194696 - Allow page scroll while mouse is over tab

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(SeaMonkey :: Tabbed Browser, enhancement)

Description

[Brad Garcia]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3b) Gecko/20030116
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3b) Gecko/20030116

Currently, when the mouse is over a tab, it is possible to 
use PageUp/PageDown to scroll a page.  However, the wheel on
a wheel mouse does nothing.

Please fix this so that using the wheel will scroll a page
while the mouse is over the tab area.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Load a long page, so that scroll bar appears.
2. Place mouse pointer somewhere along tab bar
3. Attempt to use the mouse wheel to scroll the page

Actual Results:  
Nothing

Expected Results:  
Page should scroll

Noticed this problem both on Linux and Windows.

This only really annoys me when I'm using a touchpad on a laptop.
It's more of a pain to move the mouse, so I'd just like to click
on the tab that I want, and scroll the page without having to
move the mouse any further.

Comment 1

[Brad Garcia]

I don't think this is an enhancement - it's an inconsistency.

Scrolling works while the mouse is over the tab bar, if you are using
the keyboard to do the scrolling.  Both the pageup/pagedown, and arrow
keys work to scroll the window.  But if you try to use the mouse wheel
to do the scrolling, it does not work.

Comment 2

[Andreas Kunz]

This _is_ an enhancement and maybe not even that:
Keyboard scrolling is not affected by the mouse pointer, so you can move the
mouse wherever you want and scrolling by keyboard still works.
This does of course not mean that wherever the mouse is, it should work...

Comment 3

[Brad Garcia]

As I stated earlier, it's an _inconsistency_ in the user interface.

If that window has the focus, it should be scrollable, no matter what input
device is being used to do the scrolling.  It is _inconsistent_ to have
different rules for when page up/page down can scroll, when arrow keys can
scroll, and when mouse wheel can scroll.  There is no good reason to make the
rules different.

Comment 4

[Andreas Kunz]

Ok, but why is the bug summary "while mouse is over tab"?

If a browser window content has focus, keys will always scroll it wherever the
mouse pointer is. Following your last comment about consistency the mouse wheel
should also scroll the web page wherever the mouse pointer is. 
Is that what you want or why is it you limited this bug on the tab?

Please also note that you filed this bug for "all" systems and there are
actually be differences wrt if a window gets focus on mouseover, etc.
I'm on Windows, you seem to be on Linux, maybe this is a cause for
misunderstandings... 

Comment 5

[Brad Garcia]

I probably should not have limited it to having the mouse over a tab - that's
just where I first noticed the problem.  It is more generic than that.

> Please also note that you filed this bug for "all" systems and there are
> actually be differences wrt if a window gets focus on mouseover, etc.
> I'm on Windows, you seem to be on Linux, maybe this is a cause for
> misunderstandings... 

Tthis bug is NOT about WHEN a window gets focus (also, it does happen under MS
Windows too).

This bug is for, when a window (as defined by the operating system - ie the
whole browser) has focus, but the mouse pointer is not over the current page in
the browser, then the keys will still scroll that page, but the mouse wheel will
not.

I'm not sure how to be more clear about the bug.  The bug is that either both
the keys AND the mouse wheel should work in this circumstance, OR NIETHER one
should work.  Those two situations would be _consistent_ (though I would prefer
the first as a solution).  That is, the keyboard keys and the mouse wheel will
both be able to scroll the page in the same exact situations.

Comment 6

[Andreas Kunz]

Please note that all of the following is as seen on Windows.

(In reply to comment #5)
> This bug is for, when a window (as defined by the operating system - ie the
> whole browser) has focus, but the mouse pointer is not over the current page in
> the browser, then the keys will still scroll that page, but the mouse wheel will
> not.

Umm... this is just plain wrong. E.g. when the browser window has focus, but the
text cursor is in theURL address bar, the keyboard will _not_ scroll the page.
The same when the cursor is in a text field just like the one I'm typing the
comment in right now.

I think you have to see the difference between the active window and the focused
element. Most windows have several elements that can get focus - or else I could
e.g. not scroll this text field where I'm entering this comment - it would
scroll the whole browser page.

> That is, the keyboard keys and the mouse wheel will
> both be able to scroll the page in the same exact situations.

I'm no UI professional and I don't know if you are. But I think mouse cursor and
text focus/cursor are fundamentally different. I think there are Linux/Unix
window manager settings where the focus follows the mouse, but this is very
uncommon behaviour, generally seen. Therefore text focus will stay where it is
as long as you do not transfer it to a different element by clicking on it or
tabbing to it.
What you want would also mean that mouse focus follows text focus, which e.g.
would prevent me from scrolling the web page while the text cursor is in the
address bar.

But ok, I'm not the one to decide this...

Comment 7

[mozdev]

CONFIRMED
This is a fairly major UI problem. 
it's the only program that disallows mousewheel scrolling once the mousecursor
leaves the page content area.
the last focused area in the active window should still scroll with mousewheel
wherever the mousecursor is (over toolbar, titlebar, tabbar, etc).

eg if i have 15 tabs open, i should be able to mousehover over the "closetab"
button, and still scroll up/down using the mousewheel.



i tried, but it's not letting me, change the title of this bug to:
"wheelscroll not working if mousecursor is outside webpage area"
the severity should be changed to Normal (or even major?).
probably the product/component assignment should be changed. it also effects
thunderbird.

this bug is being duplicated by <a
href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=270101">bug 270101</a>

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

with summary as currently written, this conflicts with enhancement Bug 281192,
which seems headed to being fixed.

brad hasn't changed the summary as suggested in comment 7, so it seems this is
headed to being marked wontfix after 281192 is fixed. is brad still here?

Comment 9

[Brad Garcia]

As stated in the original bug, I really want to scroll the page specifically
when the mouse is over the tab area.  If that means that this bug gets marked as
wontfix, then so be it.

Feel free to open a new bug for the other, related issues.

Comment 10

[Nik Wegner]

>I really want to scroll the page specifically when the mouse is over the tab area.

But the tab area also scrolls, so why would you take mouse wheel scrolling away from that?

Comment 11

[Kevin Brosnan]

At the time that the bug was filed there was no tab overflow management thus the scroll wheel did not do anything when over tabs. Now that the scroll wheel moves through an overflowing tab list I suspect this bug is wontfix. Fixing this bug would result in inconsistent behavior sometimes it would scroll inside the tab and other times it would scroll the tab list. Inconsistent UI is bad. 

Comment 12

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to comment #11)
>  I suspect this bug is wontfix.

indeed. and also bug 281192

Comment 13

[RickieES aka Ricardo Palomares]

(In reply to comment #12)
> (In reply to comment #11)
> >  I suspect this bug is wontfix.
> 
> indeed. and also bug 281192


Me too. As a matter of fact, mouse wheel behaves differently on MS Windows vs. Linux (Gnome). In MS Windows, mouse wheel acts on the focused element of the window with focus, whereas in Linux mouse wheel acts on the element behind the mouse pointer is at the moment (which I find way more intuitive).

Comment 14

[Philip Chee]

WONTFIX /r+ from KaiRo over irc.