When typing in my blog or elsewhere, Firefox will suddenly interrupt me by opening a toolbar at the bottom of the screen which seems to be trying to find a word for me to use.

I have to stop what I'm doing, click the toolbar X to get rid of it and then go back to what I was doing. Odd characters seem to initiate it, e.g. <, /, word/word,etc.

I've gone to Tools-Options-Advanced, and the box for "Begin finding when you begin typing" is unchecked. How can I get rid of this annoying feature?
:eek:

With "Find As You Type" off, this toolbar should only pop up when you press the shortcut for it - CTRL+F. Are you sure you aren't accidentally pressing that key shortcut?

If not, I would guess that you have installed an extension that is causing Firefox to do this. Have you installed any extensions? If so, tell us which ones by clicking Tools >> Extensions and listing what is there. Normally problems like these are caused by shortcut keys in extensions - e.g. the FoxyTunes extension uses CTRL+Left and CTRL+Right for default actions. I often use these shortcut keys when typing something (CTRL+Left/Right skips a word at a time) so it oftens caused problems (till I changed the keys).

The / key will also open the Find toolbar, but this will (should) not happen when you are typing something in a text box.

With "Find As You Type" off, this toolbar should only pop up when you press the shortcut for it - CTRL+F. Are you sure you aren't accidentally pressing that key shortcut?

If not, I would guess that you have installed an extension that is causing Firefox to do this. Have you installed any extensions? If so, tell us which ones by clicking Tools >> Extensions and listing what is there. Normally problems like these are caused by shortcut keys in extensions - e.g. the FoxyTunes extension uses CTRL+Left and CTRL+Right for default actions. I often use these shortcut keys when typing something (CTRL+Left/Right skips a word at a time) so it oftens caused problems (till I changed the keys).

The only extension I have is the Google Toolbar, which is at the top of the screen.

Read PSI's answer. Pressing '/' turns on the search but it won't do that when you are typing in a text area (like it doesn't work when I press / when typing this reply. Are you sure you're not accidentally not typing in the text area but clicked somewhere else on the page? Might help if you explain what you are doing and what blog you use.

What might be happening is this. Say you are typing in a text area on your blog, you want to make something bold so you move your mouse up to the bold button, click it and start typing again. You type '</something>' and the find pops up containing 'something>'. The text you thought you were typing in probably contains no new text - not even the '<' pressed before the /. This is a problem with the blog software, not Firefox. It should return the focus to the text area after pressing the button. I don't believe there is anything you can do to complete turn off this off though - it's more a case of either changing your browser (although Firefox is the best IMHO) or changing your typing habits.

To see the advanced options for Firefox, type "about:config" into the address bar. The Type As You Find options start with "accesiblity.typeaheadfind". For further info, see here: http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/tips#beh_taf