ah, how long have you been using the web? at least for me I edit an url
about 30ish times a day since it allows you to bounce around a site
without using the page links... much of the problem is you are trying to
use Safari, get rid of it. Camino is a much better Mac browser.
http://www.**--****.com/
and by the way, not sure about safari, but in Camino, if you click once
on the location icon, the full URL is highlighted, if you double click
on the actual URL, the main word you clicked on is highlighted, triple
click and the whole URL is highlighted.
my advice to you is dump safari quickly, it will give you a bad taste
since it's not really a Mac based app.