My mortal nemesis rears his ugly head again. (For those who don’t want to bother clicking the link, I’m talking about the fact that the easy-to-accidentally-type shortcut of Ctrl+W closes a window, thus potentially deleting a lengthy post before you can submit it.) I’ve more-or-less trained myself to be extremely careful when typing capital W’s, only to be hit by the same problem on a lowercase W due to a stuck Ctrl key. I’ve had it! I don’t want to go through the rest of my life living in fear of the letter W (and the letters around it, since I’m not immune to typos.)
This started as a Pit thread, but I’ve moved it to GQ, because I have a serious question: Are there any web browsers for Windows that give me some “Are you sure? (Yes/No)” prompt when I’m closing a window where I’ve entered text? (I’d also like to know if there’s any way in Windows to disable the Ctrl+W shortcut, but when I asked this in the Pit no one seemed to know of any.)
I don’t think so. It sounds like you just need a new keyboard that (A) Doesn’t have a sticky control key and (B) Has a control key in a layout that is not easy to hit accidentally.
My keyboard is by Microsoft and I have never once had this problem.
You can disable crtl-w in Opera. In fact, Opera allows you to disable or modify just about any keyboard shortcut you want. All the following instructions apply to Opera 8.01.
Go to Tools > Preferences, and then click on the Advanced tab.
On the left-hand side, click on the section called Shortcuts.
Now, in the bottom half of the box, double-click on the area under Keyboard Setup that says Opera Standard.
You will get a pop-up box with a bunch of options. Under the section “Input context and shortcuts,” click the little + box next to the one that says “Application.”
Now, scroll down the list until you find the entry that says:
w ctrl ________ Close page, 1
Highlight it, and click the “Edit” button on the right. The, just erase the part that says “w ctrl” or add your own shortcut.
Click out by clicking OK, and voila! You’ve done it.
Ctrl-W has bitten my noodle on many occasions. In XEmacs, which I usually use, Ctrl-W means “Cut”, but in NEdit, which I am occasionally forced to use for various reasons, it means “Exit.” So I’m always hitting Ctrl-W trying to cut text, not remembering that I’m in NEdit and not XEmacs, and my window quits, usually losing edits in the process.
Interesting. I have never once had that problem. When typing, the shift key is one that I very, VERY rarely mis-hit. Occasionally, I’ll hit CAPS LOCK when attempting shift, but not control. Do you touch type? If not, that could be the problem, because, as a touch-typist, I really can’t see accidentally hitting CTRL instead of shift.
Or if it’s already an old keyboard, just pop off the righthand Ctrl key entirely (presuming you type with the opposing-hand method, i.e. if you’re typing Shift and a letter, you’re pressing Shift with a finger of the opposite hand that’s pressing the letter). Screwdriver’ll do the trick. 'Course, for any other Ctrl-shortcuts you use, you’ll need to do some of them one-handed, using the lefthand key (pinky on Ctrl, index on V for paste, or whatever), but it’ll solve the problem.
There use to be a power toy option for windows to remap the keyboard functions, but I have just discovered it is gone from XP.
What Op Sys are you using?
If it is really annoying, you can go to shareware.com and try to find a keyboard map utility.
I do touch type, but I may tend to miss keys more than I otherwise would because I’m switching between two different kinds of keyboards. The one I have at home is ergonomic, the one at my office isn’t. So I’m constantly having to readjust. (I really ought to just buy another ergonomic keyboard and replace the one they gave me at work.)
But anyway, I think I will switch to Opera (as per mhendo’s suggestion), since I’m kind of dissatisfied with my current browser anyway.
If you open multiple tabs in Firefox, you can set it so that it won’t close the window without a prompt. I know that’s not what you’re looking for, but it has saved my bacon on occasion.