Firefox pages losing focus

March 23, 2006 8:45 AM

Keyboard navigation problems with Firefox on a Mac (OS 10.3.9). I've searched and searched or an answer, really I have, but haven't found the definitive one.

In short what happens is that a page which is already open in a tab loses focus sometimes when I go back to it by either closing the tab next to it, or clicking on its tab. When this happens the spacebar and arrow keys for scrolling, and command-option arrow keys for navigating to the next tab become nonfunctional until I click in the page. I can find no rhyme nor reason as to why it happens only sometimes.

Any help documentation always mentions F7 caret browsing, but this makes absolutely no difference whatsoever to anything at all to do with Firefox, my computer, my immediate family, or my life in general.

It used to happen every time (not just sometimes with Mozilla and was the main reason I gave up on it and went with Safari. If I'm keyboard-browsing I don't wanna have to keep reaching for the mouse.

posted by TiredStarling to computers & internet (7 comments total)

I should add that hitting the Tab key to try and force focus back to the page has no effect either.
posted by TiredStarling at 8:49 AM on March 23, 2006

Have you tried CTRL-Tab? That shifts focus from the addressbar to the active window.
posted by unixrat at 8:54 AM on March 23, 2006

I often have this problem as well, and the only solution I've yet come up with is to hit CTRL-L to get into the location bar, which resets focus in the correct tab.
posted by piro at 8:55 AM on March 23, 2006

Thanks for the quick responses. Neither work!

It's as if the page is stone cold dead.

Command-L does nothing. Ctl-tab does nothing.

Command-left arrow does get me to the historical page before, and when I command-right arrow back again, command-L now works, though the scroll, navigation keys still don't.

Aye, it's a conundrum!
posted by TiredStarling at 9:15 AM on March 23, 2006

You'd probably be better off asking Firefox related questions in the MozillaZine Forums
posted by Sharcho at 10:25 AM on March 23, 2006

My hunch is that it has to do with whether there's Flash in the page, or an external plugin. Your experiences corroborate that?
posted by WCityMike at 5:32 PM on March 23, 2006

After a little more observation, it seems to be to do with a page loading in a background tab.

E.g: Click a link on AskMeFi to open in a new tab, then hit "Previous questions" on the current page, then immediately go to the new tab created by the first click. While you're reading the question in the new tab, the "previous questions" page will be loading in the background. When you then go back to the "previous questions" page, it will not have the focus.

If you wait for the "previous questions" page to load before going to the new tab, the "previous questions" page will have focus.

I think.

Sharcho, you're right. I've been to the Mozilla fora but not found an answer, but with this new discovery I'd better head back there and tell 'em.
posted by TiredStarling at 11:30 PM on March 23, 2006