# My space bar was wacked temporarly... **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [October 27, 2002, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-space-bar-was-wacked-temporarly/134050 "2002-10-27T01:34:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Snugglebear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Snugglebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snugglebear)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2002, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-space-bar-was-wacked-temporarly/134050/1 "2002-10-27T01:34:08Z")
While typing a response to a thread I experienced a problem. Every time I hit the spacebar I would go to the bottom of the page. I logged out and back in then everyting was normal again… Any insight? ---
**Author:** ![Geek\_Mecha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecae2f/32.png) [@Geek\_Mecha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Geek_Mecha)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2002, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-space-bar-was-wacked-temporarly/134050/2 "2002-10-27T04:06:02Z")
Did you accidentally click outside the reply box? Doing so unhighlights the reply box, causing your spacebar to think you want to scroll down instead of make a space. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2002, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-space-bar-was-wacked-temporarly/134050/3 "2002-10-27T04:18:26Z")
OK, 'fess up. Even if you did a reset-and-clear on your mental imagery before you clicked the link, the **first** thing you thought of was the bar in _Star Wars_, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it? C’mon, you know you did. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2002, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-space-bar-was-wacked-temporarly/134050/4 "2002-10-27T04:29:51Z")
Actually, come to think of it, I can verify what **Snugglebear** is describing. If I type a long post–long enough to exceed the default boundaries of the “Your Reply:” box–and then at some point scroll back “uphill” in my own post-in-progress to read or correct something in the earlier sentences I wrote, it may get very funky and weirded out when I try to go back to the bottom of the post I’m composing. One symptom is as **Snugglebear** describes, every spacebar makes the whole bloody screen try to jump down. Other related symptoms: sometimes I can’t GET it to scroll to the bottom of the post (it’s as if I’d quit writing several lines earlier); and sometimes it’s not the whole page that tries to jump, just the text inside the “Your Reply:” box; and sometimes it’s not just the spacebar, sometimes it’s every keystroke. Usually what I do is command-A, command-C (select and copy), paste my post-in-progress into BBEdit, finish it there, then copy it and paste it back into the box. It’s been that way since the vb upgrade following the Winter of our Missed Content. ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2002, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-space-bar-was-wacked-temporarly/134050/5 "2002-10-27T05:57:14Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by AHunter3 \* > **the first thing you thought of was the bar in _Star Wars_, wasn’t it?** Yeah, because we don’t know what a space bar is. 😕 ---
**Author:** ![dantheman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dantheman/32/9421_2.png) [@dantheman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dantheman)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2002, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-space-bar-was-wacked-temporarly/134050/6 "2002-10-27T16:11:40Z")
A bar in space, of course! I had a slightly dissimilar problem earlier today. I’d be typing in the “your reply” box, and suddenly the cursor would leave the box. No, seriously. Then I’d have to reclick in the box to continue typing. Damn gremlins. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2002, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-space-bar-was-wacked-temporarly/134050/7 "2002-10-28T02:44:48Z")
> [@](#): > > paste my post-in-progress into BBEdit Is this some sort of text editor designed specifically for bulletin boards, I take it? Tell us more! ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2002, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-space-bar-was-wacked-temporarly/134050/8 "2002-10-28T16:30:40Z")
BBEdit is a popular Macintosh HTML and text editor. [http://www.bbedit.com](http://www.bbedit.com) ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2002, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-space-bar-was-wacked-temporarly/134050/9 "2002-10-28T22:21:37Z")
**Chronos** , it was indeed designed specifically for bulletin boards–back in the dark dim days of dialup BBS services! I believe BBEdit was first designed to let you search and parse and otherwise cope with huge text files generated by the session-trapping software, I believe. (Uploaded text-encoded binary files interspersed with dialog and command-line navigation commands, etc). Of course, since it was a phenomenal and versatile text editor, that quickly ceased to be relevant. Its career as a HTML editor is at least its “third life”.