ASCII blocked?

[Drifblim]

Whenever I try to type a dash or the é using ASCII codes, it instead directs me to other areas of the forum. To type a dash (ALT+0151) I'm sent back to the main forum page. To type é (ALT+0233) I'm either sent to the printable version of the thread or to the search page. This is happening with every vBulletin forum that I've been on thus far, and I have Num Lock on and am using the number keypad. What is going on?

[Haruki Hanai]

I think those are Unicode input codes. o_o;

Anyway, out of curiousity, what browser are you using and what Operating System are you using?

edit: Okay, it looks like you're using Firefox 1.5.0.1.
Have you looked in the Firefox preferences? Untick "Find Text As You Type" and see if that helps.
privacy note: As you browse the community, your browser, by standards, gives information like what browser it is and your IP. No other information is given to any users below the rank of Praetor on this forum.

[Drifblim]

The 'Begin finding when you begin typing' box in the Advanced section of Tools is unticked, but the problem still occurs.

I tried it in Internet Explorer and I can use ASCII there.

[Haruki Hanai]

Sounds weird, so I'd probably accuse Firefox.

[Otter Mii-kun]

I was thinking this was some kind of bug in Firefox 1.5, but I tried this with other message board systems like phpBB, ezBoard and Invision, and neither of them have these problems.

-ottermi619-
Perhaps Jelsoft has an 'agenda' against Mozilla? http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/images/emoticons/nerd.gif

[MisterCow]

OK, I know exactly what's wrong and I thought it kind of annoying that you are just stating it as a "problem" with Firefox.

Before I explain, though, all standard letters on your keyboard are ASCII, the characters you are trying to type are Extended ASCII characters, so ASCII is not blocked at all.

Right, you've stated it works in IE? That's because there is a bug in IE, not in Firefox. Firefox is behaving as any browser should.

In HTML it is possible to assign access keys to tags included on the page, this is to help navigating a page. Access keys are very similar to the short cut keys that you use daily in any modern application; E.G. Ctrl+C (Copy).

The access key behaves like this: <a href='someurl' accesskey='KEY'>some text</a>. Now, if you were to put the letter x there in place of KEY, the browser would now automatically follow that link when you press Alt+x on the page containing the a tag.

Where does this come into the forum? Well, with Jelsoft being a fairly big company and a leader in forum software, they clearly wanted to allow users to use shortcut keys with their product, just like many other companies, so they decided that they would add access keys to some of the more commonly used functions on their forum software. These functions are listed below:

Alt+1 - Go to the Index.
Alt+2 - New posts.
Alt+3 - Show printable version.
Alt+4 - Search.
Alt+5 - FAQ.
Alt+u - Jump to username box.
Alt+p - Jump to password box.
Alt+c - Check "Remember Me" box.
Alt+s - Log in.

So, therefore, as Firefox is doing its job as a browser correctly, when you press Alt+233 it recognizes it as Alt+3 (3 being the final key you pressed) and takes you to the printable page.

It may be annoying and causing you problems with typing Extended ASCII characters, but it certainly is not a bug.

Hopefully that helps :)

[Otter Mii-kun]

In FF 1.5, when I have NumLock OFF to enter special characters, I don't experience this behavior.

[Haruki Hanai]

Actually MisterCow, apparently Jelsoft recognises the importance of accessibility, hence why the Alt key functions are there.

But it behaves like this on Linux too. Must be frustrating. =\

As far as I'm concerned, Num Lock has little to do with this.

[Drifblim]

Let me try without Num Lock:

é

Yes, it works without Num Lock. Oddly enough, I thought you were required to activate it to use Extended ASCII.

[MisterCow]

I didn't say they were against accessibility? I was just explaining what the access keys are and why the 'error' was happening. And really, they don't offer clear explanation or documentation of their access keys, so they can't really be classed as an accessibility improvement.

It doesn't follow the links with numlock off because when it is off, they aren't technically numbers. You'd be pressing Alt+PgDn instead of Alt+3.