1195616 - general.autoscroll broken (in FF 38.0.6)

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: DOM: UI Events & Focus Handling, defect)

Description

[steven.goss]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.10; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/38.0
Build ID: 20150605094246

Steps to reproduce:

Click the middle-mouse button and drag.


Actual results:

The heads-up display (circle) never appears, and thus the general.autoscroll function is broken.  I have checked that the feature is enabled, both on the advanced options of the preferences page, and even in the about:config -> "general.autoscroll".  It is enabled in both places, but still will not activate on a middle-mouse button.   Scrollwheel scrolling will work, but not "autoscroll".   It used to work fine, until v38.


Expected results:

Middlemouse button down should activate the autoscroll function.

Comment 1

[Mike Hoye [:mhoye]]

Hi, Steven - 

Thanks for the bug report; I'm unable to reproduce your problem, so could you confirm that:

- It currently works in some other application, so we know it's limited to Firefox, and
- that you can reproduce it with no addons enabled?

Comment 2

[steven.goss]

What other application are you referring to?   

I don't know of any other application that has the "general.autoscroll" function.  

As far as I know that is a Firefox only feature.  

And it worked fine until I upgrade to v38.

Comment 3

[steven.goss]

Ok, after more testing I have new information for you.  Someone made a change to the FireFox mouse event handling code.  How do I know, you ask?  Well, I hooked up another mouse that has more than 3 buttons.  That mouse, still shows the same bug/flaw when it's middle mouse button is pushed...however I was clicking some of the buttons on the side of the mouse (really just accidentally...and voila ...the little circular "general.autoscroll" HUD popped up on the screen.

Someone has made a change to the Firefox mouse event handling code which has moved the function off of it's normal button (middle-mouse button) to some button like #5 or #6.

Please check your revision logs for v37 to v38 on the mouse event handling to see what changes were made to the code.

Comment 4

[Mike Hoye [:mhoye]]

Steven has confirmed over email that this issue continues to occur with addons disabled, but I don't find any references to this otherwise. I don't really understand what general.autoscroll does, though I see bug 714434 might have some history there.

Are you using a Logitech product, by any chance?

Comment 5

[steven.goss]

I have now tried 3 different mice on "general.autoscroll" with following results:

Gyration Air Go Mouse - 3 Button Mouse (with a middle scrollwheel)
   - Has been my primary mouse, and one which stopped working at Firefox Release v38.x
   - with < v38   ...Middle Mouse ScrollWheel button would always trigger "general.autoscroll" behavior
   - with >= v38  ...Middle Mouse ScrollWheel NO-Longer triggers "general.autoscroll" behavior

Apple Magic Mouse:
   - Never worked with general.autoscroll (unless some middle mouse button emulation SW was used)
   - I tried BTT (Better Touch tool, for Middle Mouse Button emulation.
         - but as expected, that doesn't work with v38 or >

Logitech M-RCL124 (Bluetooth) Mouse with 6 buttons:
   - 1 of the auxilliary buttons (but not of the primary 3) "will" trigger general.autoscroll 
   - However, that is the wrong button, to be assigned to "general.autoscroll" behavior.
         - AND YES, because I like/use "general.autoscroll", for now, that's how I use v38 or >
         - BUT, I would like "general.autoscroll" to be fixed, like it was on < v38 (so more mice can use)


THUS, THE CONCLUSION IS:

"general.autoscroll" is still there in Firefox v38 and > ...HOWEVER, it has gotten newly assigned (in >= v38) to some auxilliary mouse button, of which, no 3 button mouse is able to access.   I only "know" that "general.autoscroll" is still there and working (in >= v38, because I have this logitech mouse with 6 buttons.  However, it's obvious, that is unacceptable, for "general.autoscroll".

The Logitech 6 button mouse is not my preferred mouse.  And I'm sure that many people out their whom own 3 button mice, are unhappy they can no longer access the "general.autoscroll" behavior.

Comment 6

[Benjamin Smedberg]

There are two ways we can approach this:

I: narrow the problem

I cannot reproduce this on Nightly Windows 7 with a stock Dell 3-button mouse or my SteelSeries Sensei many-button mouse. Just because this happens with your Gyration doesn't necessarily mean this happens with all 3-button mice, does it? Do you have another 3-button mouse you could try this with?

I do wonder this is some interaction between a nonstandard mouse driver (gyration or logitech) or some other related software which could be used for mouse-button remapping. I hate to ask you to start uninstalling various software, because that could cause problems. If you have another Windows computer around, could you try attaching your various mice to it without installing any other driver software and see if you still experience the same problem. Or if you're willing to spend some time at it, you could try this in a VM (virtualbox) and see if the mice work or if particular driver software starts causing the problem.

II: narrow the regression range

We have a tool that you can use to get a much more precise regression range from our nightly development builds: http://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/

If you are willing to use this tool and get a regression range, that would really help narrow things down and find out at least what kinds of changes landed to cause your problem.

Comment 7

[steven.goss]

This is only a "Mac OsX" Firefox Problem.  I don't run windows here, nor do I even own a recent copy of Windows.  Further, it is not (at all) surprising to me, that when you try to reproduce this on windows, you can't.  (In fact that's what I would have expected).  The way Firefox maps mouse (HID) button events on OsX, and the way it is done on Windows are completely 2 different pieces of code (within Firefox).

If you don't test with OsX....sure all bets are off...you'll never reproduce the problem.  But if you test with OsX, and a 3 button mouse...you won't have any problem reproducing this bug.   

AND, in fact, if you test on OsX with a 6 button mouse...you will find that "general.autoscroll" is still there and working...BUT JUST MAPPED TO A BUTTON that most user's cannot access with their 3 button mouse.  It supposed to be mapped to the middle mouse button (the scrollwheel).

This is the behavior on 3 Different Macs, within my household ...when 38.x or > of Firefox.   This should be easy to fix...but not until you have the pre-requisites.  Surely some developer in the Mozilla team can take responsibility for a Mac OsX problem?   (and insure that they have the pre-requisites to test on OsX?)

Comment 8

[steven.goss]

Problem Resolved (was not a Firefox Bug)

It was BTT (Better Touch Tool) App which is an HID enhancing utility.  I had it installed on all computers, but somehow it was effecting the middle mouse button state (everything else worked fine, but just not "general.autoscroll").  Terminating the BTT Utility makes Firefox >= 38.x work fine.

Sorry about the above hard-headed-ness.  I thought I had prior tried disabling BTT, but evidently I didn't actually get it terminated, because the problem definitely disappears once the BTT app/utility is terminated.

Please close this ticket.  Hopefully, in future, others with "general.autoscroll" will find these comments and be able to restore their "general.autoscroll" functionality.

Comment 9

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Thank you for the update. I'm sorry I didn't read your original report carefully about the OS, but I'm glad that you were able to figure it out!