its a browser feature, ryan cant do anything about it, but it happens because the fold/call buttons steal the focus off the chat field

You cant disable a browser feature.

stop stealing focus... PLEASE

yes... definately

It can be! http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=403203&messageID=2986582

Ryan,
This is how I suggest you do it: I've done this in some of my GWT apps:
In your onModuleLoad code (in your EntryPoint class) do this:
History.addHistoryListener( this );
DeferredCommand.add( new Command() {
public void execute()
{
History.newItem( "c" );
}
});
Then in your onHistoryChanged function, do this:
if ( !historyToken.equals("d") )
{
DeferredCommand.add( new Command() {
public void execute()
{
History.newItem( "d" );
}
});
}

That way, when the page loads, there are two tokens, "c" and "d" immediately on the history stack. If the user clicks the back button, they'll go back to the "c" token, which just adds a new "d" token.

Also, I don't know why some of those commands had to be deferred, but this technique didn't work for me until I added that.

O