547173 - ui.caretWidth configuration parameter support erratic

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

Description

[Joor Loohuis]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.8) Gecko/20100214 Ubuntu/9.10 (karmic) Firefox/3.5.8
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.8) Gecko/20100214 Ubuntu/9.10 (karmic) Firefox/3.5.8

Setting ui.caretWidth through the Firefox configuration has erratic results. On some websites/applications it works as expected, and on others the setting is ignored completely. I have tabs side by side in Firefox, one with a heavier text caret in textareas and inputs, and in another tab the text caret is the standard 1px thin line.

I can find no reference to a directive that would allow a webdeveloper to set the caret width through CSS or similar, and I doubt if that is desirable. However, having a user preference to modify the caret width is good for usability. If only it were consistent.

Examples: on http://techworld.nl/ the search box at the right top shows a heavy cursor if I configure it. This site (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/) ignores my setting. Both sites are running side by side in tabs.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. in Firefox, open about:config in the URL bar
2. rightclick in the content area
3. select 'new', 'integer'
4. enter 'ui.caretWidth' for the name
5. enter 3 for the value
6. restart Firefox and test with a page that has a text input or textarea on it
Actual Results:  
On many sites, the text caret width setting is ignored, and the thin 1 pixel vertical line is displayed. The Firefox user interface completely ignores the setting.

Expected Results:  
The text caret to be displayed with the weight that the ui.caretWidth configuration option is set to.

Reference: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=865895
The ui.caretBlinkTime setting does appear to be respected consistently, both in websites and the Firefox user interface.

Comment 1

[Ioana (away)]

Can anyone reproduce this issue on a current Firefox version (23, 24 etc)?