Browser: Chromium 20 on Ubuntu 12.04
Recently I began having problems with Youtube. Some of the symptoms were erractic behavior of the volume slider or difficulty trying to move forward or backward in a video. The most maddening was not being able to type more than a couple of characters in the search box after watching a video. Sometimes the cursor would not even appear in the search box and no character. But if I typed and then hit return Youtube would complete my search even though I never saw what I typed.
The same thing would happen in Google Maps. Once I viewed a map I would have the same problems with the search box. No characters would show up but suggestions based on what I had typed so far would appear.
It appears many users are having similar problems though most of the posts I’ve read have to do with Youtube. I’ve seen similar reports from users using Chrome, Chromium, and Firefox. Many suggestions and fixes listed but none seem to totally solve the problem. Many blame Youtube, some blame Adobe Flash, others blame the new flash version that ships with Chrome (Pepper).
I finally figured out what was causing the problem for me. A few weeks back while in Google Maps I enabled the new “Maps GL”. My system seemed to meet the hardware requirements. I didn’t really notice a huge improvement in Maps but didn’t really take the time to play around with it. And I forgot about it.
Today, after an extremely frustrating time searching the web for solutions I decided to turn off Maps GL and revert to the standard view. Suddenly the search box was working normally again and repeated viewings and searches on Youtube worked normally.
If you found this article in your frustrating search for a solution check and see if you’ve enabled Maps GL in Google Maps. It just might solve your problem.