Re: Firefox: tab closing strangeness
Hi Greg,
Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> writes:
> On Mon, Jan 12, 2026 at 09:23:53 +0100, Loris Bennett wrote:
>> 2. If I close a tab via the keyboard shortcut 'Ctrl-w', this works but not if
>> the page on the tab contains a text field.
>
> What matters is whether the application's focus is currently inside that
> text field. When you're focused on the text field, the cursor should be
> visible (and possibly blinking), and Ctrl-W will act as an emacs editing
> command. Specifically, it means "delete the word before the cursor".
>
> If focus is NOT inside the text field, then Ctrl-W will close the tab.
>
> Try it on https://google.com/ for example. If you click on the big
> ol' text entry box in the middle of the page, you'll get editing behavior.
> Try typing a few words into the entry field, then press Ctrl-W and it
> should delete the most recently typed word.
>
> If you click on the vast white background outside the entry field,
> then Ctrl-W will close the tab.
>
> The same behavior used to happen in Chrome/Brave, but recent versions
> of Brave broke it. Now, Ctrl-W in Brave always closes the tab, even if
> you're editing a text/entry, and Ctrl-U always opens a new tab with the
> "page source" (except it's not the source of the page you're currently
> looking at), even if you're editing. I wish they'd revert this change.
> I opened an issue for it on their forum, but got no response. I was
> able to disable Ctrl-W and Ctrl-U entirely through preferences, but I
> was unable to find any way to restore their context-sensitive behavior.
> At least I won't accidentally close or open tabs now, but having to
> whack the Backspace key many times instead of pressing Ctrl-W, or hold
> down the Backspace key instead of pressing Ctrl-U, is obnoxious.
Thanks for the information, particularly also relating to the use of Emacs
bindings. Despite being an Emacs of serval decades and having used Firefox
for a large part of that time, I had never really twigged that Firefox
supports Emacs bindings, although I'm sure I must have subconsciously used
things like C-f and C-b them in the search field.
Cheers,
Loris
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