I realize that there are no shortcuts in life, but...

November 1, 2009 1:52 PM

When I use Grooveshark, I can no longer use Firefox's standard keyboard shortcuts. How can I fix this? Greasemonkey, maybe?

I'm a habitual ctrl-tabber to switch tabs, ctrl-t to get a new tab, ctrl-shift-t to open a recently closed tab, etc. But when the active tab is Grooveshark, these commands don't work. This is especially frustrating when I'm trying to ctrl-tab my through a bunch of tabs, and I get stuck in Grooveshark.

I feel like this is something that might be solvable with Greasemonkey, but I don't know where to start. Does anyone know how to fix this?

posted by kjackelen05 to computers & internet (12 comments total)

I believe this is a general issue with Flash. Not aware of any good workarounds.
posted by lunchbox at 1:59 PM on November 1

Here is one (hacky) workaround: use Alt+Tab to navigate to your current app.
posted by lunchbox at 2:01 PM on November 1

Thanks for the link. Strangely, that doesn't even work for me. I alt-tab away from Firefox and back again, and I still can't ctrl-tab away from Grooveshark.

Looks like this might just be something I have to live with.
posted by kjackelen05 at 2:05 PM on November 1

I'm not seeing that issue. Assuming it's not the FF version or OS (FF 3.6b, OS 10.5.7), try running your firefox in safe mode (no extensions). Try removing extensions and adding them back one at a time, to see if one of them is responsible.
posted by TruncatedTiller at 2:57 PM on November 1

Yes, same observation as TruncatedTiller here. GrooveShark isn't overriding my Ctrl+Tab shortcut. I'm on Firefox 3.5.3.
posted by lunchbox at 2:59 PM on November 1

Very interesting. I'm on Firefox 3.5.4, but I had this problem on 3.5.3 as well.

Tried safe mode to no avail. Same problem.

Are you guys clicking into Grooveshark at all? Ctrl-tab still works for me if I load the page but don't use it. As soon as I click into it though, I lose ctrl-tab when using that tab.
posted by kjackelen05 at 3:05 PM on November 1

This is, as lunchbox says, a Flash thing. If you click anywhere on the Grooveshark page that's outside the border of the embedded flash app, Flash loses focus and your ctrl-Tab and friends will work again.

You'll find exactly the same thing happens as soon as you give focus to any Flash app.
posted by flabdablet at 3:37 PM on November 1

Hmm, and in Grooveshark, the flash app is the entire window.

Regardless, if I have to click, I can just click the tab I want. Ideally, I wouldn't have to use my mouse, but, if that's how it is, then that's how it is.

Thanks to all who have posted. Further insight and data points are still welcome.
posted by kjackelen05 at 3:48 PM on November 1

in Grooveshark, the flash app is the entire window

I run a 1600x1200 screen, and hadn't noticed that. What a pain.
posted by flabdablet at 4:49 PM on November 1

Haven't tried it, but Restore Window Focus After Flash. It sounds like it may not be a good solution, since it sounds as if it would disable keyboard usage inside Flash.
posted by WCityMike at 6:51 PM on November 8

By the way, this is Bug #78414, which has been around since before 9/11.
posted by WCityMike at 6:53 PM on November 8

Sorry to have spread this over three messages – there's a Greasemonkey user script cited in the comments of #78414. I installed it on my machine. Grooveshark still grabs the Ctrl-PgUp/Ctrl-PgDwn keystroke as I'm traversing my tabs, but I can do Cmd-T to get out of that keyboard-grab, or Cmd-L to go to the address bar. (See this.)

Also, there's this: Plugins: Advanced Key Handling: "Status: Accepted, ready for implementation. Assigned NPAPI version 25."

One of the Firefox developers has indicated that this is the way that they're going to solve the problem.

The Firefox team has said that this proposal won't be implemented in mozilla-1.9.2, which, according to the roadmap, means it won't be in Firefox 3.6. Firefox 3.7 will have the mozilla-1.9.3 core, and then it's mozilla-1.9.4 for Firefox 4. I'm not sure when the proposal will be implemented – I get the feeling it's really taking a long time, and I'm presuming that's because it's sort of requiring them to rebuild some keyhandling stuff from the ground up.
posted by WCityMike at 7:27 PM on November 8