Currently if you try to chat in a game while watching the turn unfold, you will constantly get pulled out of chat so that the buttons you are pressing have their usual effect. This is really annoying. When a player is typing in any game, he doesn't want to be pulled out of chat and have his keys suddenly performing other functions, unless he chooses to cancel the chat.

It is more frequent to chat during while watching a replay than while giving orders and to make the matter more annoying, for some reason the space bar (used frequently while chatting) zooms the map in on your base, so then you miss part of the turn and have to replay it later. One new player had this happen and asked me, "why do you need a hotkey to zoom in on your base anyway?" I couldn't have agreed with him more.

I can't understand why you are pulled out of writing chat while a replay is running and I have no idea if it is a difficult or easy fix, but it would make the game seem much cleaner if this didn't happen.

Will report this to dagnor and see what he says. I agree with the spacebar hotkey -- always wondered that myself

Also, on a related note, at certain points during each turn (such as the ending of a turn playback and enterring the control phase of the following turn), when you're in a window chat (such as general chat), it will deselect the window and use the hotkeys like you mentioned.

On another related note, I've ALWAYS pushed for customizable hotkeys (seriously, look at posts from 2 years ago). However the stuff dagnor and I are working on right now definitely are more important. But they will be worked in one day! One day..