Mozilla keyboard shortcuts applied when I don't want them. Help!

Sometimes, I’ll be on a message board like this, or typing something in a browser window, and suddenly Mozilla’s keyboard shortcuts will be activated. It doesn’t do this all the time, but I have yet to figure out what exactly the trigger is. It’s usually when I type an apostrophe or a slash ( ’ or / ) but it only seems to happen some of the time. For example, as I type this now, I haven’t triggered the shortcuts despite having typed several apostrophes. It seems completely arbitrary to me when it happens. What am I missing here?

I agree that this is a problem - I often type text here, and at work for bug reporting, time tracking system, etc. Most often my friend ends up with the search bar at the bottom opening up. While I use the same types of words and the same sites and browser, it doesn’t affect me anywhere near as much.

We’ve checked bugzilla from time to time, but have found nothing yet.

This is Mozilla’s “find as you type” option–a feature, not a bug. Typing / or ’ begins a search in the page for the given text. It won’t happen (at least, it’s not supposed to) if you’re currently typing into a textbox (i.e., if the textbox is the active input field, usually indicated by an input cursor). But if you’ve just clicked the Preview button or copied some text from elsewhere on the page, for example, the textbox is no longer active, so / starts a search instead. You can turn this off if you want. Preferences>Advanced>Keyboard Navigation lets you control some of the features – you can turn on or off the jump-to-link feature, which doesn’t require the initial / – but doesn’t let you kill the entire feature. Instead, open a new tab and type “about:config” into the URL bar. Filter on “typeaheadfind” and set the key accessibility.typeaheadfind to false.