Firefox keyboard layout changes to something I don't recognize, the traditional [ QWERTY ] reads as [ ',.pyf ] any idea why this would happen or how to change it back short of killing firefox and restarting.

Question

This happens randomly and infrequently. At first I thought it was my cats fault but it has recently happened while I was sitting at the computer with no feline interference. If someone could let me know how, if it's possible, to change the keyboard layout to QWERTY I will try this next time it happens to see if it can be corrected without restarting firefox. For a larger sample I will include the lines below:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
yd. 'gcjt xpr,b urq hgmlo rk.p yd. na;f eri
This is only effecting firefox, no other programs are changed and it does effect all running and new instances of firefox.

Answer 1

See:
* http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/The-Language-bar-overview - The Language bar (overview)
It is possible that you have switched the keyboard layout by accident.
* Make sure that you have the Language bar visible on the Windows Taskbar.
* You can do that via the right-click context menu of the Taskbar: Toolbars > Language Bar.
* Check the keyboard language (keyboard layout) setting for the application that has focus via the icon on the Language bar.
* You need to do that while Firefox has focus because Windows remembers the keyboard layout setting per application.
* The default keys to rotate the layout is a combination (Ctrl+Shift or Alt+Shift) that can easily be used in Firefox to activate a menu item.
* To avoid an unintentional switch assign a specific key sequence (Alt/Ctrl+Shift+number) to select keyboard layouts and remove the key combination to rotate layouts (Alt+Shift or Ctr+Shift)
* Vista: Control Panel > Regional and Language Options > Keyboards and Languages > Change keyboards > Advanced key settings > Change key sequence