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How to stop firefox from auto focusing on text boxes

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by cor-el

grixm
grixm
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There is an extremely annoying behavior of firefox, that it automatically focuses on text boxes when a page loads, even if the text does not have the html autofocus attribute. This wouldn't be so bad on its own, the main problem is that it happens after a big delay, up to a few seconds after the textbox has loaded. This frequently causes problems like me manually focusing the text box I want to use, start writing, and then mid-word firefox changes the focus to a totally different text box. It drives me up the wall, and I can't find a solution for it. I've tried disabling the browser.autofocus setting in about:config, to no avail because it's not being focused because of an autofocus attribute, also I tried adding the setting capability.policy.default.HTMLInputElement.focus;noAccess but this didn't work either. Please help

There is an extremely annoying behavior of firefox, that it automatically focuses on text boxes when a page loads, even if the text does not have the html autofocus attribute. This wouldn't be so bad on its own, the main problem is that it happens after a big delay, up to a few seconds after the textbox has loaded. This frequently causes problems like me manually focusing the text box I want to use, start writing, and then mid-word firefox changes the focus to a totally different text box. It drives me up the wall, and I can't find a solution for it. I've tried disabling the browser.autofocus setting in about:config, to no avail because it's not being focused because of an autofocus attribute, also I tried adding the setting capability.policy.default.HTMLInputElement.focus;noAccess but this didn't work either. Please help

All Replies (3)

cor-el
cor-el
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Try to toggle browser.autofocus to false on the about:config page. You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar. You can accept the warning and click "I'll be careful" to continue.

grixm
grixm Question owner
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Thanks but as I said I've already tried that.cor-el said

Try to toggle browser.autofocus to false on the about:config page. You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar. You can accept the warning and click "I'll be careful" to continue.

Thanks but as I said I've already tried that.

cor-el
cor-el
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  • Top 10 Contributor
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If JavaScript is used to set focus to the field and not the autofocus attribute then only blocking this script could prevent this. If you know that a web page behaves this way then you will have to wait until the page has finished loading (no spinning throbber and a reload icon instead of the stop button). CAPS (capability.policy.default) prefs are no longer supported.