Right now it feels like the text selection handles only work for drags inside the input element that they're bound to. We would want them to work so that, once you started dragging they would capture all touch events until the user lifted their finger up. That's the default behaviour for most touch events, so this shouldn't be too hard...

Is this not a dupe of bug 1065142?

One was about initializing text selection. The other was about dragging. It may be confusing, because if you start text selection inside a text field, it should not be able to extend outside it, but you should be able to drag outside the text field and have the selection stick to the edges of the input's frame. Or they may be the same fix internally. :)

Is that not the way that it currently works?!

Switching component, and marking invalid in light of new core AccessibleCaret implementation ( bug 1215959 ) currently in m-c. We can re-open, morph, or re-file if this is still a thing, and I can get wes or anyone else to comment :)