Published:
May 8, 2008 – 9:09 pm
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By Dave
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Firefox Blinking Cursor Issue

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”.

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10 Comments

  1. Ralph Hyre

    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.

    Posted August 2, 2008 at 1:54 pm | Permalink
  2. mmmbop

    Thanks, this issue was really bugging me.

    Posted September 17, 2008 at 6:06 pm | Permalink
  3. Nora

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

    Posted January 3, 2009 at 8:59 pm | Permalink
  4. mary

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

    Posted January 29, 2009 at 6:06 pm | Permalink
  5. holger

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

    Posted March 13, 2009 at 9:26 am | Permalink
  6. Rose Pulsifer

    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!

    Posted July 28, 2009 at 10:32 pm | Permalink
  7. Matt

    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!

    Posted October 14, 2009 at 12:20 pm | Permalink
  8. Dimitar Chakarov

    Thx alot! That’s been bugging me for days!

    Posted November 8, 2009 at 8:48 am | Permalink
  9. Simon

    Thank you, my cat wreaked havoc!

    Posted January 13, 2010 at 7:32 pm | Permalink
  10. Crystal

    Thank you!

    Posted March 24, 2010 at 12:48 am | Permalink