of tapping is for the cell to highlight momentarily and then revert back to the previously-selected cell. I can even hold my finger down for a moment and it stays highlighted, but then reverts when I release, as long as I didn’t hold it down long enough to trigger the contextual menu.

This is confusing and annoying. Either it should select the article despite bouncing (this is my preference), or it should avoid highlighting the cell if it’s not going to go ahead and select it.

Curiously, this bug only triggers if my scroll gesture ends before the article list starts bouncing. Which is to say, it has to be in the state where it’s inertial scrolling without dragging. This makes some sense, as when it’s inertial scrolling like this a tap doesn’t select anything it just stops the scroll, but it also doesn’t highlight the cell when stopping the scroll. It’s only when it’s bouncing after the inertial scroll that the tap highlights the cell without selecting. And really, it shouldn’t matter if I dragged into the bounce or if it was inertial scrolling before bouncing, either way tapping during the bounce should select the article.

Reproduced on iOS 14.0.1 with NNW 5.0.3 (Build 50)

[vincode-io]

This is the default UITableView highlighting behavior. You can see it in action on Notes where the selection briefly flashes gray. Interestingly, they seem to have overridden this behavior Mail, probably because it highlights blue and is more noticeable.

Changing VibrantTableViewCell.setHighlighted to an empty implementation is all we need to do to defeat the default UITableView highlighting behavior.

@brentsimmons Should we change this or stick with the default behavior?

[lilyball]

I just tested in Notes and tapping during the bounce actually does select the note. Press and hold for a moment shows the grey selection and doesn’t select, but a normal quick tap does.

[vincode-io]

I must be doing something wrong. I can't get either Mail or Notes to select while the scroll view is bouncing.

[lilyball]

Mail isn’t doing it for me, but Notes is. Also neither one of them have NNW’s behavior of highlighting immediately on touch down even if I’m attempting to scroll (NNW is somewhat inconsistent here but usually when I touch down it highlights the cell (and unhighlights the selected one) immediately even if I’m about to scroll).

If it makes a difference, I’m testing on iPad. It’s entirely possible iPhone has different behavior.

Also NNW will select the article if I drag into the bounce area and let go and then tap an article, but Mail doesn’t select anything in that scenario.

[vincode-io]

I'm able to reproduce with some consistency the highlighting immediately on touch down with Mail. See the below video.

RPReplay_Final1601267633.mov.zip

Are you sure that this isn't a standard iOS behavior that you are only noticing in NetNewsWire because of the custom selection color? We're just using a plain old UITableView.

[vincode-io]

I'm closing this since I think it is normal iOS system behavior. @lilyball if you have more to add, we can reopen and investigate further.