How to fix an annoying Firefox bug

jeffy777

jeffy777

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This is something that has been bothering me for awhile now. I kept hoping Mozilla would fix it with each new release, but I finally got rid of it with the help of Google. Many firefox users have had this problem, so I thought I'd share. Interestingly, some people never experience this bug, while it can show up for other people on a daily basis.

Here's an example of the bug:

The ' and / keys are hotkeys that bring up the quick find box if you want to search the text on a webpage (similar to CTRL + F, but with less features). These hotkeys are supposed to be disabled whenever you are typing in a form element (textbox, textarea, etc.). However, occasionally when posting on a forum for example, including ' in a post would still bring up the Find box, and it becomes impossible to type ' in your post, which gets very frustrating after about the hundredth time this happens, which seems to be totally at random since it doesn't happen all the time.

Well, here's how to fix it:

Disable the ' and / hotkeys (CTRL + F works better anyway)

First, close Firefox.....

Open the following file with WinRAR or something similar (I use PowerArchiver), also a good idea to make a backup first:
C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\chrome\toolkit.jar

Inside, open up:
content\global\findBar.js

Find these lines:
const CHAR_CODE_SLASH = "/".charCodeAt(0);
const CHAR_CODE_APOSTROPHE = "'".charCodeAt(0);

Replace them with;
const CHAR_CODE_SLASH = "".charCodeAt(0);
const CHAR_CODE_APOSTROPHE = "".charCodeAt(0);

(Note: you can change the hotkeys to something else if you want to...I just changed them to nothing)

Save and exit.

Life is now beautiful once again :D
 
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OMG I fucking love you! I have this problem all the time and usually fix it by spamming my control + alt + windows keys. That seems to fix it and allow me to type a ' again. heh

Off to make my changes...

(BTW, you can open JAR files with WinRAR ;))
 
You're welcome guys! I had a feeling others would benefit from thefix This bug is really the only problem I've ever had with Firefox, and I've been using it since before it was even called Firefox :)
 
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Nice one Jeffy! Now... if only my PC hadn't blown up spectacularly... :lol:
It was a problem I frequently had before...

Thankfully it's not a problem I've experienced on the Mac, though I have found a couple of annoying niggles on the Mac version of Firefox that do not appear on the Windows version - but they're something for another day... ;)
 
yeah i didn't even know those keys did that *prods keys and jumps up and down with excitement...* and i've never had that problem...
 
Some people are lucky enough to never know the evils of this bug. Others of us have lost many a hair over it.
 
I fall in the second group. My word that was (is) an annoying bug.
 
I've been using Firefox since before 1.0, and I've never had that problem. Maybe it's because I've always set Firefox to search when I start typing any character? :think:
 
chaos386 said:
I've been using Firefox since before 1.0, and I've never had that problem. Maybe it's because I've always set Firefox to search when I start typing any character? :think:
Click to expand...

Could be. I've never turned that feature on to be honest.
 
never ever had this problem and i've never used that feature.
 
Now I'm even more curious as to why some people have this and some don't? I've had it pretty much on all my PCs and windows installs. I wonder if it's a conflict with some other installed program.
 
I've never experienced this problem, but thanks for pointing it out for future reference.

I just use type-to-find anyway ;)
 
cvg said:
I always use Ctrl+F so no bugs here.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, I always use CTRL + F as well. But the problem is that ' and / would act as hotkeys when they weren't supposed to, such as if I were to try to include the word "I'm" in a post. The instant I would type the apostrophe, the quick find would come up and so including an apostrophe would be impossible, unless I copied and pasted it in, but that's gets old really fast. The hotkeys ' and / are supposed to be disabled when filling out a form (such as a post for example), but for some reason they are only disabled sometimes. That's the bug. Be thankful you've never experienced it ;)
 
Jeffy - I wonder if one of the plug-ins could've caused it?
From memory I was using a weather one (with Fox in the name I think), TabMixPlus, GoogleBar and I think that's it...
 
That's what I thought at first too. I've had the bug with no plugins/extensions installed, and on the default theme :(
 
Guys, keep in mind that you will need to apply this fix every time Firefox updates, atleast until they officially fix it.

I have been lazy since 2.0.0.7 came out, but the bug has returned so it's definitely still in the latest version.

Time to go apply the fix again :)
 
i've never had this problem, and i have lots of plug-ins installed (Forecastfox, FireFTP, Spell check, Fasterfox etc)

FF 2.0.0.8 has just come out so that might help to fix this problem for people who have it :)
 
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