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Tab key to select form elements in Firefox on the Mac

If you use Firefox on the Mac, you've probably noticed that when you are editing a form and using the tab key to move the focus between form fields, select boxes get skipped. As it turns out, this is not a problem with Firefox, it's a result of a Mac keyboard preference where they made a really bad decision on the default value. If you want to change this behavior so that using the tab key in Firefox forms will include select box elements when switching the focus, here's what you need to do.

1) Go to System Preferences and select the Keyboard & Mouse panel.

2) Choose the Keyboard Shortcuts tab.

3) At the bottom of the panel (shown in red in the image below), there is a section called Fulll keyboard access. By default, the radio button will be selected so that the keyboard focus only goes between text boxes and lists. Select the All controls option and the behavior will be changed so that the select box form elements will be included when moving the focus in the form.

The Keyboard preferences panel highlighting the section of interest in red The Keyboard preferences panel highlighting the section of interest in red
Rating: 85% positive, 7 total Votes
Categories: mac firefox keyboard
Added: on Sep 21, 2007 at 7:43 am
Added By: Marcos84

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This odd behavior has bugged me for years... and to think this fix was there the whole time. Thank you!
– Added by an anonymous user on Sep 21, 2007 at 7:49 am
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