Browser sluggish to respond to Enter key when saving images

[Rekrul]

I just registered here to post this...

I'm still using an Xp system. It's a 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo with 4GB of RAM and Windows XP Pro, SP3. At the moment I'm still using Firefox 13, but I've been thinking of switching to Palemoon since I've encountered several web sites that no longer work properly on FF13.

I started with Firefox 4 on a Windows 98SE system. I gradually upgraded through the single-digit Firefox versions and didn't have any major issues with them, other than Win98's poor memory handling. When I got an XP system I installed Firefox 12, then 13. I tried upgrading to a later version (either 16 or 19), but it screwed up big-time and I restored my FF13 configuration and just stuck with that.

It might just be a coincidence, but ever since switching to the 12/13 versions on this system, there's been one problem that has been a major thorn in my side; About 75% of the time when I go to save an image from a web site, it doesn't respond to the Enter key. I often have to press it 2-5 times before it registers. You might think that the browser is just too busy doing something to respond, but if I use the mouse and click the Save button, it works instantly every time. If I'm trying to save an animated GIF from a page with other animated GIFs, there's about a 50% chance that the Enter key will be completely useless. I have literally sat there repeatedly banging the Enter key for a full minute and not gotten any response (in the browser, it works fine in every other program at the exact same time), but when I click the Save button, it works instantly.

I had hoped that this was just a bug in FF13 and that it had long since been corrected. Unfortunately when I tried the XP version of Palemoon (portable version) it did the same thing, although to a lesser extent. About half the time I had to press the Enter key more than once to get it to save an image. Note that I hadn't changed any settings or used any add-ons when I tried the XP portable, I just unpacked and ran it.

I don't know if this is a bug in the browser or if it's reacting badly to something on my system. The Enter key works perfectly when typing messages such as this, it works fine in text editors, it works the first time, every time when saving files from every other program, it's only in Firefox/Palemoon when saving images that the Enter key seems to go off into limbo on me.

On my old Win98 system (2.8Ghz P4, 512MB RAM) and the older versions of Firefox, this never happened. I could go through a line of pictures on a page, right-click, select Save Image As..., tap Enter and go on to the next one. On this system, I have to repeatedly hit the Enter key and it's a royal pain in the *ss!

I tried to Google this problem, but with such generic search terms, I didn't find anything useful.

Has anyone else experienced this or have any idea why it's happening?

[ikar-us]

Is like this on PM x64, too.
The ENTER key isn't bound to the SAVE button.
Needs to press TAB until the focus is on the SAVE button.

[Rekrul]

Is like this on PM x64, too.
The ENTER key isn't bound to the SAVE button.

I was under the impression that the box which pops up when you want to save an image was a system function of Windows and not a custom function provided by the browser? It looks like every other Save box in Windows.

Needs to press TAB until the focus is on the SAVE button.

Which totally negates the convenience of being able to press Enter to save the file. Besides, as far as I can tell, the focus is always on the text box with the filename, rather than the save button in all programs. So why does this issue only show up in Firefox/Palemoon when saving images?

[ikar-us]

As I believe to remember, standard dialogs recognize four special keys:

• Tab marches the focus through the elements
• Space bar triggers the element which has the focus (if it isn't a textbox)
• Enter triggers the main action (the button with the bold name)
• Esc triggers the abort action

Having the initial focus on the filename and enter bound to the save-button allows to confirm the suggested name or type another name without additional keystrokes.

[Rekrul]

As I believe to remember, standard dialogs recognize four special keys:

• Tab marches the focus through the elements
• Space bar triggers the element which has the focus (if it isn't a textbox)
• Enter triggers the main action (the button with the bold name)
• Esc triggers the abort action

Having the initial focus on the filename and enter bound to the save-button allows to confirm the suggested name or type another name without additional keystrokes.

So does that mean that Firefox/Palemon is using non-standard file save windows rather than the standard Windows ones?

[Moonchild]

Nope, Pale Moon uses standard file dialog boxes to save images.

[Rekrul]

Nope, Pale Moon uses standard file dialog boxes to save images.

That's what I thought. But then why is the one for saving images so sluggish to respond to the Enter key? Sometimes, especially with animated GIFs, it doesn't work at all and I'm forced to use the mouse to click the Save button.

No other program on my system has ever had this problem.

[Rekrul]

So...

We've established that Palemoon uses the standard Windows file box when saving images. This box responds instantly to the Enter key in every other program, so it should respond equally well to the Enter key when saving images. It doesn't. In other words, a standard feature of Windows isn't working properly when used in Palemoon.

We've also established that this behavior isn't unique to my system or to the 32-bit XP version.

I assume from the lack of responses that nobody has the faintest clue why this happens?

[Tharn]

We've also established that this behavior isn't unique to my system or to the 32-bit XP version.

Sorry, but we haven't established either of these. Ikar-us said something about dialogue behaviour, not that he's having the same issue. And as for the behaviour.. by default, hitting Enter after opening a save dialogue will save. I tried to reproduce your issue but it works fine here.

Do you have an antivirus running on your machine? If so, have you tried turning it off?

[Rekrul]

Sorry, but we haven't established either of these. Ikar-us said something about dialogue behaviour, not that he's having the same issue.

The very first line of ikar-us's first reply is;

"Is like this on PM x64, too."

And as for the behaviour.. by default, hitting Enter after opening a save dialogue will save. I tried to reproduce your issue but it works fine here.

It doesn't work fine here. I would have posted on the Firefox forum, since that's where I first noticed it, but the users there typically have the attitude of "upgrading magically cures everything". I know exactly what they'd say if I were to post there; "You need to upgrade to the latest version, that will cure everything." Putting aside the fact that I don't want the latest version of Firefox because I don't like the changes they've made to it, even if I were to upgrade and still had the problem, I'd then be told that XP is the problem and I need to upgrade to at least Windows 7.

This system is an HP DC7700 convertible minitower. The only modifications I've made to it were to add an extra 2GB of memory, a GT430 graphics card and I changed the DVD-RW drive because the original was giving me problems. It has Windows XP Pro, SP3, which is patched up to the very last patch that MS offered before they dropped support. The only programs that run at startup are my antivirus (Avast), my firewall (Kerio, last free version) and a small bandwidth meter.

Palemoon was run without any extensions or modifications of any kind. I literally unpacked the archive, double-clicked the EXE and pasted in an URL.

Do you have an antivirus running on your machine? If so, have you tried turning it off?

Yes I have. It didn't make any difference.

Call me crazy but if it was something in the background causing this, I would think it would have been much more apparent on my old 2.8Ghz P4 with 512MB RAM than on my current 2.4Ghz Core2Duo with 4GB RAM. Plus, as I pointed out in my original message, clicking the Save button with the mouse always works instantly, which proves that it's not a case of the computer or browser being too busy to respond.

I am very selective about what I install on my system and what I allow to run. This isn't one of those systems where you double-click an icon and it takes two minutes to open the window, or you press Control-Alt-Delete and it takes 30-45 seconds to open the task manager. I've seen people with systems like that and they drive me crazy. My task manager opens instantly and Palemoon portable, from a cold start, takes about five seconds to open the window. Sure, I know that probably seems like an eternity for someone with an i7 processor and a solid state hard drive, but it seems pretty reasonable to me. Subsequent sessions only take about 2.5 seconds to open the window. All in all, my system is pretty responsive.

Besides, why would it only affect saving images? If I use the option to save the page on the File menu, Enter works fine. It also works fine when saving downloads. It also works fine when saving images in other programs, when saving text files, when saving attachments from Thunderbird, etc. It's only when saving images in the browser that the Enter key seems to go off into Limbo.

It also seems to be related to the size of the image. Saving small images, like the smileys on the side of this message editor works great. It's only when saving larger images that the problem occurs. Now before you jump to any conclusions, I've had this happen on 640x480 images and other times the Enter key will work the first time with images of 1280x1024. So it doesn't seem that the size if a direct correlation to whether it will work, other than that images larger than icons typical exhibit the problem.

[Tharn]

I am also picky about what services, background apps etc. run on my machine, so I feel your pain. But we have to assume first (simply because it's more likely) that there's a custom configuration, extensions, program at fault here that makes it difficult for you. Because if that's not the case and Palemoon just decides to screw up on a particular hardware configuration, that's quickly getting arcane and difficult to pin down.

Since it hasn't been suggested in the thread yet - have you tried Safe Mode / a fresh profile without extensions or custom settings? And since this only happens with images, try turning Hardware Acceleration off. A GT430 is low-end, but it shouldn't be actively slowing you down. It's worth a shot anyway.

Also try going through the steps with your firewall disabled. I only recommend trying this if you're behind a hardware firewall such as a router - exposing an outdated Windows to the internet can have nasty results. My old computer hard-locked one time when I did that, no joke.

[Frasier]

This may seem a bizarre question, but I have to ask. When this problem occurs, which window is the mouse pointer hovering over, the "Save..." dialogue window or the browser window?

There are applications/programs that change the behavior of the mouse under certain situations. One of those situations is making which ever window the mouse is hovering over the active window, even if that window is not the one on top.

I'm sure there are mouse drivers that have this capability too.

Maybe this would be a better question, is the "Save..." dialogue window indeed the active window? If not then what ever window is active is the one intercepting the keystrokes.

[Toa-Nuva]

In case there's still uncertainty about whether only one person is affected, I can confirm that I did have this problem in Windows 7, with the 64 bit version of PM. No antivirus or firewall or anything that isn't available in Windows by default. I can't do any tests or experiments on this, though, as I don't have any Windows installation at hand anymore, and it works fine in the Linux version.

EDIT:

This may seem a bizarre question, but I have to ask. When this problem occurs, which window is the mouse pointer hovering over, the "Save..." dialogue window or the browser window?

I can say for sure that the mouse pointer was not hovering over the browser window for me. I had set the "save as" dialog to full screen, so the browser window was completely covered up by the save dialog. The pointer might have hovered over the Windows task bar, though.

[Mercury]

Can we get a specific site/download URL where this is particularly bad? It might be helpful for others to reproduce the problem. I haven't seen this but I usually click on the Save button using the mouse.

[Moonchild]

... How do you set the "save as" window full screen? This dialog normally has a minimize and close button but not a maximize button; and i do not assume you'd be manually resizing it. This would mean that some other software is giving you the additional option to maximize common dialogs, which in turn may be the very cause of operability issues with them.

[Toa-Nuva]

As far as I remember, I just double-clicked the title bar / the area above the directory field (I don't remember if it actually had a title). That allowed me to maximize the window, even though there was no maximize button. No third-party software involved, or at least I'm not aware of any.

By the way, here's another thing that might be related to this problem: I think the problem often occurred when I right-clicked an image, and then used the arrow keys and the enter key (instead of the mouse button) to select "Save image as". When I pressed the enter key again to save the file to the default folder, nothing happened.

Off-topic:
Sorry for posting these details bit by bit instead of all at once, but as I said, I haven't been affected by the issue since I switched to Linux, and my memory is a bit hazy.

[Moonchild]

Oh right about the double-click there (I didn't even realize that wasn't disabled on file save dialog boxes...). The problem is that doing so, you shift focus to the window frame (even though the filename remains selected) and it will not respond to enter in that case because the dialog's work area isn't selected anymore. That is Windows' common dialog behavior because I'm sure it's actually not intended for people to do that (probably not tested either). Not maximizing the file save window that way will likely solve your issue.

Using keyboard navigation in the context menu works perfectly fine. arrows to move to 'same image as" then enter, and enter again will save the image in the currently selected folder.

EDIT: confirmed that maximizing does something odd with the dialog box focus and it won't respond to enter unless you click again to restore its focus. there's no visual cue as to whether focus is off or on, so I think this really is a Windows bug.

[Ex Pea]

I've been experiencing was sounds like the same issue with FF & PaleMoon for years now. Certain keys are USUALLY* missed when pressed in a file dialog (be it save or open):
Escape
Enter
Tab
Any function key (i.e. F2 to rename)
Perhaps some other function-like keys I'm forgetting
Anything that's related to the file dialog, like hitting any shortcut letter keys on a context menu after I right clicked, or hitting enter on a modal pop-up with an OK button

All other keys - letters (except to a context menu), numbers, spacebar - respond no matter what, like you'd expect.

*What do I mean by "usually"? It's like there's something polling for keys and it's running too slowly and it just misses those keys most of the time. If I hit one of those keys again and again and again, eventually it will be "heard" and will work. Or if hold the key longer, sometimes that helps.

But every other key works no matter what, and file dialogs in other applications, and the entirety of everything else on my computer, work the way you'd expect: Keys ALWAYS work, are always heard, no matter how busy the computer.

It's not a window focus issue. It's unique to Firefox and Pale Moon. I run hundreds of applications and have been using Windows since v3, and I have never seen anything like this elsewhere. It has been this way for years. It's maddening.

If I run a brand-new profile with no plug-ins, it ALMOST NEVER happens. I suspect some CPU overhead issue. My normal installation has 300 tabs (mostly unloaded, of course), and the machine isn't that fast. But no other application on earth misses keys (and only certain keys) just because it's got CPU issues.