Why can’t I always scroll with the down arrow on my iPad keyboard?

June 27, 2023 10:31 AM

I bought a Logitech Rugged Folio to use with my iPad, because I have wrist issues and any sort of touchscreen finger motion is painful. For some reason, I can only use the down arrow to scroll on some sites. Even more baffling, sometimes it’ll work on certain sites, but not on those same sites at other times. There is no pattern I can detect, it seems random.

Sometimes I can get it to work when it didn’t before by highlighting some text or clicking the mouse/touching the screen while pressing the down arrow. Sometimes I can’t. It never works when I’m using 12ft.io. It’s really frustrating, because using the mouse scrollwheel or swiping is painful. How can I make it work consistently?

posted by wheatlets to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Have you tried holding down modifier keys—specifically the fn (globe icon) key—while pressing the arrow? (I don’t have a Folio but just looked it up and it appears to have this key.)

I suspect that on some sites and in some contexts, the focus is on an input element that’s intercepting keystrokes. For example, right now I’m typing into the MetaFilter comment box so the arrows on my keyboard don’t scroll the page. But fn-↓ does work. (This is on a MacBook with an external keyboard, not an iPad, but the principle is the same.)
posted by staggernation at 11:56 AM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Oh, I see focus issues ALL THE TIME, because I like to scroll with the down arrow key (or PgDn key) instead of parking my hand on the mouse. FYI, "focus" is how your computer knows where your keyboard input is supposed to go.

Rarely it's a form element that's "stealing focus" like staggernation says above, but in my experience literally 99% of the time there's no form and it's just some web 2.0 / CSS code run amok. The solution, 90% of the time, is to just click in the center of the screen again -- yes that means interacting with the touch screen (or mouse in my case), but it's just a one time thing and then you're back to scrolling via keyboard. And then 10% of the time even that doesn't fix it, and in that case I LEAVE THE WEBSITE, buh bye.

Many websites, especially those with fancy mechanisms that load more content as you scroll down, like Twitter and Facebook, have this problem, and I think we're in the minority as far as caring. I just mutter some curse words, click to reset focus, and resume scrolling via keyboard.

Sometimes you can use the TAB key to change the focus to the center of the page, but typically you have to hit it like 20 times (or hold it down) until the focused element moves to the center of the page and keyboard scrolling works again.
posted by intermod at 2:55 PM on June 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Holding down the globe key + down takes you to the screen that shows all the apps you have open.

I had better luck with the focus thing - I didn't realize that the middle was where you were supposed to click, and it seems like a double click often works better. It certainly doesn't work for everything, though, and I don't understand why I am able to scroll with the down arrow key on my computer on certain sites, but not my iPad keyboard case.
posted by wheatlets at 6:08 AM on June 29, 2023