That stupid Ruler dialog box | The Coffeehouse

RodAtWork

Sometimes, on some websites (MySpace.com is an example of one where I seem to often encounter this behavior and it appears as though this website exhibits that behavior as well, and I know I’ve encountered this on other websites I just can’t remember which ones at the moment), when I’m entering text into a text box on the web page, if I hold down the shift key and press the letter “R”, instead of actually putting a capital “R” into the text instead I get this stupid Ruler dialog box popup. In those situations it is impossible to ever get a capital “R” into those text boxes! That really sucks!!!

What causes that stupid dialog box to popup and how to I stop it???

I’m using IE7, and no I don’t want to change browsers.

lini
Big Dog

The popup is part of the IE Developer toolbar.

You can try pressing both Ctrl keys and then trying Shift-R, because the shortcut for the ruler is Ctrl-Shift-R. Since it opens only with Shift-R then the toolbar thinks one of the Ctrl keys is also pressed.

Harlequin
http://twitter.com/TrueHarlequin

Still, the toolbar should have options to turn off keyboard shortcuts. Even better to change them, especially since Shift-R is quite a silly shortcut to use.

PaoloM
Hypermediocrity

bleh.

PaoloM
Hypermediocrity

Harlequin wrote:
Still, the toolbar should have options to turn off keyboard shortcuts. Even better to change them, especially since Shift-R is quite a silly shortcut to use.

But it's not Shift-R, it's Ctrl-Shift-R.

Symptom: Pressing Shift-R cause the keycode for Ctrl-Shift-R to be sent.
Cause: Ctrl key is stuck.
Resolution: Clean your keyboard.

zian
Exploding heads since 1988

PaoloM wrote:

Harlequin wrote: Still, the toolbar should have options to turn off keyboard shortcuts. Even better to change them, especially since Shift-R is quite a silly shortcut to use.

But it's not Shift-R, it's Ctrl-Shift-R.

Symptom: Pressing Shift-R cause the keycode for Ctrl-Shift-R to be sent.
Cause: Ctrl key is stuck.
Resolution: Clean your keyboard.

That's odd...I'm obsessive about keeping my keyboards clean (complete with wiping down each little key and a full disassembly) and I still have that problem.

SlackmasterK
I write my OWN blogging engines

zian wrote:
That's odd...I'm obsessive about keeping my keyboards clean (complete with wiping down each little key and a full disassembly) and I still have that problem.

Same here... Though I don't actually clean my keyboards, I generally replace them. By the time it gets bad enough for crud to interfere with keypresses, I've gotten bored with it... Now if only the Das Keyboard checkout system weren't broken...

JChung2006

Shift-R bringing up the Ruler window in IE Developer Toolbar is annoying. Hope they fix this someday, and yeah, umm, it isn't a keyboard issue, it's a software one.

evildictaitor
if( !succeed( try() ) ) { while(true) try(); }

PaoloM wrote:

Harlequin wrote:Still, the toolbar should have options to turn off keyboard shortcuts. Even better to change them, especially since Shift-R is quite a silly shortcut to use.

But it's not Shift-R, it's Ctrl-Shift-R.

Symptom: Pressing Shift-R cause the keycode for Ctrl-Shift-R to be sent.
Cause: Ctrl key is stuck.
Resolution: Clean your keyboard.

No - it'll be a stupid design of the toolbar, which rather than looking at the keycode and using the ctrl, alt and shift flags sent with the code, it'll be registering KeyDown and KeyUp for the keys and looking for Ctrl (and storing this as a bool).

If for some reason the Ctrl Key-up is missed, for instance if the focus changes away from the toolbar and into something else while the Ctrl is down, then all subseqent key presses will register as if the Ctrl is still down so far as the toolbar is concerned.

This can of course be fixed by pressing both Ctrl buttons down while the toolbar has focus which will overwrite the bool and the keyup of the ctrl will cause the bool to be unstuck, allowing normal use again.

hplvecraft
hplvecraft

In reply to evildictaitor

#May 10th, 2008 @ 2:18 PM

Wow, I know I'm replying late in the day, but it's nice to see that someone actually replied with an actual fix!