Okay, so “hijacked” might be a little strong of a word, but for some reason, I have noticed that Firefox (my browser of choice) has had some sort of funky bug every once in a while. When I try to fill out a form online, the keyboard just won’t type anything. I have looked online to find a ton of other users having the same issue. Also, I noticed that it is a well reported bug (here, here, here, here and here) and the Firefox team is actually working on it. I am not sure how cross-platform this issue is since I don’t remember running into it a lot on my PC when I was using FF1.5, but since the switch and upgrade to 2.0, I have found it rather frustrating.

Maybe I found a workaround?
Once again, I don’t claim to be any sort of authority on the issue, but this morning, I was filling out a rather lengthy online form and, wouldn’t you know it, my browser froze on me. There’s not much more daunting than the thought of having to fill out a huge online form all over again (especially while staring at the partially filled out form in my window), so I went into troubleshooting mode. I found that I could launch a new window or tab still by hitting CMD+N or CMD+T, going to a page in that window or tab and then clicking back to my other window with the form in it to access the form. I was thrilled! A couple minutes later, it happened again, further down the form. A quick click to the other window (which I still had open) and back… I was in business again. This seems to me to be a good “in between the fixes” workaround until the team finds the issue and releases an update. Until then, I hope you find this trick as helpful as I have.

I could be wrong (disclaimer)
Not being one to claim omnipotence, this issue does only happen every once in a while so it is a bit difficult to test. I have read the above linked bug threads and it did work for me twice this morning, but I am not completely positive I can call this a sure fire(fox) fix. If you have found anything else to work or want to share your alternate workaround, please feel free to comment. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Update: Looks like others have used it too
I also noticed today, by reading deeper into the support links above, that others have found this fix to work as well. It’s nice to know that my discovery isn’t uniqe and actually works for others as well. Thanks for the links, Michelle!