Google-chrome – Google Chrome mouse wheel takes keyboard focus

browserfocusgoogle-chromekeyboardmouse-wheel

I recently switched the default browser on all my machines from Firefox to Google Chrome. In general I’m loving Chrome but there is one behaviour that is driving me nuts. Scrolling with the mouse wheel takes keyboard focus away from the document.

Here’s what happens. I’ve just opened a page or switched to a new tab and the page has keyboard focus as I can use the keyboard up/down and PgUp/PgDn keys to scroll it; no problem there. But if I then use the wheel on my mouse to scroll the page, it loses the keyboard focus and no longer responds to up/down, PgUp/PgDn, or in fact any other keyboard keys. I have to click on the page background to restore the keyboard focus. This is a minor inconvenience for scrolling but where it really drives me nuts is in Google Reader and Gmail where I use keyboard shortcuts a lot. Here I find that I scroll the article or e-mail I’m reading with the mouse wheel then get no response when I press j/k to move to the next or previous article or e-mail.

I am using Windows 7 and the Chrome dev channel (version 4.0.249.43).

Best Answer

I have found a solution.

There is apparently a bug in Chrome that cause some incompatibility with mouse wheel extenders such as KatMouse, which I happen to use. Rob Boek has documented a workaround, where changing some settings in KatMouse solves the problem.

Related Solutions

Chrome – Disable “Ctrl”+mouse wheel zooming in Chrome

There is a solution using AutoHotKey posted on google groups:

Using Logitech Performance Mouse MX...

Downloaded AutoHotKey software

In the AutoHotkey.ahk file, added these to do nothing for Cntrl+MouseWheelScrolling
^WheelDown::return

^WheelUp::return

Google-chrome – Mouse wheel scroll causes zoom in/out in Google Chrome

Dont know where from this problem comes. but we can have an alternative solution to that. Depending on the drivers for your mouse, you could set ctrl-scroll as a "shortcut" to actually do nothing - essentially capturing the combination and throwing it away. Some drivers will even let you specify this for only within a certain application, at which point you'd specify chrome.

OR

Another trick would be:

solution using AutoHotKey posted on google groups:

Using Logitech Performance Mouse MX...

Downloaded AutoHotKey software

In the AutoHotkey.ahk file, added these to do nothing for Cntrl+MouseWheelScrolling

^WheelDown::return

^WheelUp::return

http://productforums.google.com/d/msg/chrome/-rtDLZmN9bk/5pJYksjrvQUJ

Also if this doesn't work, please provide some more information about your hardware please..

UPDATE - The solution

It looks like the zooming issue is related to mouse scrolling freeware. I took a look at a tool I run called "WizMouse." The purpose of these tools is to allow scrolling windows without focusing on them. Settings can be changed in these to fix the problem.

Resolutions:

KatMouse (per nsx82): Add class: Chrome_WidgetWin_1, and under the settings tick option: "Window has scrolling wheel support?" (try checked first)
WizMouse (per JoPa Mi): Uncheck "Enable mouse wheel for applications without mouse wheel support"

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