firefox ignores ui.caretWidth setting

[Joor Loohuis]

Binary package hint: firefox-3.5

Ubuntu 9.10, Firefox 3.5.7

Setting ui.caretWidth through the Firefox configuration has no effects.
Reference: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=865895

Steps to repeat:
1. in Firefox, open about:config in the URL bar
2. rightclick in the content area
3. select 'new', 'integer'
4. enter 'ui.caretWidth' for the name
5. enter 3 for the value
6. restart Firefox and test with a page that has a text input or textarea on it

Expected result: a thick text caret (cursor)
What happened: the caret is unchanged, a single pixel line

NB: on Windows XP with Firefox 3.5.7 the precedure above works as advertised.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Feb 13 19:12:51 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
Package: firefox-3.5 3.5.7+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.9.10.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-19.56-generic
SourcePackage: firefox-3.5
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-19-generic x86_64

[Joor Loohuis (joor)]

FYI, I just tried the procedure on another Ubuntu 9.10 , and here I do get the thick cursor. I added the output of apport-cli to this bug.

[Robert B (robertbub)]

This is completely bizarre. On my Ubuntu Firefox at home, ui.caretWidth works perfectly. At work, my Ubuntu Firefox doesn't. They are both running precisely the same version of Firefox.

There are 2 differences:
 1) At home, I'm running GNOME; at work, I'm running Fluxbox.
 2) At home, I'm running Lucid Lynx (10.04); at work, Karmic Koala (9.10).

Makes no sense.

(I am not running the 64 bit version -- only 32 bit version of Ubuntu.)

[Joor Loohuis (joor)]

Meanwhile I've updated to Ubuntu Lucid with Firefox 3.6.9, and the problem persists in all versions from the one this bug was initially filed for until the most recent (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.9) Gecko/20100825 Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.9).