2.213.01 Hotkey mystery

[MilesAhead]

It's not just FARR, but I noticed it seems to suffer from the same strange behavior I noticed on my own hotkey programs.  Namely, the main hotkey, which should fire no matter which window has focus, does not fire unless I click on the Desktop first.

I am running a Toshiba Satellite C55D-A Laptop with Windows 8.0 Home with FARR 2.213.01 portable.

Some of my programs where the hotkeys work fine from XP to W7 are displaying this quirk where I have to click on desktop first.  Also some other weird things with selective hotkeys(that depend on which window has focus) but they are not relevant here.  It seems like Windows 8 has been around long enough that I would have heard something if all hotkeys were having problems.  So I'm wondering if it's some weird synergy with Toshiba Laptop and its keyboard hardware peculiarities, and Windows 8.  Really strange.  The weirdest is that any Firefox based browser will react to my hotkeys except for Pale Moon, which has the same window class(I've posted on Pale Moon site for that.)  I just though I'd mention this as maybe someone else will notice some clue. 

As far as I can tell, once the search window comes up everything acts normally.

[mouser]

Strange.. try killing all other processes and see if you can find if one bad actor might be responsible for this.

[MilesAhead]

Strange.. try killing all other processes and see if you can find if one bad actor might be responsible for this.

I think it's weirder than that.  I made a small test script with one hotkey.  If I run it inside the Scite4AHK editor, it works.  If I compile and run it, it won't work in Pale Moon. I'm thinking it might be due to the fact that Toshiba has a keyboard hardware configuration thing for setting function keys to require FN key or normal.  Although it has nothing to do with the function keys. I can set any hotkey and it won't work in Pale Moon.  So it must be some strange keyboard side effect.

If you haven't heard of anything like this then that makes me think it's a Toshiba/W8 thing rather than just a W8 thing. But if someone with Pale Moon wants to try it, this script sounds a tone when Winkey-t is pressed and any FF derived browser 4.x or newer is the active window:

Code

Sendmode,Input
GroupAdd,EditorGroup, ahk_class MozillaWindowClass   ;Firefox 4+ Browser

#IfWinActive ahk_group  EditorGroup
#t::
	SoundPlay,*16
return

I tried it compiled 32 bit Ansi/Unicode 64 bit.  Won't work with Pale Moon 24.2.2 but it does work with any other Firefox I tried.  It's just peculiar.

Edit: apparently Winkey-t has a function for taskbar in Windows.  But it doesn't matter. It can be set to Control-Winkey-PGDN or something. It still won't work.

[MilesAhead]

Ok Mouser.  I've verified it's Pale Moon.  If it has the focus Pause doesn't bring up FARR, F9 doesn't bring up my ReRun and Shift Numpad Plus doesn't bring up Folder Cache.  If I close it, those hotkeys work even if, say, Firefox has the focus.

I'll post on the Pale Moon forum there's definitely an issue.  Maybe he's hooking at a low level.

[IainB]

...I've verified it's Pale Moon. ...

Not surprised. I tried out Pale Moon and rapidly uninstalled and deleted it before giving it a full trial. It was doing stuff by default in the background that I didn't know or approve of up front, so I couldn't trust it. Plus, it didn't seem any faster than FF and didn't seem to work nicely with some of my existing applications or add-ons - e.g., it grabbed hooks to hotkeys that I wanted to use. Nothing but trouble.
I only used it for a very short time - an hour or two - so I didn't really learn enough to write a Mini-Review about it.

[4wd]

I just found that the Tab Mix Plus add-on is eating my F3 hotkey in Pale Moon - disable it and the hotkey works again.

To keep it ontrack, hitting Pause/Break works fine in Pale Moon here on Win8.1 - FARR opens immediately (whether or not TMP is disabled).

I'd try starting Pale Moon in Safe Mode and see if you have an add-on doing something strange.

[MilesAhead]

Thanks for the replies.  Where I'm at now, FF x64 26.0 Portable kicks ass.  FARR and my hotkeys all work.  The only hassle is being portable I can't fully set it as default without a lot of effort.  So now my plan, since I can't find x64 FF 26.0 installer, is to install the 26.0 32 bit to be default.  Just to hanlde those WiFi terms of service pages that pop up but don't look for an already running browser. I'm downloading it now.

Also I found there's a new fangled Download Statusbar for FF 26 and later.  Even with ignore version checking the old one won't kick in.

It will be interesting to see if I get any feedback from the Pale Moon side.  Someone on the forum asked me to post Transpose AHK program.  They detected my posts on DC I guess.