283050 - Can't type or use keyboard with new windows, but original window and tabs work

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Keyboard Navigation, defect)

Description

[grussgott]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041201 Camino/0.8.2
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050221 Firefox/1.0.1

When opening a new window of Firefox after the original is spawned, the new
window does not allow keyboard input.  Clicking on the URL bar will highlight
the text, but it is not editable.  You also cannot focus in any other textbox
that may appear on the default page, in this case, google.

It seems that Firefox is not releasing focus to the new window because even if
you have clicked on the URL bar of the new window to highlight the text, when
you type keys that would normally erase the URL text, nothing happens in the
current window, but the text does appear in the first window!

That is, if you put focus into a text box on the original window and then spawn
a new window no text input is available on the new window even though it's "in
front".  If you try to type in it, and watch the rear window, you can see that
the text that supposed to be going into the front window is actually going into
the rear window.

OS: OSX v10.3.8
Platform: 1 GHz G4, 268 MB RAM

The bug is not repeatable in Mozilla (Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X
Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041217) or in Camino (2004120113 v0.8.2)

Occasionally this problem will occur when Firefox launches and in the first
window except in this case only the "Firefox" contextual menu appears - no other
menus appear.  In this case keyboard input is immediately disabled.

In all cases links on the loaded pages remain functional.

Menus the alter the top window are also disbled in this way: you can access the
menus contents, but when you click on an item the menu disappears as normal but
the menu item remains highlighted and nothing happens.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Start Firefox (occasionally this is enough, see above)
2. apple-N or file->new window
3. try to type in the new window
Actual Results:  
I can't type in the new window, focus appears on the previous window in a text
box that the text I'm typing that should be going into the "front" window is
going into the rear window's textbox.

Expected Results:  
The new window should have an editable URL bar, keyboard shortcuts should work
(they don't), and the text shouldn't be going into the rear window.

I have many screenshots if needed.

Comment 1

[Alex Bennee]

I see similar focus issues with having multiple windows on my firefox
(Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050715 Firefox/1.0.6
SUSE/1.0.6-3.1) but its a bit more random.

Most of the time it works fine but occasionally I'll switch to another window do
a Ctrl-T and not get a new tab in the currently focused window. When I switch to
my other workspace I'll find a series opened blanks tabs in the last window I
was working on.

Usually deleteing these tabs, clicking in the old window and then clicking in
the new window is enough to "unstick" the focus and get it working again.
However sometimes I have to give up and close firefox and start it up again.

Comment 2

[Fabio Russo]

Could you test it using the last beta build?
I used to see this too with 1.0, now with 1.4.1 is gone.

Comment 3

[Fabio Russo]

*** Bug 267561 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 4

[Fabio Russo]

*** Bug 290329 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5

[Fabio Russo]

a good thing pointed out in bug 290329 is that switching app and going back to
firefox fixes the problem temporarily.

Comment 6

[Fabio Russo]

*** Bug 270902 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[Mike Calmus]

This seems to work fine in FF 1.5.

Comment 8

[Aaron Leventhal]

WFM based on comment 7. Reopen if necessary.