For some reason, Firefox started to display a blinking cursor, like web pages I have been viewing were editable. Thinking that some errant plugin was causing this behavior, I manically disabled a few I had recently installed. However that didn’t fix the problem.

Good ole Google to the rescue.

Firefox has a ‘feature’ that lets you select text with more visual feedback. I guess the little one must have been hitting keys and turned this on.

Turning it off is easy! Press F7 to turn off caret browsing.

Alternatively, type “about:config” in the URL area, then filter for “caret“. Change accessibility.browsewithcaret to “false”.



This post has 5 comments. Add your own.

Comments

Ralph Hyre
Posted August 2nd, 2008 @ 13:54:23

Where was the ffox product manager when this was put in?
>Alternatively, type â??about:configâ?? in the >URL area, then filter for â??caretâ??. Change >accessibility.browsewithcaret to â??falseâ??.

This \’hidden feature\’, which fails too many usability principles (I\’ll list 3 here):
- Nothing obvious firefox help about this
You\’d have to guess it\’s an accessibility feature.
- State of this feature is invisible, nothing changes in the status bar

- No menu shortcut to turn it off.

mmmbop
Posted September 17th, 2008 @ 18:06:49

Thanks, this issue was really bugging me.

Nora
Posted January 3rd, 2009 @ 20:59:20

Thank you! I have a 5 yrs old sister that must have done it. It was driving me crazy!

mary
Posted January 29th, 2009 @ 18:06:29

I have tried this fix several times and still does not help. What else could it be?

holger
Posted March 13th, 2009 @ 09:26:32

Thanks, I must have activated this by accident, you helped me very much here! What a feature…

Trackbacks