Weird Firefox/Google Reader/whatever bug
Over the past few days I’ve been experiencing a really annoying bug on Google Reader. I’m not sure if it’s actually related to Firefox or Google Reader, but I’ve tried in Opera and it’s not happening, at least not on the same way.
Suppose I’m reading my feeds and I want to open some item. I can press the ‘v’ hotkey and everything is fine. But sometimes, when I have the mouse connected to the laptop I reach for the third button and click on the item title. I usually don’t go to that new window right away (I have this habit of opening lots of stuff and just wait for it to load and read it only after I finish all the feed items). The thing is, after I middle click the title, when I press ‘j’ again to go to the next feed item, Firefox’s “quick find” feature kicks in, so I’m just taken to the next ‘j’ character, which is extremely annoying. If I want the feed items section to regain focus, I have to left click on some item again.
I tried this on Opera, and it doesn’t happen, but after I middle click a title I have to move the mouse out of the link area, otherwise ‘j’ won’t do anything.
While trying this on other browsers I also found out that Google Reader’s keyboard shortcuts are not supported on Konqueror.
The weird thing is that I believe this only started happening after the last time Google Reader told me there was an update and that I should refresh. So, is this happening to someone else ?
Update
Looks like this was already noticed on the discussion group.
Update 2
The Reader team has replied to that thread from before saying they are working on a fix. Way to go guys !
Update 3
It’s fixed !
March 9th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Yeah, I’m getting this too, I thought it was because of a new tab extension I was trying in firefox.
March 9th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
No tab extension here, I assure you.
March 9th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Having a similar problem since last week. When I click “j” after opening an item with my mouse in another window, Firefox does nothing. I think it’s actually the same problem you describe with the difference that I have automatic type-ahead search disabled, so my FF does nothing when yours finds “j”s. Annoying, really.
Any GoogleTracker where we can file this bug?
March 9th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
I just disabled firefox’s quick search because of this issue.
March 9th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
@menachem But like Fabian said, even if you disable it the ‘j’ hotkey still doesn’t work after the “middle click”
@fabian I’m not quite sure, but the last time I complained about a problem in Google Reader here it got noticed and corrected :) Anyway, I’ll try and find some way to report it now that I know this isn’t just something about my particular case.
March 9th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Looks like someone already mentioned it on the discussion group. I’ll update with a link for it in the main post.
March 9th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
I think they must have rolled out some new code in Reader recently that wasn’t tested in Firefox. I found this thread while searching for a different / probably unrelated problem in Google Reader lately.
I’ve used Google Reader for quite some time in Firefox, yet suddenly now it is giving me “issues”… when I click into Google Reader, all the text turns white and the background around the edge turns green, and therefore I can’t read any details. If I right-click THEN left-click in an open area, the colors revert until I click on the next article.
I have loaded firefox in Safe Mode and it still does this - never did it before.
March 11th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Yeah, I’ve been seeing this for the last few days as well. It is really annoying. Please update your post with any new info you find.