Text editors

I am using FF 3.6.3 and find that when I tab through an EMPTY HTML editor, the focus changes as follows:

Font Name -> Font size -> Format -> Lang -> ???? -> |Path: -> body -> Help with editor

Where the ???? appears, above, the focus should be on the text field and I should be able to start typing. However, when I type, nothing appears. I can only get access to type if I use my mouse to bring focus to the text field. Once I've done that ONE time, I can tab backwards and forwards and the focus WILL go to the text field, even if it's empty.

None of this works this way in I.E. In I.E., the focus moves to the text field, as expected, and there's a flashing cursor ready for me to type.

I hope this all made sense and I'm hoping somebody can figure out what is wrong and how I can get the focus to move into the text field (without using the mouse) in Firefox the way it does in I.E.

Thanks for your time.