Text field behavior change

[Jeffery Small]

In Firefox 11 (and maybe recent earlier versions) I notice that I cannot
directly type or paste into text fields any longer. First you need to click
on the field to activate it and then you can type/paste.

Can anyone explain how this can be changed back to the old behavior where
the field is active when hovering on it? I'm guessing that there is a
config option, but I'm not sure what it is.

Thanks.

[Robert Riches]

If you put 'about:config' (without the quotation marks) in the
address bar, it will show you a _TON_ of configuration options.
If you type something into the Filter box, it will show you the
options whose names include what you type in the box. For
'focus', I see a bunch of options, the first and last of which
might be similar. Be cautious about what you do there and
remember what you change in case you need to change it back.

The behavior you refer to might be OS-dependent. As an example,
on Linux, Edit->Preferences gets you to the Preferences panel.
On Windows, Tools->Options takes you there. For future
questions, it might help to specify the OS you're using.

My suspicion, and it's just a suspicion, is that the developers
(or maybe marketing) has decided for you what the behavior will
be. Focus-on-pointer is more consistent with X (Unix and Linux),
while focus-on-click is more consistent with Doze.
Unfortunately, in some areas, Firefox seems to be moving browser
behavior to be more consistent with Doze.

HTH

--
Robert Riches
spamt...@jacob21819.net
(Yes, that is one of my email addresses.)

[cjsmall]

Robert:

Thanks for the great response. You are absolutely correct that I
should have indicated the OS. It is Solaris 10 on a Sparc machine,
running Firefox 11.

I had tried to look in about:config before posting, but stupidly did
not think to filter on the word "focus". The two options you mention:

accessibility,mouse_focused_formcontrol false
ui.key.menuAxxessKeyFocuses false

do both seem like likely candidates. However, changing either or both
to true did not affect the behavior of the browser.

So, does anyone else have any idea of what it takes to get Firefox to
obey focus-on-pointer for all text fields, including the URL bar?

Thanks.
--
Jeffery Small