I like to use the up and down arrows to navigate through a list of files, using the viewer pane to see what is in the file. (Dual Display + Folder Pane +Folders + Details). In some of my work, the files are actually exercises and diagrams from a chapter of one of our books, and it is very useful to be able to do quick checks with the viewer pane rather than opening the files I want to look at.
But when I do this, the highlighter sometimes get stuck on a particular file, with the 'hairiness' gone, and the up and down arrows don't work. Usually I can get things right by pressing Ctrl+Tab three times, but sometimes I have to bring in the mouse to get the 'hairiness' back and the highlighter moving again. Sometimes the highlighter sticks again on the same file on a subsequent pass through the files, but usually the highlighter goes through the particular file without sticking on subsequent passes.
It's a pain, because I have to stop thinking about what's in my files, and start thinking about how to get the highlighter working again. Is this a bug, or is there some setting that I should change?
Some of the viewers, especially ActiveX ones, take the focus when they open files. The ActiveX plugin attempts to put it back to where it was and generally works but might not work in all cases.
The 'trapping' of the focus happens sporadically, which is why I think it is a bug. And it does seem to happen mostly when the file takes just a little longer than usual to display.
The files that I have noticed it with particularly are .pdf files, but occasionally with .tex files (TeX is a markup maths typesetting language) which the viewer seems to interprets as simple text files, and with .htm files.
Assuming you're using a recent version of Opus (older versions worked a bit differently), the ActiveX plugin will wait up to 5 seconds for the file to load before it then restores the focus.
If the file takes longer than 5 seconds to load then the plugin won't restore the focus afterwards. That's by design and supposed to prevent it from changing the focus when it was changed intentionally by the user. I'll see if increasing it causes any problems and post a new plugin if it doesn't.
HTML files shouldn't ever cause the focus to change, at least with IE7 on the machine. Earlier versions of IE might behave differently but IE7 won't take the focus and thus doesn't need the plugin to put it back.
Files displayed by the Text plugin shouldn't take the focus either but maybe something else is displaying your .tex files (but still displaying them as plain text). Opus should tell you which plugin is being used if you right-click the viewer pane's titlebar.
I also have this problem (only with PDF files). I installed the new ActiveX plugin, but that didn't solve the problem (yet)... But when I close the viewer pane, it restores the focus.
I have downloaded the latest ActiveX plugin as instructed, and it makes no difference whatsoever.
The focus gets trapped on .pdf files, .xps files, .htm files, and various files opened with the text plugin. But it only happens sporadically.
Usually restores the focus to the filename, but sometimes ia have to press twice to recover it.
The bug - I am still assuming that it is a bug - is a thundering pest, because you never know where the focus is going to be and you have to keep checking the screen. Running the focus up the directory sometimes traps it on one particular file. When you go to rename (F2) or delete (Del) or open (Enter) or anything else, you find it wonlt work, and have to fiddle abut getting the focus back again. It's a real pest.
It seems that it's not really possible to work on files with the the viewer open, and wokring with it closed is the only way Directory Opus functions properly.
I don't know if it's the same as what you're seeing but I noticed some problems when moving from files that are handled by my ActiveX plugin to files handled by other plugins (e.g. PDF -> TXT). I haven't had a chance to investigate further and find out what the details are but I made a note to look at it.