[kde-linux] KDE config question please.

[Duncan]

George R Goffe posted on Wed, 12 May 2010 11:53:41 -0700 as excerpted:

> I'm experiencing a problem with Firefox where you can double left
> "click" on a tab and then use left/right arrow to navigate from tab to
> tab. Firefox is behaving as though it's not receiving the key-strokes.
> 
> Is there something in KDE that's receiving or blocking these
> key-strokes? If it's a configuration issue, how can I resolve this
> situation?

[Please kill the HTML next time.  It's simply annoying to many of the 
regulars who might be of help.  Plain text posts are preferred.]

Agreed with Kevin.  Trying a fresh user, without a user config to get in 
the way, just the system config, is an excellent idea.

Additionally, and the reason for me posting as well, there's an xorg 
application called xev that's sometimes helpful at tracing what input an 
app is actually seeing.  It won't trace what firefox is seeing, but it'll 
trace what an ordinary non-kde app sees.

Once you have xev installed (if it's necessary to install it, it might be 
installed as part of xorg), run it from a konsole window.  It'll popup a 
little square window, with a smaller one inside.  When the xev window is 
in focus, pressing a key, moving the mouse, or pressing a mouse button 
(thus, basically any input event, I don't have a joystick so don't know if 
events from it apply as well), should log the event to the konsole window.

If you double-click it and the arrow keys quit logging events, you know 
there's something strange going on.  I don't expect that to happen, but if 
it does, something strange is definitely going on, and you then know it's 
not a firefox problem.  More likely, however, the app continues to receive 
events, and firefox is simply mishandling them somehow.  IOW, I suspect 
that it's a firefox (or gtk or similar bug, since firefox is built on gtk) 
bug, not a kde bug, but we don't know that at this point.

Also, note that firefox has multiple profiles, and can be started in safe 
mode (without extension support, etc), as well.  Run firefox --help at a 
konsole prompt to see the various options.  If it's a firefox issue as I 
suspect, does the problem go away when running a brand new profile?  What 
about when running the normal profile, in safe mode?  Perhaps it's an 
uncooperative extension.  I know I've had problems with them before.

(Actually, right now I have a problem with something.  It's weird.  If I 
start firefox normally, it won't work.  If I start it in safe mode and 
immediately quit at the prompt that comes up, then restart it again 
normally, it works -- for that session only.  So I can get it to work for 
one session, by starting it in safe mode and immediately quitting, before 
I even load the browser, first.  Then it's back to not starting again, 
until I start it in safe mode again, after which it will work exactly 
once, before getting screwed up somehow, again.  I suspect you're having a 
similar issue, but unlike me, you can start firefox, and use it almost 
normally, except for the one thing.  That one thing is likely to be a bug 
related to one of the extensions you're running, as I know it is here, 
because if I permanently disable extensions, I can reenable most of them 
one at a time and it runs fine.  There's just one or two that are 
problems.)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman