ALT+D moves the focus to Address bar in IE8

Hi,

My application uses hotkey ALt+D to fire a link, but now in IE 8 when user press Alt+D then focus goes to address bar of IE.
I cannot change the hotkeys because that will take me to train the user again.
Is there any workaround for this?

<b>Application details:</b>
.Net framework 3.0
Language C#

Thanks in Advance!!!!!

Alt + D has been the defacto standard for moving focus to the address bar for some time now. It was in IE7, IE6, and is also the same in all other mainstream browsers. You simply chose a hotkey combo that was already in use. You really should just change it since a) I and any other user would expect Alt+D to focus the address bar and not do some other unexpected thing, and b) you can't change the behavior of all the browsers anyway.

Hi BigEd781,

Thanx for the response.
Actually the same functionality is working under IE6, and my users are used to with key behaviour thats why its hard for me to change the keys.
You are right this behaviour does not work in IE7 and IE8.
My aim is override the Alt+D keystroke of IE8.

Ahh, ok; I didn't have a copy of IE6 to try, I was going off of memory. I guess I was wrong :)

I still say this violates the principle of least surprise and is a bad idea in general, but I suppose you have your reasons. What type of application is this? Is it using global keyboard hooks to launch the link? Since you mention IE6 I am assuming it is not a browser plugin, so how was it working initially and why does moving focus into the address bar break it?

alt+d is not a hot key, it is an accessibility key bound to the "d" in "address" which used to be the label next to the url in internet explorer, the same as "f" in "file" from the menu.

use a different accelerator. every web browser (from the earilest implementation of ie to netscape / mozilla / firefox, to chrome, to safari to opera...) uses this shortcut to access the url / address textbox, so if you're writing a browser addin, every web browser user in existence will be thrown off by your new implementation alt+d, pick a new shortcut and document it.