Firefox and Sidetrack

[buckuxc]

hey all,

I'm using Firefox and Sidetrack on my 12" Powerbook and there is this glitch the sometimes ruins my work by backtracking the browser. I have Sidetrack set up so that the bottom edge scrolls horizontally (the left edge scrolls vertically). However, when I'm in Firefox, the bottom edge doesn't scroll right and when I brush (usually accidentally) left, it backs the browser up any number of pages depending on how much I brused the edge.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Is there anyway to stop this?

thanks.


sps

 

[buckuxc]

does anyone know...

what i'm talking about? It must have something to do with mouse gestures connected to the back and forward commands of Firefox. Is there anyway to stop this??? Anyone?

 

[jaseone]

I haven't seen that problem in particular but I do have problems where you usually need to click on blank space somewhere on the webpage to give it focus so the scrolling will work so I am guessing when you brush the sideways movement on the touchpad that the navigation bar has focus and gives you grief as a result.

Does it work as expected when you give the page focus? Safari doesn't seem to have problems with the focus at all.

 

[mkrishnan]

I was about to write that I can confirm the lack of horizontal scroll functionality, but not the navigation, but actually, I just played with this, and I get forward and backward navigation for left and right swiping of the lower edge, respectively. Both of them, as opposed to just the one direction the OP described!

It seems to happen consistently, but it seems to have a higher threshold of activation than the scrolling function -- you have to give it a good swipe, not just a slight brush. It does not appear to be driven by default focus -- I clicked in a text box (the reply box for this msg) and then did it, and it still worked.

Interesting.

Does anyone know if Raging Menace is aware of the issue? It sounds like it's more on FF than on Sidetrack, and I don't use horiz scrolling in Firefox that much, but heeehee, I just paid the $15 for this software and that raises the bar!

 

[mkrishnan]

I e-mailed Raging Menace and got a response back from Alex Harper, who comes here once in a while, with a solution.

This is apparently a bug or oddity in the way default prefs are set in Firefox. It can be fixed in one of the following two ways:

1) Add these lines to your user.js file (which is in a folder which looks like /Users/mkrishnan/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/dz5o2uil.default

except, of course, your user name, and the last directory with the *.default will be differently named.

pref("mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action",0);
pref("mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.numlines",1);
pref("mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.sysnumlines",true);

I'm a little confused about whether these should be pref( or user_pref( when in the user.js file, but, I also find that you have to reboot or something to get the changes to this file to take, because they often don't take for me when I quit and restart. So...the easier method:

2) Point to "about:config" in the address bar in Firefox. This will take you to a page which lists numerous preferences. There should be a filter text entry tool at the top; you can type in "mouse" or "horizscroll" to make it easier to find these three preferences. Then double click them to add new values, and update the values as listed above (0, 1 and true, respectively, for the three entries), and this should start working immediately, or definitely after a restart of Firefox.

Anyway, I tried it and it works swell. Thanks Alex!

 

[buckuxc]

thanks for the help