I also use ^L, but many times I just want to modify part of the URL (sometimes even with text from the clipboard buffer). As a web developer this change is going to be pretty irritating.
Don’t worry. The single click behaviour is secondarily broken in that it doesn’t save the url to your primary clipboard so you can click again (but slowly enough for it to not be a double click) to edit the url
Uhm so if I do two slow clicks I can actually edit without changing my clipboard (even when the first click renders it selected)... and if I want to copy the URL I have to do two slow clicks and then a quick triple-click. It's awful but I least I still have copy paste functionality. Thanks!
By the way, is there any workaround for the Esc issue? (i.e. a way to unfocus the new address bar)
In fact you can go straight for a confusing fast triple click to select everything and copy to clipboard. The first selects everything, second click selects and saves the word, and the third selects and saves the whole address.