Apostrophe character brings up "Find" feature

[MontyV]

This has become quite annoying. This only happens in my firefox browser. I've noticed that on this computer that has firefox that every time I used the apostrophe it automatically jump to the "find" feature. Is this a bug? I've reinstalled firefox a few times also already.

[craigevil]

No bug it is the default. Both ' and / will bring up the find box if you aren't in a text box.

[MontyV]

No bug it is the default. Both ' and / will bring up the find box if you aren't in a text box.

I was not aware that there was a shortcut but this happens as I am typing. So yes I am in a text box and it is still happening. I have to not use contractions like don't and change it to do not. The only reason I am able to use the contraction right now is because I had to switch to IE browser to reply to this message.

[MontyV]

no help here?

[venus_de_mpls]

I had that problem for quite a while. I finally did a totally clean installation (performed an uninstall, then removed profile and program files/directories and cleaned the registry). Of course I first backed up bookmarks, passwords, etc. Problem all gone.

[Sarre]

No bug it is the default. Both ' and / will bring up the find box if you aren't in a text box.

Could anyone explain to me why this default has been introduced?
I just can't see the point - at least I think it ought to have been a default which you could disable or alter.

[VanillaMozilla]

If you are NOT in a text box it's a useful feature. See Keyboard Shortcuts. It searches for links. (<i>in</i> links? -- I forget) It's not supposed to happen if you are typing in a text box, but very occasionally it does. This is a known bug.

[venus_de_mpls]

According to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=258285 Tabmix Plus is a known culprit. When the bug was fixed and I still had the problem, that's when I did a clean install and the problem disappeared.

[VanillaMozilla]

But you can observe the bug without any extensions. It's "fixed", and depending on your life expectency, the fix may eventually come to your desktop.

[venus_de_mpls]

It did come to my desktop - with a clean installation. The reason I keep stressing that point is because I had some holdover when upgrading from 1.0 to any and all successive upgrades through 1.0.7.

[juliette]

So the only solution to this is to go through the hassle of reinstalling everything which might work if I'm very lucky (and knowing me will result in me losing at least some of my settings), or to wait for 1.8? Any other ideas? At the moment I'm having to switch to IE regularly :-(

For some reason this has only just started happening recently even though I haven't installed any extensions etc. for ages.

[VanillaMozilla]

Uninstalling and reinstalling should take less than 5 minutes, and won't change any of your settings. It might not solve the problem either, but who knows? It can't hurt to try.

But you should also try switching tabs or windows. That's a known workaround.

[MontyV]

ok I have done the clean install and I am having the same problem. I haven't even put my extensions/themes/plugins back in again and I am having the same problem. I'm in the same boat as juliette and I am forced to switch to IE regularly as well

[juliette]

My problem seems to have magically fixed itself. Will cross my fingers and see how it goes. By the way MontyV the IE Tab Extension is worthwhile if you don't have it already, as a bit of a workaround.

I'm quite curious as to what sort of text areas it happens with though as it certainly wasn't with all of them (the one that was causing my the most anguish was the wordpress posting text area for my blog).

[Canyonero]

Could anyone explain to me why this default has been introduced?
I just can't see the point - at least I think it ought to have been a default which you could disable or alter.

It was a feature introduced a long time ago, before the Findbar even existed, to make searching easier. Searches occurred then whenever you typed on a page. The shortcuts were so that you could turn on and off find-as-you-type easily.The apostrophe and backslash even do different things. Apostrophe searches only links, and backslash the whole page.. or at least that's how they used to work. It's a bit of a hold-over feature now, but I think some important people would probably go nuts if they were removed.

The problem might be linked to rich-text editing areas. Normal (non-rich) ones just use a textbox. Rich ones are usually an iFrame that's been set to be editable. I'm betting its more just a setting changed in FF by an extension though, and not changed back when the extension was removed.