How to Disable Firefox Quick Find

Finding a Solution to Disable Quick Find Completely

The predator
A friend of mine, Dr. Robertson, prompted me that somehow Firefox Quick Find feature still interferes in his typing practice even after setting the accessibility.typeaheadfind to 'false' in the about:config settings.

“How?” I queried him inquisitively.

“As we all know pressing either the slash or single quote key enables Quick Find, right?” I nodded in approval as he continued, “I was practicing typing online at typingtutor-online.com's My Text section when suddenly my typing was halted by something incomprehensible. I pressed every key on the keyboard and yet no character was coming out. Much to my surprise I found out that Firefox Quick Find had stealthily emerged above the status bar and it was stealing focus on my typing.”

“What do you mean by stealing focus,” I asked.

“You see, I was typing with texts full of slashes and single quotes. Every time I pressed either key, Quick Find springs up and like a vicious predator from beneath feeds on all my slashes and single quotes and all other innocent characters,” this he said haltingly. With a pale face and sweat as large as peas on his forehead, my perplexed friend concluded, “Arnel, your post on How to Disable Quick Find in Firefox last month is flawed.”

Looking for a cure
The horror, the horror of it all, right there in my desktop Quick Find was gorging on all the slashes ( / ) and single quotes ( ' ) as I reenacted the circumstances Dr. Robertson had narrated.

I opened about:config and look for clues inside the items, maybe there is a way, I thought, to disable Quick Find completely that would end my friend's misery. I tried to configure all typeaheadfind Boolean items to 'false' and then to 'true' and back again to 'false' and configured accessibility.typeaheadfind.timeout value to zero; all efforts failed.

So I invoked the power of Google and prayed that it provide a vaccine to this ailment plaguing Firefox users. It showed me a website and directed, “Go to Kaosmos Website!” Upon arrival at the site, I saw plug-ins and extensions free for downloads. And somewhere on this site a solution not only for my friend's Firefox 3 but also for Firefox 1.5 and 2.0 users.

Bearer of Good News
So I turned from my desk and reach out for the phone to report the good news to my dear old friend.

“Good news, Dr. Robertson. I finally found the solution to your predicament,” I told him as I opened Gmail. “I will be sending you the procedure through email.”

“Thank you, Arnel. I can't wait to tinker with my Firefox again.”

As I was about to give him a word of reproach on tinkering Firefox, he proudly announced that his typing speed had increased considerably since our last conversation. “It's 40 cpm!”

And then he asked, “What does cpm stand for?”

And so the day went on for a tutorial on abbreviations . . .


Read also: How to Disable Quick Find in Firefox, and How to Disable Firefox Quick Find Completely

NOTE: The author does not consider Firefox Quick Find as a virus. Dr. Robertson is not real. However, Kaosmos Website and Google are real.