I'm currently using Firefox 1.5.0.4, and lately I've been noticing a strange cursor artifact quite often. I'm not sure why it shows up, but it seems pretty random and comes and goes as it pleases. The last time I saw it was when I was writing up an email in Gmail:
It's a minor annoyance, sure, but it's an annoyance nonetheless. I tried looking for a Bugzilla bug on it, but didn't find one right off the bat. I did, however, find some discussion on the artifact over at MozillaZine, relating mostly to RTL languages. However, I'm not convinced this is the cause of the problem.
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I've seen that so many times and always thought it was my 'puter. Good to know that I'm not secretly going insane. :-)
I see it in Firefox on both my Mac and Windows machines, and I had to Google "gmail firefox cursor" to find your blog entry. Jeez, I hope either Gmail or Firefox gets this fixed. It's not crazy-making but it is occasionally distracting.
Press F7 to disable or enable caret blinking.
That weird cursor doesn't seem to be limited just to any particular websites. I'm getting it in the comment section of my own blog, and I've seen it at many different websites, including a web app I'm developing at work. It's not so annoying as to impede productiveness, but it's one of those things that gets under your skin, so to speak.
BTW, I've never been to your blog before, but I love your logo -- great use of typography!
Scott, couldn't have said it better myself (regarding the annoyance). I wonder if the issue's still around in the beta of Firefox 2.0 that came out yesterday.
Thanks for the compliment regarding my logo.
I find this a HUGE HUGE HUGE annoyance. My curser blinks at a crazy rate and seems to just input text wherever it chooses. To prove the point I am using windows but I will copy your link and repost in Firefox. It's positively insane.
My issue is that for my job I the Firefox works better or should I say it did before I upgraded. LOL
Still appears in 2.0 (find it about 15.7% annoying ;-)
/Johal
This bothers me as well. BTW, I always see it on the wikipedia, can someone confirm?
I just found out that this is called caret browsing, and its a simple fix by hitting F7!
I've seen it... does it have any correlation to FireFox's version "AutoComplete" maybe?
I don't find it annoying at all. It's just a cursor. I only find it annoying when it doesn't show the cursor at all.
This is not caret browsing. Caret browsing involves using the cursor to highlight within a web page. This occurs even with the address and search bars of Firefox. Has no one found the cause or solution? I find this terribly annoying.
I know this sounds nuts but I've noticed that this cursor shows up when I search for items that are related to terrorism. Like if I do a google search for "arabic" the next time I search I have the weird cursor. If I search for something harmless, like bunnies, it goes away. Then if I search for Saddam it's back again.
Someone else try this out and see if I'm just crazy. It only happens in firefox, not IE.
Ian, what you're seeing could just be a coincidence based on the point that was raised in my original post about RTL languages. If the "terrorist" or "Saddam" searches you're performing result in the display of those types of languages, it might explain why the cursor changes.
I still have no clue what the significance of the cursor change is, though.
I've been wondering about this for ages too! Here's the explanation:
It will appear in the text boxes of a page that mixes left-to-right and right-to-left scripts. For example, wikipedia.
The dot on the cursor indicates the direction the caret will move in the current text box (which depends on the script direction). I imagine this is useful to people who work in a mixture of RTL or LTR languages.
Source: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=331120
...and, indeed, someone on that page has added Arabic and Hebrew text to one of the posts, so the search box on the right now shows the dot.
I have no idea whether there's a bug to remove the marker on people's systems that don't use BiDi languages.
Dan, thanks for the very insightful follow-up on the matter. It definitely makes more sense now, especially the part about the left- and right-facing glyphs depending upon the direction of the language.
So its a feature, not a bug. Hmmm... annoying feature.
As always Bernie, thanks for having the site that attracts the people that know what they're talking about :-)
Old thread I know, but change about:config Bidi.support to 3 and it should go away
I get the vanishing cursor, works fine on one asp.net page, on the next not. The issue is in a div/panel that is exactly the same on both pages. No foreign languages, nothing out of the ordinary. Very annoying to users.
what about your support
Dan-
Thanks for the clarification!! Someone here at work thought it was some sort of keylogger working. Good to know we're not going insane!
Thx a LOT! This has been bothering me for weeks...
I have two almost identical instances of the same web app but the cursor problem appears only in one of them. "Identical" *except* for the supported languages that are listed in a drop down and one of them includes arabic... never would have thought about that :-)
Setting accessibility.browsewithcaret to false fixes the issue for me!
The default value of accessibility.browsewithcaret is already false. I've also tried setting bidi.support to 3 (as per the instructions in one of the commments above) and that didn't work either (with Firefox 2.0.0.6). Does anyone know how to turn this annoying thing off?
Hi,
Finding first Arabic site in Google - http://www.aljazeera.net and still cursor is showing to right although you are writing to left (LTR). Maybe someone has found cure for this nonsense?
In about:config change bidi.support to 0 (not 3 as mentioned above)
Restart FF
Above commenter's fix doesn't work.
F7 worked for me. When I hit it again, it asked me if I wanted "Carat Browsing" turned on. That's the solution. Thanks!
Hello, I want to weigh in on the dot because I first noticed it two years ago when doing google searches. Now I notice it a lot, mostly through Google sites. I think it is generated by Google and has nothing to do with operating systems or browsers, because I have used them all and it doesn't matter. It shows up randomly. It is not here on this site, for instance, but does seem to show up when doing a search. For that reason I thought maybe it was an NSA or DHS spy or bot of some type. If anyone knows for sure please let us know. I got so paranoid about it I stopped using Google for awhile.
I have this weird bug in Firefox 3.0.4 that acts like Microsoft Word. I can click anywhere on a web page, and it will show the blinking cursor that is used for typing. I can't type anything there of course, but it just annoys me.
it's called caret browsing. press F7 and it should go away.
I have this dot thing when using Thunderbird V20.0.0.23 email program. The explanation that it's caused by RTL and LTR in the same page makes sense to me, but none of the above fixes have worked. It goes away if I reboot the program and reappears when an email containing Arabic or Hebrew comes in.
I see this is a very old post (3 years old), but none of the answers were accurate. So here's a try to explain what's going on:
WHY DOES IT SHOW A LITTLE TRIANGLE AT THE TOP? This is simply to indicate the direction of writing. For people installing multi-lingual versions of their operating system (Windows or Mac OS), it is built in. For people with only one language installed (English, for example), it will start showing the triangle on web-pages that have mixed input OR allow (!!) mixed input in various languages. Think Flickr, Google and Yahoo! (in some of the pages).
DOES IT EVER CHANGE? Yes. When you are typing in a Right-To-Left language, the cursor immediately shows you which language are you in (Hebrew, for example, will indicate the triangle to the LEFT of the cursor bar, indicating you are going to type with glyphs to the left of the cursor.
CAN I REMOVE IT? I ONLY TYPE IN ENGLISH! Unfortunately no, until someone at Microsoft, Apple, Google or the Firefox folks decide it's a worthwhile feature to address. Some of the fixes above work, depending on the exact OS + Browser configuration you will use (there are hundreds, so no one "solution"...)
BTW, this is not considered a bug. It's a usability & accessability feature that users writing RTL languages are familiar with for roughly 20 years. It does not affect your writing, unless you see it blinking with a triangle to the left of the bar, which means you switched to an RTL language... ;-)
See more at http://ask.metafilter.com/39501/Whats-going-on-with-my-Gmail-cursor
if you wanna get rid of it, remove the hebrew or arabic or whatever exotic keyboard setting in your region and preferences settings.
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I see that all the time though not now, it seems. I found it about 20% annoying -- I wish it were not there, but its not anything I'd blog about :-).
I'll keep my eyes open for it and any possible reasons for its existene.
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