Firefox focus issues

perost · 2008-01-19 16:44:33

Hi!

I have a sometimes very irritating problem with Firefox. I have a Logitech G7 mouse with a tiltable wheel that I've set up to change tabs in forefox, and a sidebutton that I use to close tabs with. I'm just using xbindkeys to bind the mouse buttons to ctrl+page up, ctrl+page down and ctrl+w. The thing is that firefox sometimes seems to loose focus, and ignores keyboard commands. For example when I close my current tab with my mouse or by pressing ctrl+w, and then try to close the next tab too, it doesn't work. I have to click on another window or on the desktop to make firefox loose focus, and then click on firefox again. Then it starts working temporarily again.

I'm using Firefox 3.0b2 from AUR right now, but I had the same problem with Firefox 2 from extra too. I use gnome with metacity. I also have a couple of plugins installed, but I have tried without any plugins too. I also have the same problem on my laptop, and both my computers use Arch64.

So, does anyone know a solution to this? It's not such a big deal really, but I gets really annoying sometimes.

X/ax · 2008-01-19 17:30:10

It's more like the opposite I think. Firefox always works, even if it has no focus. Like when I'm using terminal with firefox on the background (but still visible), and I start scrolling, I can actually scroll the window inside of firefox (And close tabs, without my terminal loosing focus).
However, I'm not sure if it is the cause of your problem, I'm guessing that something else was interfering with your mouse (Say, some other program using somewhat the same or similar keys?)
Forgive me if my explanation was quite vague, I tend to explain stuff very badly, I hope you understand.

perost · 2008-01-19 18:28:23

X/ax wrote:

It's more like the opposite I think. Firefox always works, even if it has no focus. Like when I'm using terminal with firefox on the background (but still visible), and I start scrolling, I can actually scroll the window inside of firefox (And close tabs, without my terminal loosing focus).
However, I'm not sure if it is the cause of your problem, I'm guessing that something else was interfering with your mouse (Say, some other program using somewhat the same or similar keys?)
Forgive me if my explanation was quite vague, I tend to explain stuff very badly, I hope you understand.

No, this sounds like a different problem. I don't have any problem with firefox "stealing" input, but rather the opposite. It ignores input that it shouldn't ignore. And my problem is not specifically with my mouse, since Firefox stops responding to the keyboard too. And I have the same problem on my laptop, where I only use the keyboard to close tabs.

I find it odd that I have the same problem on both of my computers, yet it seems as though no one else has the same problem.

arnuld · 2008-01-20 10:39:57

Aha... and I thought I am the only with Firefox issue

I use "wmii" and my Firefox always looses focus. In wmii, you can change to different TAGS (like Desktops in GNOME) using "ALT-#" If i have 3 tags opened and Firefox is running on tag-2 and I go to tag-3 to check my messages in pidgin and come back with "ALT-2" I do not see Firefox. I see only border of Firefox and between the border i see my background wallpaper . Clickign with mouse does not bring the focus in anyway..... Quite funny though.. It is happening very frequently , nearly all the time, even if I kill Firefox using <killall firefox-bin> or <kill -9 PID> , the problem remains as it is when I start Firefox again :\

perost · 2008-01-20 12:13:47

arnuld wrote:

Aha... and I thought I am the only with Firefox issue
I use "wmii" and my Firefox always looses focus. In wmii, you can change to different TAGS (like Desktops in GNOME) using "ALT-#" If i have 3 tags opened and Firefox is running on tag-2 and I go to tag-3 to check my messages in pidgin and come back with "ALT-2" I do not see Firefox. I see only border of Firefox and between the border i see my background wallpaper . Clickign with mouse does not bring the focus in anyway..... Quite funny though.. It is happening very frequently , nearly all the time, even if I kill Firefox using <killall firefox-bin> or <kill -9 PID> , the problem remains as it is when I start Firefox again :\

This also seems to be a different problem from what I'm experiencing, but it seems like there are lots of different firefox focus issues. From your description it almost seems like firefox has crashed for you, since it is no longer drawing itself. Have you tried running firefox from a terminal, to see if you get any error messages?

arnuld · 2008-01-20 15:20:22

perost wrote:

This also seems to be a different problem from what I'm experiencing, but it seems like there are lots of different firefox focus issues. From your description it almost seems like firefox has crashed for you, since it is no longer drawing itself. Have you tried running firefox from a terminal, to see if you get any error messages?

yes, I did run Firefox from X-Terminal (rxvt-unicode) but then I did not see any error message, I just saw an blinking cursor holding onto an unfinished line, like if Firefox was running, there was not even a single word like error.

BTW, after posting my 1st message here in this thread I did a "pacman -Syu" and since then this problem has disappeared. I will post back If I will have the problem again. I am using Archlinux x86-64.

ralvez · 2008-01-20 15:38:47

I do not think the problem is with FF in Arch. I run the "stock" FF from mozilla.com and it has the same issue.
From time to time, not too often, it will loose focus. It seems to me that the problem is generated by having multiple tabs running.

R.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-01-19 16:44:33

Firefox focus issues

#2 2008-01-19 17:30:10

Re: Firefox focus issues

#3 2008-01-19 18:28:23

Re: Firefox focus issues

#4 2008-01-20 10:39:57

Re: Firefox focus issues

#5 2008-01-20 12:13:47

Re: Firefox focus issues

#6 2008-01-20 15:20:22

Re: Firefox focus issues

#7 2008-01-20 15:38:47

Re: Firefox focus issues

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