For a long time I used Fluxbox as my window manager under Debian Sarge. I did not have GNOME or KDE installed at all. In most programs (most notably, Firefox) I could use the kill character (^U) to clear out a line of text. In Firefox this was especially useful for starting over after mistyping passwords in login pages (for e-mail, etc.), and for swiftly clearing out the URL bar.

A few weeks ago I upgraded my whole system and in the process decided to install GNOME and use Metacity as my window manager. Now when I type ^U, instead of clearing out the line of text, it brings up the page source. I am aware that the toolbar lists Ctrl-U as the shortcut for this. However, it used to give the OS precedence over itself, I suppose, because typing ^U never brought up the source window under my old setup.

I think the version of Firefox I had prior to the upgrade was 0.8. I now have 1.5. I am wondering if this is an issue with GNOME or with the new version of Firefox. I believe in my experiences, GTK+ applications have never handled ^U properly (e.g., in Gaim it toggles text underlining). If I could just get Firefox to let me use it again I would be happy...it's really annoying to keep bringing up the source window.

Any possible solutions for this? I suppose I could try running Firefox from outside GNOME and see if ^U works again (I still have Fluxbox installed).

Underline is normal for ^U in Gaim.

Sounds to me that before ^U wasn't working properly, and now it is. Have you tried double click a line of text and then ^X (cut)?

I'm aware I can double-click and hit backspace to clear out text; I am lazy and I prefer to leave my hands on the keyboard as much as possible. ^U was a quick and easy way to clear the text without having to reach for the mouse. I guess I can use Shift-Home and backspace instead.

I thought maybe there was a way to change it so that GNOME wouldn't trap ^U.

seemed ^U works in opera (8.5.1) in gnome.