Over the last week or so, I became aware that when I clicked on text on a webpage in Firefox (version 2.0.0.3), I was left with a blinking cursor flashing at that point – as if I was in a word processor. This isn’t such a problem but I became increasingly aware of it and it started to become an annoyance – especially on Ajax pages where it makes things look faulty. If the text size is large then you can get massive cursors flashing at you! See the screenshot below:
I searched around and eventually found this website which proposes a solution. It turns out that this blinking cursor is actually a feature of firefox, called caret browsing and that it can be toggled on and off using the F7 key. Interestingly, Firefox prompts you when you want to turn Caret browsing on… yet I cannot remember ever seeing this prompt box before – which leaves me intrigued as to how it turned on in the first place on my computer.
Caret browsing can be a useful feature if you wish to select and manipulate text all via the keyboard – but for general web browsing it is best turned off. For a start, it makes scrolling a webpage using the keyboard arrows very very twitchy! Glad I’ve got to the bottom of this one anyway. Thanks to Rishi ‘Beyond-Teck’.
Thanks! This was driving me barmy today. I thought I’d coded something wrong in my CSS….!!
Thank you! It was driving me nuts and as you have put it, was getting to be quite annoying.
I don’t remember ever seeing a dialog box come up either. Thanks again!
Glad this sorted your issues out!
Thank you SO much! That was absolutely driving me insane! The blinking cursor next to an image would be like 3m tall! Thanks much!
Hi Michael
Glad that this guide was of use to you!
Jono