141476 - Ctrl Mousewheel up (away from me) should make font bigger

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Core :: XUL, defect)

Description

[Sitsofe Wheeler]

Steps to reprduce:
1. Turn mousewheel font resizing on

Expected:
Mousewheeling up (away from me) should make the font bigger

Result:
Font becomes smaller

Making things bigger tends to be the default for mousewheeling up. One thought
that came to me was that perhaps my mousewheel buttons were round the wrong way
but Opera gets this right and mousewheeling in general goes in the right direction.

Comment 1

[Sitsofe Wheeler]

Almost forgot: build 20020426 Linux.

Comment 2

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Mousewheel stuff is bryner...

Comment 3

[Brian Ryner (not reading)]

The current behavior comes from IE.  IMO, we should keep this in line with what
IE does.

Comment 4

[R.K.Aa.]

*** Bug 146491 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5

[Ariel Arjona]

why not make it a configurable option?
Duplicating unintuitive behavior from IE it's ok for de facto "standards" 
compliance, but an option for a more appropiate implementation should be 
included.

I am just saying that it is pretty unintuitive to make text bigger when you 
move the wheel down.

IE's behavior could be a bug. In Office (Outlook for example), when you scroll 
down while pressing CTRL, text gets smaller, and when scrolling up, it gets 
bigger.

Comment 6

[:deanis74]

No, making an option for this is plain overkill.  There is the valid point,
however, that IE behaves one way and Office behaves the other.  But we're the
same as IE right now, so I think that's fine for now.  Verifying.

Comment 7

[Ariel Arjona]

Would you please clarify why do you think it would be overkill?
I mean I would be most happy if the proposed behavior replaced the current one, 
but that'd be selfish, because there probably are people who are already used 
to the old one. I'd be rather unhappy if out of the blue the UI behavior I am 
used to changed to something else without giving me choice to retain my old way.
That's why I think it should be a user option.

I would love to hear reasons other than "IE does it like that" for not offering 
this option/UI behavior.
Is the system hardcoded in the current behavior?

Comment 8

[Andrew Pimlott]

I can pretty confidently predict that I will get this backwards every single
time, which means it will take me three clicks (my mouse "wheel" is actually two
buttons), plus the redraw delays, to change text size.

<rant>I feel that mozilla is much too extreme in limiting configurability.  Yes,
we all want a browser that "just works" well.  But we all inevitably find one or
two things that annoy the heck out of us, and it's user-hostile to say "live
with it".  Computers are infinitely flexible, so the end goal--an awesome user
experience--should be achieved by a combination of thoughtful defaults, and
adjustment to the user's needs and tastes.  Mozilla seems to be stuck on the
former.</rant>

I don't mind if this preference is "hidden", as long as it's documented.

Comment 9

[Elmar Ludwig]

*** Bug 168457 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[Stefan A. Möller]

I recommend to reopen this bug, since Microsoft has reversed the mouse wheel zoom direction in IE 7. Now Mozilla remains the only application zooming in the wrong direction.

Comment 11

[Anton Gavrilov]

I agree with Stefan, correcting zoom direction is the obvious thing to do now that IE 7 is out.

Comment 12

[Biju]

(In reply to comment #3)
> The current behavior comes from IE.  
> IMO, we should keep this in line with what IE does.

Reopening as IE7 has now changed the direction of zoom.
If somebody still wish the other way it can be an about:config item

Good if we can have a zoom button, 
see IE7 attachment 245423 [details] on
bug 155562 Ability to add a Zoom button to the Toolbar

Also there should an about:config item to change 
ctrl+scroll to shift+scroll or alt+scroll 
to avoid situation like bug 215950 
"Ctrl + scroll wheel does not zoom text if system scrolls one screen at a time"


similar bugs
bug 299879 <control + mouse scroll> zooms in wrong direction for gnome
bug 358431 Ctrl + mouse wheel zooms in wrong direction

Comment 13

[Anton Gavrilov]

*** Bug 358431 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 14

[Andrew Smith]

i don't know of a single other application that zooms out with the wheel up. if you like i can make a list of apps that work the other way around. (but seriously, just pick a random one)

the longer you wait to fix this, the more people will get used to firefox being backwords and complain later.

Comment 15

[Francois Botha]

Please change the zoom direction asap.

I always zoom in the wrong direction first because I'm so used to Adobe Acrobat and my Office applications working the other way.

Comment 16

[Stuart Axon]

An argument for keeping things as they are, I find it intuitive to role 'forward' to zoom in, as it feels like getting 'closer' to the document

Comment 17

[wvengen]

An argument for changing things: scrolling downward (towards me) is like grabbing the document and bringing it closer to the eyes.


Also, I filed a bug on Ubuntu for this ( https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/54633 ) and included a small list of applications on Linux that does it differently:
* Evolution
* Google maps (without ctrl)
* Evince
* The Gimp (with shift instead of ctrl)
* Abiword

Comment 18

[wvengen]

Oops, please forget first paragraph of previous comment, my mistake! I meant:
scrolling upwards is like 'diving into' the document, taking a closer look.

Comment 19

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Can someone whip up a patch? Also, this seems to affect all systems, and OSX's ctrl+mousewheel also says "up = bigger" (though in that case and GMaps, the idea is "up = in", but same difference) so let's get 'er done.

Comment 20

[Andrew Smith]

Attachment: fix via nsEventStateManager::DoScrollTextsize()

Fix attached. I'm not sure who to ask for a review.

Comment 21

[Andrew Smith]

Comment on attachment 282721 [details] [diff] [review]
fix via nsEventStateManager::DoScrollTextsize()

Jonas, will you take a look?

Comment 23

[Elmar Ludwig]

Comment on attachment 282721 [details] [diff] [review]
fix via nsEventStateManager::DoScrollTextsize()

>       // positive adjustment to increase text size, non-positive to decrease
>-      ChangeTextSize((adjustment > 0) ? 1 : -1);
>+      ChangeTextSize((adjustment > 0) ? -1 : 1);

Please also change the comment to reflect the new behaviour. Looks fine to me otherwise, but I'm not a reviewer... ;-)

Comment 24

[Andrew Smith]

Attachment: same fix with updated comment

Comment 25

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

Comment on attachment 282737 [details] [diff] [review]
same fix with updated comment

Would like to get beltzner to UI-review this, but there doesn't seem to be such a flag for Core bugs.

Comment 26

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Comment on attachment 282737 [details] [diff] [review]
same fix with updated comment

jonas: yeah, second-review works for components without ui-review :)

Parity with IE was the only reason we were keeping this, AIUI, and I'm fine to match the behaviour of pretty much every other app and OS under the sun.

Apologies for the slight break in muscle memory for some, I know you'll adapt quickly, and it makes more sense.

Comment 27

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

Checking in content/events/src/nsEventStateManager.cpp;
/cvsroot/mozilla/content/events/src/nsEventStateManager.cpp,v  <--  nsEventStateManager.cpp
new revision: 1.710; previous revision: 1.709
done

Comment 28

[steppres]

Stuart Axon said "An argument for keeping things as they are, I find it intuitive to role 'forward' to zoom in, as it feels like getting 'closer' to the document"

I totally agree. It might not be the way every other app does it, but I reckon it's the right way. This new way is akin to scrolling the document "down" when I mousewheel up because I'm going "forward" in the document. It's not intuitive to whats happening on screen.

Comment 29

[Elmar Ludwig]

Verified fixed in Gecko/2007100204 Minefield/3.0a9pre nightly build.

Comment 30

[Biju]

current fix is not configurable, 
Bug 404775 has the fix,
Need you guy's attention there

Comment 31

[Peter Lairo]

I know this bug is "fixed", but I at least wanted to provide a reason to keep the mousewheel-DOWN = increase text size:

- Pulling the mousewheel DOWN is like PULLING the page toward you.

- Pushing the mousewheel UP is like PUSHING the page away from you.

Think of how a fishing reel or a pulley works.

Also, when I "pull" on the mousewhell, it (subtly) brings my body (eyes) closer to the screen. It's the third Law of Physics: Every Action has an Equal and Opposite Reaction.

Please either:
1. reverse this bug
2. make this a UI option
3. make this a hidden option (edit:config)

Comment 32

[Elmar Ludwig]

There is already a hidden pref to revert to the previous behaviour, see bug 404775 comment #15.

Comment 35

[Huan]

This should be under Accessibility options - I constantly use the mouse wheel to try to get a readable font size, and am accustomed to the down=enlarge behaviour.

No doubt had I become accustomed to the reverse, it would be natural to me, but it's hard to break a habit.