Need help reproducing a focus issue

We're still seeing reports of typing ' bringing up the Find bar when it shouldn't, mostly when users are trying to type email messages. Aaron Leventhal, Blake Kaplan, and Johnny Stenback fixed a bunch of bugs like that in the betas leading up to Firefox 1.5, but apparently there's at least one bug like that left.

None of those bug reports have steps to reproduce that work for me in Firefox 1.5, but there are enough reports that I think it's a real problem. Steps to reproduce that I can use to reproduce the(?) bug would be great, and so would a minimal testcase.

23 Responses to “Need help reproducing a focus issue”

  1. Nanaki Says:

    Just get rid of the damn “feature”. :p

    Who the hell uses ‘ and \ to spawn find anyway?

  2. Ian Says:

    I sometimes get it happening. Restarting Firefox always seems to fix it.

    Well I have find-as-you type on (as I think it’s useful).

  3. Ian Says:

    Sorry, to be clear, I actually get the find bar popping up when typing into text boxes (the one line ones not textareas) when find-as-you-type is on, regardless of which letters I type. I imagine this is a different (though very annoying!) bug.

  4. Logan Says:

    Who the hell uses ‘ and \ to spawn find anyway?

    I do. I find FAYT distracting.

  5. mike Says:

    I gave it a try in my firefox 1.5 after reading this, and it does happen for me. If I’m typing in a form field this does not occur, but when the focus is outside a text-input area and I hit ‘ I see the find bar pop up.

  6. tim Says:

    Who the hell uses ‘ and \ to spawn find anyway?

     No one uses \ to spawn find.  It should be /. :)
     

  7. Martijn Says:

    Well, https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=312251 is a reproducable way to still trigger the bug, but it’s probably an edge case.

  8. mat Says:

    This may be related somehow:

    Sometimes firefox disables all Copy/Paste functions. i have to open Help/About and close it again to get copy/paste working again.

    It may be that Firefox set the focus to something else that doesnt allow copy/paste oparations

    and like the ‘ issue i’m totally unable to reproduce it. (it seems to happen totally random)

  9. Jan! Says:

    mat: I always have that after viewing and embedded Windows Media file (or anything else that uses the Windows Media Player plugin). The way I “fix” it, is press F11 twice. Going fullscreen and back seems to solve the problem. No idea why, though. If I remember correctly, this also fixes the issue discussed in Jesse’s post.

  10. CypherBit Says:

    This bug annoyed the hell out of me. So much so I started using http://the-edmeister.home.comcast.net/advice-html/simultaneous-profiles_versions.html

    I was using .zip builds at the time and instructed my girlfriend to always click on the Firefox shortcut to open a new one, so she wouldn’t mess up (close tabs,…) anything in “my” Firefox.
    Almost everytime she opened “a new” Firefox and wanted to search, enter an e-mail the search bar appeared.

    I haven’t seen this with the .exe builds. The fact I’m using that solution also helps.

    The focus issue might be related to the numerous reports about copy/paste not working properly, although I never experienced that.

  11. chris Says:

    I have run into the same issue as Ian, turning off the find as you type worked but it was quite annoying

  12. Manuzhai Says:

    I’m also still seeing this with arbitrary characters in textareas. I had FAYT off for the last few months on Fx 1.0, with 1.5 it worked alright, but now it’s back. I just hit a form (on a vBB forum) where I can’t type ANYTHING in the textarea without the FAYT popping up, and this annoys the hell out of me.

    Surely, this can’t be that hard to fix!? (Except that it obviously is.)

  13. Laurens Holst Says:

    “Who the hell uses ‘ and \ to spawn find anyway?”

    All the time!

    Well, not ’, because it doesn’t work on my US-international keyboard IME.

    ~Grauw

  14. funTomas Says:

    I personally havn’t experienced the issue. Maybe because I usually trigger the feature with Ctrl+F keys. So, yes, I also think you’d better get rid of the other kye shortcut.

  15. Zach Says:

    I’ve had this problem but I found it was related to having Tab Mix Plus installed. I disabled all my extensions and it seems to disappear.

    I believe it had to do with windows that used the onUnload event.

  16. Tim Says:

    Nanaki, I assume you’re kidding about “who uses it”.

    ANYONE who has moved from Mozilla Suite to Firefox in all likelihood is still using “/” to pop-up the Find dialog. The was THE interface for accessing the feature in Mozilla.

    So very “vi” of them :)

  17. ispiked Says:

    Call me a skeptic, but I think that the only bug here is that some websites do weird focus stuff with JavaScript, sometimes setting the focus back to the page and causing the findbar to popup.

  18. starwed Says:

    I’ve seen this bug several times while leaving comments on slashdot, but never seen this bug while using forums. (And I leave comments way more in forums than on slashdot). I can’t find concrete steps to reproduce, though.

  19. Manuzhai Says:

    Yesterday when I encountered the bug I could do in the tab that was invoking FAYT for me whatever I tab, and I browsed around some in the tab without the issue resolving itself (going back and forth to the form). When I opened this site to complain about it, I posted a comment, that just worked, and after that, the form at the other site also just worked.

  20. Thomas Says:

    when trying the demo at http://www.fckeditor.net/demo/default.html fayt activates when pressing eg. the bold-button.

  21. Jesse Ruderman Says:

    Thomas: I was able to reproduce the bug on that page after clicking the Bold button, and I thought I was reproducing it reliably, but now I can’t reproduce it.

  22. LouCypher Says:

    Ian, I just open the pref dialog, close it (OK or Cancel), and it’s fixed. Though, I still don’t know how to reproduce it, it only appears sometimes.

  23. Jesse Ruderman Says:

    dmose says “I see the FAYT focus issues on windows all the time, and I kinda wonder if it might be related to my use of the MS Virtual Desktop Powertoy. So I though I’d suggest you might try installing and playing around with that to see if it makes the problem easier for you to reproduce.”