Flash doesn't always prevent HTML from getting input events even if it has focus

Question

Hi,
There's been two such problems for some time now.
- Take any HTML page with enough content to be able to scroll down. Add an SWF in there, for example that page could be a Flash tutorial and the SWF illustrates one of its steps.
If that SWF makes use of the mouse wheel, for instance to zoom in or whatever, it does receive the event provided it has focus but the HTML page ALSO does. So the page scrolls down and the SWF vanishes from view (while it zooms in its own content ).
- There is a similar (worse) issue with Firefox "Search as you type" feature (Firefox > Options > Advanced > General > Search as you type checkbox). Sometimes, mostly with the letter A it seems, when you try to for instance move a character in Flash with WASD, Firefox will also trigger the Search as you type box, which steals focus from Flash. Pretty bad when you're gaming.
Are you aware of these bugs ? Didn't find mention of them. Can they be fixed pretty please ?
Thanks.

Answer 1

Ok
It's great that you guys are in close contact. Mozilla has been working a LOT on JS speed these past few years. In early days I think they took hints from you, but now the reverse could apply, you could maybe use Mozilla's work on JS to fasten AS3 ?
Anyway! So I will show only the find as you type issue to Mozilla then, although they will have to wait a week because I can't spend more time dealing with Bugzilla right now, I made the case reproducible and that will be enough till next week
So here is how you might be able to reproduce it:
- Enable Firefox find as you type (FayT)
- Open the HTML page in this zip and give focus to the game
- Play around a few seconds (WASD, left click to shoot, right click to change weapon, target enemies with cursor position relative to character)
- "Accidentally" click outside of the game area (which means inside the HTML page) while you're walking with WASD
- FayT is triggered as expected. (Even though this can be an issue if the page is scrollable and FayT scrolls the game away from view)
- Click inside the game ONCE
- Either wait or play around some more, but do not click again
- Once the search bar disappears, you lose focus. Pressing keys either has no effect or triggers FayT again.
Expected: The game keeps focus when search bar disappears.
Notes:
- There are other, likely similar methods to reproduce this
- Clicking a second time within the SWF prevents the focus issue to happen (I think. Maybe not with all methods ?)
- It works with other HTML pages and other SWFs. You should be able to trigger the bug even with a barebones SWF that only registers key strokes, I think.
- I didn't give you the step by step way to have focus locked in the SWF instead of away from it, but it should be similar. 2 clicks outside might fix it. Plus, I can't see a situation where this "reverse bug" would be annoying for the user.