421821 - Incorrect key mapping/binding - several keys swap roles.

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Sam Pablo Kuper]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080201 Firefox/2.0.0.12
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080201 Firefox/2.0.0.12

Sometimes, after Firefox has been running for a while (a few hours, say), it swaps the roles of the @ and " keys, and the ~ and | keys, while the \ the ` and the # all move to keys that shouldn't produce them.

The keyboard mapping is unaffected in other applications that are running at the same time (e.g. text editors).

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Boot Windows Vista Home Premium
2. Run Firefox.
3. Use computer as normal for a few hours (mixture of: web browsing with Firefox and possibly other browsers; document editing with MS Word; listening to music with Windows Media Player; text editing with oXygen, PSPad, Notepad, etc).
4. Try entering data into a form in Firefox.
Actual Results:  
Most times, I find that the " and @ keys have been swapped (which will certainly catch you out if you're entering your email address!)

Expected Results:  
I expect the @ key to put an @ character in the form, not a " character. And vice versa. Also, I expect the backslash key to put a backslash in the form, not a #, and I expect the | key to print a | and not a ~ , etc.

In short, I expect the keys to produce the characters printed on them!

I'm running Firefox in Windows Vista Home Premium on a Macbook 2.13GHz 2GB RAM via Leopard Boot Camp.

Comment 1

[Sam Pablo Kuper]

Seems this is a problem due to the way Windows behaves under Boot Camp. See http://www.sampablokuper.com/2008/08/22/bizarre-keyboard-shortcut/