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”.
Tagged: caret, configuration, firefox, tips
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9 Comments
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.
Thanks, this issue was really bugging me.
Thank you! I have a 5 yrs old sister that must have done it. It was driving me crazy!
I have tried this fix several times and still does not help. What else could it be?
Thanks, I must have activated this by accident, you helped me very much here! What a feature…
Thanks Dave! This was SOOO annoying as I like to use my arrow keys to scroll down web pages and I couldn’t with the caret browsing on. It was like hitting the END or HOME key and it was frustrating. I guess my little guy must have pushed F7 and turned it on, many thanks!
I found this when searching for the blinking close button problem solution. I have found a workaround here http://annoyances-resolved.blogspot.com/2009/10/firefox-vista-close-button-blinking.html but not the complete solution. Help!
Thx alot! That’s been bugging me for days!
Thank you, my cat wreaked havoc!