User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0 Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0 Everything works perfectly for a while (can be hours of browsing many pages). Then it suddenly prevents me from entering or modifying the url or entering a search term. Clicking onto another application's text box (just so the cursor appears) such as Mail.app or camino or just invoking the hotkeys for Launchbar are enough to re-enable the functionality in Firefox, but only momentarily. Mozilla and Camino do not have this behavior. It started for me on one of the big version updates... was it from .7x to .8? I'm sorry I don't remember. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: Use the browser normally. The last time this occurred was after opening a new window. In fact, it just happened. I also just clicked in the next ("Actual Results") box trying to paste some text, and while the cursor was there, the text was pasted back in this box. I can't change that behavior. So this whole problem appears to be focus related. Actual Results: Whoa, maybe I just learned something: I just opened a new window and it was "dead" as described above. However what seemed to be happening was that focus was left on *this* page, as I had to click on the title bar to regain focus here, and the text I had just typed appeared in this box. Expected Results: Changed focus and allowed me to type a url in the new window's url box.

(CCing pedemonte) Javier: I have been told about this issue today from one more user. May it be related to the disk-sleep-fix?

I doubt that's the problem, Asaf. This sounds more like on of the many focus issues with the browser. If you open a new window, and the old window was loading something, then it 'steals' focus, such that the new window would appear to be unresponsive. I don't think this is a Mac specific issue; I think it's cross platform.

*** Bug 270323 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 267084 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I have noticed that when this occurs (can't fill in url, googlebar, etc), I also can't bring up a new tab from the keyboard. Seems like the "window is suspended" Only way to "get back to normal" is close the window and open a new one. Would suggest raising the severity. bob j

I believe this started in .91. Further research seems to indicate that this problem is related to the use of CodeTek's virtual desktop (which I am using). Please see: (search for "codetek") http://maikimo.net/weblog/archives/2004/06/faster-firefox http://www.versiontracker.com/php/feedback/article.php?story=20040630055835257 and particularly, the November 12 entry. http://blog.aharbick.com/

Another bug resulting from Codetek! I can't remember the other at the moment. ted, any chance you could use nightlies from around that period to narrow this down? it would be great if we could find out what checkin caused this problem.

After thinking about this I'm 98% sure I never saw this on 1PR. Note, I use my browser about 5 hours a day 6 days a week. I used 1PR from the day it was released until 1.0 was released. Hope this helps.

Robert, if you get the chance, could you downgrade to the PR release and see if you can recreate the problem?

First, I no longer have the PR release. Second, the problem isn't one that I can create even with 1.0. It just seemed to occur a few times after I started using 1.0. I wasn't doing anything unusual and only had one tab open. If there is any info I can capture when it happens again let me know. Note, as I said I'm almost sure I never saw this in PR.

Just after I added the last comment it happened again. I couldn't get the cursor in the url bar, the google bar (note - I'm talking about the googlebar 0.9.0.30 extension) or a form field. Now for the interesting thing and I hope helpful. I got an email alert. My email window was behind the FF window. I brought it forward to see was it was. When I brought the FF window to the front the problem was gone. bob j

Fwiw, Bob J's comment about the email alert window is (I think) the same as my original comment about, "Clicking onto another application's text box (just so the cursor appears) such as Mail.app or camino or just invoking the hotkeys for Launchbar are enough to re-enable the functionality in Firefox." Unfortunately, as I also stated, this only fixes it for the one input. The next time you want to input text you have to do the same thing. One other comment: Sometimes FF will launch with this (for lack of a better term) focus problem. In other words, you don't necessarily have to create a new window to see it manifest itself. The app will launch "disabled." So, it must be state dependent- probably on Virtual Desktop. I will see if I can find out any more about this.

Ted said - "Unfortunately, as I also stated, this only fixes it for the one input. The next time you want to input text you have to do the same thing" This is not what I observed this morning. After I did the "bring email to front - bring FF to front" thing, FF has been working fine re text boxes (at least for about 1 1/2 hours). bob j

Another twist on this bug (maybe). I have noticed that control W sometimes does not close the active tab. By bringing some other app window forward and then bringing FF forward, control W then will close the active tab.

In other possibly related news, last night I had both Camino and Firefox open, and I found that I could not change focus from FF to Camino without clicking on the title bar of Camino. Everything I tried to type in the text box in Camino went to FF.

Please disregard my last comment. It appears to be Camino related (maybe in combination with 10.3.6) and not Firefox keeping/stealing focus. Sorry about that.

*** Bug 273077 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 267084 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 278466 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I can add that I don't have Codetek Virtual Desktop installed (or *any* virtual desktop apps installed), but this bug plagues me pretty much once to twice a day, every single day. I'm on OS X, and I saw it starting with FF 1.0 (I don't recall if I ever saw it on PR1), and I still see it in the nightlies.

Jason: Do you do anything special before you notice this issue? Is Firefox in the backgound or minimized? Or are you just browsing and all of a sudden it refuses URL input?

I've struggled to try to remember common things about all the times it's happened, and as far as I can recall, it's *always* when Firefox is in the background. I could probably say with certainty that, at least 90% of the time, it's minimized and in the background, and the other 10% of the time it's merely in the background but not minimized... but I could be wrong about the latter, and it might happen 100% of the time when Firefox is backgrounded AND minimized. I'm a predominantly tab-based browsing kind of guy -- I usually only have one window open, and then many tabs in that one window. Every now and then, I end up with two windows, and interestingly, I've noticed that when the bug happens during a time I have two windows open, frequently it only affects one of the two windows, and the other is just fine. Almost certainly, all these times the affected window is minimized into the dock, and I discover the bug when I restore it to normal size. Unfortunately, it's almost always the case that there's nothing I can do to restore normal functionality to that window's input areas -- so I lose any work that's in a text input area, and I lose all the open tabs because I lose the ability to cut-and-paste URLs into my functioning window.

(In reply to comment #21) > Jason: Do you do anything special before you notice this issue? Is Firefox in > the backgound or minimized? Or are you just browsing and all of a sudden it > refuses URL input? Note comment 11. Also, when I clicked on reply to create this comment, the cursor was blinking in the comment area but I couldn't type in it. I then brought another open window to the front (in this case a directory) and then brought FF back to the front and was able to type in this comment. When it happens I can ALWAYS get things back to "normal" by bringing anything to the front and then bringing FF back.

My only caveat, Robert, is that there are times -- times which occur only when I see the bug exhibited in one of greater-than-one open browser window -- wherein I cannot solve the problem by sending Firefox to the back and then returning it to the front. In those instances, I have to close the affected window outright. I've never seen this when there's only one Firefox window open, and it's that window that's affected, only when there are more than one open.

(In reply to comment #24) > My only caveat, Robert, is that there are times -- times which occur only when I > see the bug exhibited in one of greater-than-one open browser window. -- > wherein I cannot solve the problem by sending Firefox to the back..... I agree. I never (almost) have more than one window open - use tabs.

if we can get a set of steps to reproduce (if it's a focus issue, then there will be some) please renominate!

(In reply to comment #26) > if we can get a set of steps to reproduce (if it's a focus issue, then there > will be some) please renominate! I would have to agree with comment #22 BUT I usually have several windows open and I notice this issue after some period of inactivity. Usually I "hide" the application when leaving my desk or at least minimize them. Then upon reopening or unhiding the application one or more of my windows will stop responding to the keyboard at all. Hope this helps

Has anyone experienced this lately? Some of these comments sound like bug 294476, fixed in 1.5.0.1.

I'll keep my eyes open -- it happened quite a bit more to me when FF was my default browser, but since I've switched to Safari (sorry!), it's harder to remember. I've certainly experienced it once or twice in the past two weeks, but I'm just not sure if I was running 1.5 or 1.5.0.1 at the time.

Oh, sorry, bug 294476 will have to wait for 1.5.0.2, it's not fixed in 1.5.0.1.

*** Bug 334026 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Per comment 31/bug 334026, this still occurs in 1.5.0.2.

(In reply to comment #32) > Per comment 31/bug 334026, this still occurs in 1.5.0.2. > It actually didn't start with me until 1.5.0.2

As of an upgrade to 1.5.0.2, I am also seeing this problem. It happens often, so I am not seeing much of a pattern, and it is extremely frustrating. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.2) Gecko/20060308 Firefox/1.5.0.2

Let's see if we can eliminate or finger bug 294476 as a cause: Lawrence and Joe, are either of you minimizing Firefox windows to the Dock and raising them again? If you are, can you try curbing that behavior for a while to see if it makes any difference?

(In reply to comment #35) > Let's see if we can eliminate or finger bug 294476 as a cause: Lawrence and > Joe, are either of you minimizing Firefox windows to the Dock and raising them > again? If you are, can you try curbing that behavior for a while to see if it > makes any difference? > No I have not done that since installing 1.5.0.2.

I should make it more obvious that I am running in Windows. I'll treat the dock and the taskbar as the same for this conversation. Often, I will switch back to FF with alt-tab, and I will not be able to paste and/or type into the location bar or the search box. If I have an open page with a form, if I try to type into a form, instead of entering text into the box, it will start doing find-by-typing. In all of these situations, the cursor will be blinking in the appropriate box. Typing either doesn't work (in the case of location/search), or it does find-by-type. The cursor will remain in the form field in the latter case. I don't believe this is related to bug 294476. I can't trivially reproduce the bug by clicking on links from other programs. I don't use tabs, and I always open a new window from external apps. I will attempt to observe my behavior to determine what I am doing to cause the problem.

Is this the same as mysterious bug 274631 ? If it is, it's one of the biggest ff mac issues right now.

*** Bug 274631 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I just wanted to mention that when I see this bug, it's not just a problem with text boxes - all keyboard input is ignored. This is on linux, and it has been happening for ages - well before 1.0. Sometimes I see strange things where I type some text that gets ignored, switch to another window, and then when I switch back to firefox, the text suddenly appears, though most of the time, switching back and forth has no effect. I also see the exact same thing in Thunderbird. Haven't been able to find any way to reproduce it consistently - it just happens every now and then. I've never seen it on windows or macOS though (but I don't use those platforms very often).

I now have a specific reproduction case. I happen to use pandora.com, but I am guessing (with no basis) that this could happen with any page with flash: 1) Open pandora.com in a window. 2) Minimize the window. 3) Open a new FF window by shortcut to firefox.exe. (shortcut is likely superfluous for reproduction) 4) Location and Search bar will not allow copy/paste (ctrl-c, ctrl-v, shift-ins) 5) Browse to a page with a form. google.com will do. 6) Attempt to enter text into form, but it will do find-by-typing instead of entering the text into the form field. If at any time I switch to another window and come back, everything will work. Step 2 is absolutely necessary. If the window is not minimized when I open the new window, everything works. This appears to only happen when the last window minimized is one that contains pandora.com (flash?).

The bug/reproduction case I described does not occur in 1.0.8 for Windows. (The bug was so frustrating, I was forced to downgrade.) At some point, I will attempt to upgrade to 1.5 and 1.5.0.1 to see when I start to see the problem.

I had this exact same thing happen today after I accidently clicked on the update button. No input was possible. No menu choices worked either. The ONLY thing I could click on, oddly enough, was the Javascript console information button I have on my toolbar, and the google news icon I have on a toolbar (although the site didn't come up.) I had to completely uninstall Firefox, then remove all the directories. Then, I edited regedit to get more entries out. Something I did finally worked because the third time I reinstalled, it worked.

I doubt that's the same thing, actually. When I've seen this bug occur, mouse input was never affected at all - it just completely blocked keyboard input, but the mouse kept working.

Just so everyone sicussing this bug knows, what is currently being reported as a bug in 1.5.0.2 of the Windows version seems to me to be very different to the bug I originally reported with 1.0.x (and it still happens in 1.5.x), which was specifically on the Mac, after a window was minimised, input fields could not be entered. The fix that I use is to quickly open up a text editor, type a few characters and the problem is (temporarily) resolved. If the windows issue is anything like the Mac issue, try opening notepad and see if it (temporarily) solves the problem.

Certainly in linux, this doesn't have much effect - I've tried switching to all sorts of apps, in and out of X, to no avail. FWIW, I've never actually seen this happen on windows, though I don't use it that much.

Hello, I wanted to add my two cents. I am seeing this problem many times per session now, on my mac (roughly every 10-20 minutes). I use tabs heavily, but never minimize. It often happens as I'm using a page... I will rather abruptly lose the ability to type. Sometimes it's with a new window, sometimes it's with an existing page. Cmd-tabbing to any other program then cmd-tabbing back "fixes" it, but it's sure to reappear sometime in the next hour. Becoming very frustrating... Let me know if I can try any steps to help fix. Thanks!

This seems to happen FAR more often when I open new windows, such as page source windows, and the DOM inspector. I almost never use new browser windows other than those two, but every time I've lost the use of the keyboard, it's been when I was doing some web development with those two frequently being opened.

I have a lot more information, possibly relating to this bug's behaviour. I'm running a fully updated Fedora Core 5 (i386) install under Gnome 2.14.3-1.fc5 with Firefox version 1.5.0.6-2.fc5. Since all the non-macos related variants of this bug keep getting filed under this bug, I'll put my comments here. I don't feel this belongs here but in a separate bug report. I've been having this focus problem related to Firefox since at least Fedora Core 3 under Gnome. I've encountered it at least 20 times over the last couple of years, but almost always randomly. I have no suggestions on how to reproduce it. The system is under light CPU load with little running in the background. I'll start by mentioning something really odd which occurs when trying to switch between different windows or applications. If the left-mouse button is pressed to click on another window to get its focus, it will only switch focus when the title bar or border is clicked, never when the content area is clicked. When the content area is clicked, the old application keeps its focus. This problem is always associated with the bug, at least that I recall. I can also confirm that if Firefox and Thunderbird are both open, or one is opened after the other has the focusing problems, both applications are affected and result in similarly odd functioning behaviours. Noticeable Problems in Firefox ------------------------------ - all keyboard functionality stops working except: - <TAB> and <SHIFT>+<TAB> for moving around parts of Firefox and within web pages - <F4> displays a drop down list if a text field is selected (ie. navigation/URL field) - <F6> seems to bring focus to navigation/URL field - <ENTER> works for executing URLs in navigation field but not within the web browser content area - <CTRL>+A, <CTRL>+C, <CTRL>+X and <CTRL>+V all work in text fields and elsewhere - down arrow in text fields bring up a drop-down box - text fields do not accept any keyboard characters, but do allow you to select it with a mouse or <TAB> to bring up the cursor/flashing vertical line signaling focus and waiting for input - left-clicking a link with the mouse does not work, except if it's javascript and then it appears to execute the javascrit - right-clicking a link and choosing open in new tab or open in new window works - <CTRL>+left-click works - <CTRL>+<F4> doesn't work for closing tabs or anything - <CTRL>+N/T/R/whatever - all keyboard shortcuts appears to be broken - <BACKSPACE> doesn't go back a page in the history - mouse-based copy and paste (highlight and middle-click) seems to work in text fields - pasting a URL into web page visits website in current tab as normal - fullscreen mode doesn't work (<F11>) - trying to select different tabs with the keyboard doesn't work - arrow key navigation within web page content area doesn't work, including <PAGEUP>, <PAGEDOWN>, <HOME>, <END> - <ALT>+F/E/V/G/B/T/H do not activate menu drop-down lists, but once a drop-down box focused, keyboard navigation works fine within those drop-down lists (<UP>, <DOWN>, <ENTER>, <ESC>, underlined letter-based quick keys, and even the <LEFT> and <RIGHT> keys to move between different menus) - in Firefox Preferences - tab-based keyboard navigation seems to work - spacebar and enter keys activate buttons but refuses to toggle checkboxes - trying to toggle a checkbox results in the chebox's highlighting colour flickering a bit which means that there is something being recognised - arrow keys work in drop-down boxes as well as enter key (not spacebar, but think this is normal). arrow keys also work when a drop-down box is not listing its contents (it can scroll through entries) - arrow keys work in colour selection boxes as well and spacebar and enter keys - arrow keys DO NOT work in lists of radio buttons to navigate between each one. Tab just exits the list of radio buttons to next field - Download Folder folder browser (standard file chooser dialogue) works as expected, including all keyboard inputs - text fields still do not accept keyboard input Noticeable Problems in Thunderbird ---------------------------------- - keyboard functionality is very similar to in Firefox. Most navigational issues in Firefox are also present in Thunderbird - selecting an email folder works fine. selecting an individual email in a folder doesn't work with a single-click, but does work when right-clicking and opening in a new window and sometimes when double-clicking. clicking on an email with the left mouse button doesn't even select the email, however <CTRL>+left-click seems to work fine, but left-clicking alone doesn't unselect them. firefox-bin eventually stopped allowing selection of text fields with mouse and went into an infinite loop (~30 minutes after problems started). Thunderbird followed after about 3-5 minutes later and also locked up. Closing Firefox didn't help and "Force Quit" didn't kill firefox-bin. kill -TERM <PID> did kill firefox-bin though. Window focusing behaviour oddities persist even after Firefox has been completely shut down. Restarting Firefox does not fix focus/keyboard issues. Restarting the X window manager does fix problems. All other Gnome applications I've tried such as gedit and terminal function fine as far as keyboard input. The only problem exists when focusing new windows by left-clicking in the content areas. Daniel

I've just now learned about Bugzilla. Otherwise I'd have reported this months ago. (A couple of other FF user pages yielded no results.) Same problem, still occurring (Mac OS 10.4.9). It gets very annoying to shut down/restart FF sometimes 5-10 times a day. Now that I've read other reports I'll see if it does happen only when I minimize. If so, at least I can help prevent it sometimes. Regardless, I echo a couple of remarks above: PLEASE UPGRADE THE SEVERITY of this issue. Thank you.

I have a similar problem. I am unable to edit the address bar, due to focus problems. Using FireGestures (1.1.4.2 ) Not that i think its a plugin issue. 1. open Firefox (3.0.2) and another application. 2. give other application focus (but be able to see the firefox window, i.e, different monitors) 3. Gesture to open a new tab in firefox. 4. Try to edit the address bar work around: click in the new tab, then click back in the address bar.

Just wanted to mention that I haven't seen this problem occur in a very long time now - looks like it's fixed in FF3.

Chuck also indicated a long time ago "FF3 seems to be OK on my iMac, OS 10.4.11."