Mouse issues: Windows 10, hovered links no pointer cursor, no I-beam cursor in text, unable to select text (entire window drags instead).
Here's the problem. I recently purchased a new laptop with Win 10. While setting it up, I found that, in Firefox 49, and Firefox only (I've also tested Edge, IE 11, Safari 5.1.7, and Chrome), the (arrow) mouse cursor does not change to a pointer (hand with pointing finger) cursor when hovering links, and single-clicking when hovering a link does nothing. However, if you hover a link and double-click it, it follows the link, although it also toggles full-screen (??).
Furthermore, it does not change to a text "I-beam" cursor when placed over text. Therefore, you cannot left-click and drag in text to select text either. If you try, it just drags the whole browser window. It seems to be dimly aware that it is text, since hovering a single word and double-clicking selects that word (and also toggles full-screen mode [??]). Hell, if you hover a word and triple-click, it even selects the whole paragraph, so it's clearly text-aware! But it seems unable to effect cursor changes and associated behaviors appropriately—pointer with single-click jump for links and I-beam with click-drag text select for text.
I have exhausted everything I can think of in searching for a resolution for this issue. Has anyone encountered this or any other similar mouse issues in Firefox in Win 10 (or at all,come to think of it)? Anyone have any suggestions of where I might look? I've tried looking at "about:config," but could see nothing obvious to address it. As a Web developer, I *really* do not want to even think about having to give up Firefox and its wealth of excellent developer's extensions and plugins. Any help gratefully accepted.
cheers, scott
All Replies (1)
It occurred to me that some additional information might be in order, because this laptop is equipped with a touch screen. It is a Dell Inspiron 17 7000 2-in-1, with a Core 17 7500U and 16 GB RAM. I have now done some touch experiments, to see if the behavior differed. (I've only used phone and tablet touch screens before, so I based my expectations on that behavior.)
When I single-tap a link, which has always before (on other devices) launched that link's target, nothing happens. When I double-tap it, the target is launched, but the browser goes full screen. On my phone (Galaxy S5, Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow), pressing and holding on text in Firefox highlights that word with movable boundary markers and offers choices based upon the nature of the text, but usually including Copy and Paste. Pressing and holding in FF49 on the Dell simply invokes the standard context menu. As with a mouse, double-tapping anywhere in the browser viewport switches to full screen mode.
Oh, and speaking of the browser viewport, I should note that I observe absolutely normal behavior (click-drag text selection), both mouse and touch, in the browser chrome text fields not in the viewport (i.e. the address bar and the search box). Seeing this, I invoked Firebug on a page. I saw the same behavior (no link highlighting, no text cursor) in the left-side editing region, but if I mucked about a bit in the right-side CSS region I could sometimes get a text cursor and edit values(??). This kinda sorta makes sense, since, like the main page, the Firebug panel is rendered using standard HTML and CSS, and from appearances, it seems that Firefox is oblivious of the nature of the elements underlying the cursor inside the browser viewport.
This is driving me nuts. I cannot imagine what might be different about FF that would cause it to exhibit this behavior. FF is by far my favorite browser; nothing else even comes close. Please, someone, tell me there's a setting I can change somewhere to resolve this.
cheers, scott