Firefox keyboard navigation

April 4, 2007 2:21 PM

Keyboard navigation often doesn't work in Firefox.

When I open a new window or tab in Firefox (2.0.0.3), about half of the time I can use the keyboard navigation keys (Home, End, Page Up, Page Down, up, down, left and right arrows), but half the time they don't work.

Sometimes I can activate them by clicking in the text area, but sometimes the only way to move around is to use the mouse roller or click in the scrolling area at the right.

Is there a setting that makes the keys always work without clicking, or one that activates them when they don't work at all?

posted by KRS to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Is Tools | Options | General | Accessibility | "Always use the cursor keys to navigate within pages" checked ??
posted by misterbrandt at 3:10 PM on April 4, 2007

A new tab doesn't seem to focus and allow keyboard navigation until you click the tab with the mouse, I get this.
posted by fire&wings at 3:22 PM on April 4, 2007

It's all about focus, like fire&wings said. You can use this extension to help your eye track where the focus is (for text boxes, not for when the focus is on the tab bar). You can also theoretically use Keyconfig to set up a hotkey to return focus to where you bloody well want it to be.
posted by anaelith at 7:03 PM on April 4, 2007

I run into the same problem. For those who like to experiment, here's something that seems to trigger it every single time:

Open a page and follow a link (PageUp, PageDown navigation works fine at this point). Now go Back using the Alt+LeftArrow key combination (PageUp, PageDown still works). Then go Forward using Alt+RightArrow and suddenly PageUp, PageDown doesn't do a thing. Navigate back (Alt+LeftArrow still works) and PageUp and PageDown work fine on earlier pages.

When the PageUp and PageDown navigation doesn't work, hitting Tab once is usually enough to get focus back in the right place.

I'm running Firefox 2.0.0.2 on NetBSD. I'd be interested to hear if this procedure gives consistent results across platforms. (Or maybe they've fixed it in 2.0.0.3 now?)
posted by Lirp at 7:24 PM on April 4, 2007

Lirp: It works (breaks) in vanilla FF on Windows here.

And what I forgot before, this extension is supposed to combat focus loss. It doesn't, however, seem to do anything for me(?), but it may work for you (or you may find some documentation which explains something very simple that I'm failing to do to make it work).
posted by anaelith at 7:47 PM on April 4, 2007