Simulate A Manual Click - Not An Auto One

After all, there is some difference in the way we 'click' using our mouse at some place in the document, and what can be achieved by the dispatchEvent "click" in Firefox. We have a page, which has two iFrames on whole. Left frame having a table of clickable email subjects, and right frame showing the entire body of the selected email. The problem is, the clickable area on the subject is too small, making it a pain to click each email to see its body. So I implemented a way of navigating through them using keyboard in the parent page(using key handlers in Javascript). The problem is, when we load the page for first, the navigation works fine, since the focus is on the parent page. But as soon as someone clicks on any area on the two iFrames, the key handlers don't work because they are in the parent page, not in that frame.

I noticed that when I click on any area outside the two frames, it works again. Idea : "Why not do a setTimeOut or setInterval sort of thing, which just sits and keeps on clicking on a place outside the frames"? Good idea, but doesn't work. Why? Is installing the same kind of key handlers in both the frames the only other way? Even setting focus on an element on the parent page doesn't work.