Unwanted opening of tabs

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Philip Goddard
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Unwanted opening of tabs

#1 Post by Philip Goddard » 20.08.2016, 18:10

I'm getting on great with FC XE x64, and keep it up-to-date, but have had one little annoyance for probably a couple of months. On the odd occasion I'd find that something I'd been doing on the touchpad or keyboard had resulted in a new tab being opened in FC's active pane. It took until today for me at last to find what I was doing to cause that to happen.

I have a Microsoft Natural keyboard, which has some extra keys that are programmable in the Microsoft Keyboard & Mouse Centre. Five of them have no predefined functions, and I have them all set to load different programs. It turns out that if I press any of those five keys while FC is the focused window, FC opens a new tab.

This is a consistent happening - no intermittency here - so I guess that this should be easy to track down and fix.
--[url=http://www.philipgoddard.com/index.htm]Philip[/url]

Free4all
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Joined: 30.09.2014, 21:12

Re: Unwanted opening of tabs

#2 Post by Free4all » 17.09.2016, 03:41

Curious issue!

Which OS? Do you have the MS Natural Keyboard software installed?

IIRC, the MS Natural Keyboard software creates a text file that contains the macros for each of those keys. If you find that file and post it, it might help diagnose what is happening.

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Dreamer
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Re: Unwanted opening of tabs

#3 Post by Dreamer » 17.09.2016, 14:19

Check if one of those buttons don't have the function of the "middle mouse button", because it opens the current folder in a new tab.

Or it could be the keyboard shortcut conflict, perhaps Ctrl+Tab or Ctrl+T.

Try to find which button causes it and try to click it when FC is not opened and watch what it's doing. Then try to disable it in the MS software, or mouse settings.

Alternatively, you can try the HotkeyP, great small program which can change or block some keyboard or mouse buttons. Windows 10 defender (and perhaps some antivir programs) block this program, but it's 100% safe.

Philip Goddard
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Re: Unwanted opening of tabs

#4 Post by Philip Goddard » 19.09.2016, 17:22

Thanks indeed for suggestions, though at the moment none of them seems to have taken me forward. I've been experimenting and found that the only keys on this M$ Natural keyboard that cause the current folder in FC to be loaded in a tab are the five custom preset ones and the Calculator one. The latter (only) opens the current folder in *two* identical tabs (definitely with only a quick single press, which loads just one instance of the calculator), while the former open it in one tab.

On my system the mouse middle button does NOT appear to do anything to the currently open folder - it does NOT load it in a tab, BUT if I go up a level, so that there is a subfolder in the list, and I middle-click on that, that opens in a tab. That looks like potentially useful behaviour, and so I assume that it's the intended behaviour for middle-click, whereas loading the currently open folder in a tab would surely more often be an annoyance than anything useful.

I tried using AutoHotKey, which I have on my system, to disable the middle-click. That did disable middle-click actions in my tests, but it made no difference to the issue with FC, which still loads the currently open folder in a tab if user preset button 1-5 on the keyboard is pressed, or in two tabs if the Calculator button is pressed.

The keyboard's Web/Home, Search, and Mail keys are all configured by me to load specific programs, yet they do not cause FC to do anything either silly or useful.

I've so far not found any configuration file containing my keyboard settings, though I cannot see why any of the latter would be adding in mouse middle-click to any of my key-presses anyway - and, as noted above, I find that middle-click doesn't do what this M$ keyboard is doing in FC anyway. -- But I've just done a Registry search and find my settings actually there. I tried attaching here an exported copy of the whole key, renamed as a .txt file as this forum doesn't allow uploading files with .reg extension, but find that it rejects .txt files too! The key is:
HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-1362945498-75891818-1128523163-1001\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\IntelliType Pro, and you want to look at the subkey \ModelSpecific\1016\EventMapping. I don't see anything that might trigger the funny behaviour in FC, but then you might. :-) Please let's know how I can get that file to you, getting round the file extension restrictions on this forum. Thanks.

That's all I can think of just now. Let's see if any of this helps! :-)
--[url=http://www.philipgoddard.com/index.htm]Philip[/url]

Philip Goddard
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Re: Unwanted opening of tabs

#5 Post by Philip Goddard » 19.09.2016, 17:33

I should also mention that I've checked in FC's keyboard shortcut settings, and find that I have no keyboard settings for opening tabs, either default or custom. I've checked that Ctl-T doesn't open any tabs in FC, while it definitely does in my browser (Pale Moon). Actually I'd really like an option to altogether disable the opening of tabs, because that's a feature that I simply don't use. Then I wouldn't have this issue.

Further check - with or without FC running, if I press any of the keyboard buttons that would cause FC to load the current folder in a tab, no tabs are created or other unwanted functions execute in other programs that are in focus, such as my browser.
--[url=http://www.philipgoddard.com/index.htm]Philip[/url]

Philip Goddard
Posts: 38
Joined: 04.08.2009, 17:33
Location: Exeter, UK
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Re: Unwanted opening of tabs

#6 Post by Philip Goddard » 25.09.2016, 22:50

Finally today, following some online research, I tried downloading and adapting an AutoHotKey script to replace the functions of the Microsoft Mouse & Keyboard Centre, and it actually works! Now I can press any of those Favorite keys or the Calculator key, and just have the respective program run, with no unwanted effects in FC or any other program. Also, of course, I now have many more options for configuring keys of the keyboard - not that I expect to be taking advantage of that - and my system is now clear of that clunky and probably rather resource-hungry MMKC, now just with a second instance of AutoHotKey loaded at Windows startup, to provide the special key functions.

Thank you all for the suggestions, nonetheless. All's well that ends well! :-)
--[url=http://www.philipgoddard.com/index.htm]Philip[/url]

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