Comment by tavavex

Oh, I know why it works that way. The point is that overriding parts of the normal focus behavior makes sense within video players - not only does every function already have a key shortcut (reducing the need for tabbing through every button), but some shortcuts can only work if the player understands what can and can't be overriden. Losing focus on the volume bar for the sake of keeping the arrow key assignments consistent is how it was done. Many other video platforms have figured it out, and so did YouTube many years ago, but then during one of their endless player redesigns, they seem to have simply forgotten about that basic behavior. I have no idea how they allowed it to remain this way for years, with all of them being extremely intelligent and well-paid engineers that are working on probably what is the world's most popular video player UI.