Forum Overview :: Tansin A. Darcos's Alter Ego :: How to destroy a message post

[quote name="Commander Tansin A. Darcos`"]You will need: * A computer with Windows * Running Firefox browser * Having an Internet connection The process: * Log on to Caltrops.com's message boards (If you can see this, you already have). * Choose to reply or create a new message. This opens a text box, sets "focus" to it, and places the cursor in the box, allowing you to type in text. * Type in some material and make a mistake and proceed to press the backspace key to correct the mistake. * Accidentally hit F12, which is directly above the backspace. This opens a debug window so you can analyze the objects and DOM layout of the web page. * Realize that (unless you are a web designer or programmer who wants to analyze this page) you did not want that, and press F12 again to release the debug window and go back to the "ordinary" web page. * Unless you are very attentive, you might not notice that the focus - the place where the system sends keystroke messages - is not on the input area of the page, but on the whole page. This means keystroke messages are sent to the application, not to the text box. * Proceed to correct the message by pressing the backspace key. Since you're not in the text area, the web browser does not treat the backspace as a command to "delete the previous typed in key" it is now the <i>back</i> button, which means to back up one web page from the stack of pages you've surfed through. * This causes the web browser to return to the previous page before you wanted to enter a reply, destroys the current web page and discards everything you typed in. It's gone forever and you can't get it back. Using the "forward" button on the toolbar returns you to the posting page, but is cleared out as when you start a new post. There may be other ways of causing focus in a posting page to exit the text area and be redirected to the page instead (making the backspace key the back key), but this is probably the simplest one. This is the thing I sometimes did when I typed something in, didn't notice I'd struck a key that removed focus from the text box, then attempted to make a correction and destroyed my message. And for which some people criticized me for being stupid for not noticing the focus had changed and not realizing the backspace key is "modal," in that the key has two completely different behaviors depending on what "mode" the browser is in. [/quote]