Hi Greg, Greg Wooledge <[email protected]> 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 -- This signature is currently under constuction.
