I'm not sure if this is a debian problem or just a linux/X problem in general but here goes. I first had this problem when I was using gnome. Once I click on some particular part of a window like say the firefox toolbar with back torward refresh and whatnot, then I cannot click anywhere outside of there, when I do, it just acts as if I clicked in the closest place in the area to where the cursor actually is, so If I am trying to click a link that is on the left side of the page and halfway down the screen, it sill just click the back button instead. Because of this I also cant swtich which window is the current one when this happens. (note also that the cursor does not change to a hand or whatever when i'm over the link in the example). By trial and error I learned that if I use the keyboard to switch which to a different workspace and then back to the current one, then the FIRST thing I click after that will act as a normal click, and change the current area, and then after that it acts the same, with this new current area. This only works within the window, to change windows you have to switch to virtual terminal 1 and back to 7 and then the FIRST click after that can change the window. There are various other odd tricks I discovered to make it possibly to right click and some other things.
Anyway, I was sure this was just some bug in my copy of gnome or X and that I had accidentally screwed something up, so I re-installed debian completely on a new hard drive and immediately, before I even installed gnome, when I was using twm, that problem was still there. This means the problem must be a hardware problem, even though it really really seems like it would have to be a software problem. does anyone hav a clue what would be causing this? it stumped all my CS major friends here at carnegie mellon. if anyone can think of whaqt is causing this or if there is a way to fix it, please let me know (ahoy@andrew.cmu.edu).
thanks