Unfortunately, this is just the way that Inkscape works :roll: There are some tricks that I've found to deal with this, and probably others will share their tricks as well. I actually submited a new feature request -- Re-Select the last thing that was selected (bug #695940). And there are some othe...

is there any setting in inkscape to prevent the arrow keys (and page up/down) from ever moving the sliders in the fill/stroke panel? the problem is... i use the keyboard to move one object somewhere i can get a good look at it, then tweak the colors exactly how i like them, then try to move it back ...