Hard Question: Mozilla, Sidebar, Focus, Flash

Without bogging down this already complicated question with the how's
and why's I need it, here we go:

I have a sidebar window that refreshes every five minutes.

Often when it refreshes, I am working inside a flash/shockwave app
embedded on a web page in the main window.

When the sidebar refreshes, it takes focus.

If I am typing inside the flash/shockwave object when the sidebar
refreshes and I don't realize it has lost focus and happen to press
the backspace key (remember, I'm in the middle of typing), the Back
button gets activated and I lose the content I was typing in the
flash/shockwave object.

This is a major inconvenience and has led to way too much frustration
and elevated blood pressure levels.

I've dug through the newsgroups trying to solve this and it looks like
I can:

- open a link in the window, but not use Javascript to touch the
window and its contents

- I can find an object on the page if the script is running in the
window, but not from the sidebar

Most of the time when I think I've figured it out, I get a message
indicating the script running from the sidebar doesn't have permission
to access the contents of the main window.

Does anyone have any ideas, suggestions or comments as to how I can
fix this?

Thanks!