You don't necessarily need interrupts. There isn't enough information to guide you really. One approach is to check for a press frequently (eg. every 10th of a second).
My problem is that it's cycling through refreshing the page so fast that it's not catching when i'm pressing a different tab.
I don't really understand that bit. You mean "so slow" that it's not catching presses?
You could conceivably have an interrupt set a flag, and then test that flag once the screen is refreshed.