Closed Bug 202615 Opened 21 years ago Closed 7 years ago

No mouse page back/forward or horizontal scroll using Alps touchpad. [not synaptics]

Categories

(Core :: Widget: Win32, defect)

Product:
Core
Component:
Widget: Win32
Platform:
x86
Windows XP
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED INCOMPLETE
Tracking Flags:
Tracking Status
blocking2.0 --- -

People

(Reporter: vrstein, Unassigned)

References

(
URL
)

Details

(Whiteboard: [See comment 92, fixed by Alps] [Dell does not provide this update]) 

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4a) Gecko/20030411 Phoenix/0.5+
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4a) Gecko/20030411 Phoenix/0.5+

No mouse page back/forward or horizontlal scroll functions when using Alps touchpad
(Alps driver version 5.3.507.2)on a Sony R505TL notebook.  Vertical scroll works
ok with either touchpad or jog dial.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.stroke left or right on appropriate touchpad areas.
2.
3.

Actual Results:  
no scrolling or page change

Expected Results:  
similar to using toolbar forward and back buttons.
Not a Phoenix bug, moving to Browser/XP-Widget.

I'm a bit annoyed here. It should normally be marked as dupe of bug 58589, but
according to bug 58589 comment #29, it's more a dupe of bug 98940 (which was
marked as dupe of 58589), so I'm not sure what to do exactly.
Keywords: qawanted
Really moving
Assignee: blaker → jaggernaut
Component: General → XP Toolkit/Widgets
Product: Phoenix → Browser
QA Contact: asa → jrgm
Version: unspecified → Trunk
Same problem, Using winXp , the back/forward buttons on the touch pad work with
IE and Mozilla 3.0 but not 4.0 or 5.0

Same with my other computer using a Logitech MX mouse
Horizontal scrolling and back/forward don't work for me either in Firebird 0.6.1
on my Dell Latitude D600. I'm using Alps driver 5.4.101.25 (the most recent on
Dell's site) on Win XP.
This seems to be a small missing feature at first sight. But for people who 
use it day in and day out, this is almost a MUST-HAVE feature. I will still be 
using IE if I don't see this feature implemented...
Confirming Bug 58589 fixed horizontal scrolling w/ Alps touchpad driver.
Back/Forward navigation gesture still is not supported, however.

Using driver v5.4.301.5 dated 7/15/2002 on a 1 yr. old Toshiba tablet.
WinXP Tablet version w/ SP1.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040626 Firefox/0.9.1
I've tested this and confirmed that back/forward with the touchpad is working in
Netscape 7.1 (though horizontal scrolling isn't).  Back/forward remains broken
in the latest nightly.  Any chance Mozilla can apply whatever fix Netscape has
made to get this working?
I agree that this is pretty much a dealbreaker for me using firefox right now.
I'm experiencing the same problems on my hp pavilion zx5000, using Alps driver
v. 5.4.202.8

Strokes across the top of the touchpad do not result in back/forward actions, as
they should.
5.4.102.8 on Dell Latitude D800 using Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1;
en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040608 on WinXP SP1 has same issue.  As others have said,
this borders on a won't use issue for me.  The thing that keeps me here is that
IE for XP is not drawing .gif's correctly and the security issues it is
constantly having.  This bug though, is making for really tough surfing.
Same problem on Toshiba Satellite 1110 using ALPS driver 5.3.203.4 (no update
available from Toshiba), Firefox 1.0 PR (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT
5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041001 Firefox/0.10.1), WinXP SP2.

As others have said: a small, but *very* annoying bug.
I can confirm on a Dell Inspiron 8600.....

A am using the latest alps drivers for my laptop too (version 5.4.102.8)

Horizontal scrolling works in everything but firefox 1.0...

Maybe if someone could find out if this is an alps touchpad specific problem or
all touchpads in general then it would help some....
Do you have a pointer to a page that describes these apparent gestures that
you're using on the touchpad? Is there a way to configure these?

I have an Inspiron 8500 and a Compaq r3000z which should be similar to the
Pavillion. I can scroll a page on the Pavillion in a little area to the right
of the touchpad but I've never really played with this functionality before.

I'll take a look at this when I get home.

Anyone know whether or not this bug is actively being worked? It may just be
that the touchpad maps Windows functions that aren't being interpreted by
Mozilla.
Okay, I can reproduce this. Interesting as I have a cordless CompUSA mouse and
it has back and forward buttons and they work just fine. I'll see if I can find the
code that handles mouse input. Hints are welcome if you already know where the
code is.
Found the code (I think). I need to do a build and run some tests. I wonder if
there are other codes for the ALPS events.
http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/widget/src/windows/nsWindow.cpp
Summary: No mouse page back/forward or horizontlal scroll using Alps touchpad. → No mouse page back/forward or horizontal scroll using Alps touchpad.
These aren't mapped in nsWindows.cpp. My build should be done in about 20
minutes so I can get the keycode out when the ALPS special functions are used.

#define VK_BROWSER_BACK        0xA6
#define VK_BROWSER_FORWARD     0xA7
#define VK_BROWSER_REFRESH     0xA8
#define VK_BROWSER_STOP        0xA9
#define VK_BROWSER_SEARCH      0xAA
#define VK_BROWSER_FAVORITES   0xAB
#define VK_BROWSER_HOME        0xAC
My mouse buttons use the APPLICATION stuff. The touchpad falls right through the
code. I turned on a bunch more debug stuff in nsWindow.cpp and am rebuilding.
PRBool nsWindow::ProcessMessage(UINT msg, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam, LRESULT
*aRetValue)

Is not getting the VK events that I assume the touchpad generates. I don't know
anything about Virtual Key programming or if you need to call something to enable
them in the application.

I assume that Peter (Assigned To) is familiar with Windows programming and can
take this problem further.

BTW, apparently there's a concept of the virtual keyboard where it pops up on
the screen (like on a PDA) and you can select characters with a pointing
device. It might be good to support VKs in general for the coming tablet
devices. I think that this stuff would be necessary for any future PocketPC
support.
let's be clear. no one's working on this. if you want the bug, i'll gladly
assign it to you. selecting gfx: win32 for lack of a widget: win32 / ports:
win32 component.
Assignee: jag → win32
Component: XP Toolkit/Widgets → GFX: Win32
QA Contact: jrgmorrison → ian
Michael, I'm not sure how much of this you know so pardon me if you know it already.

The gestures for Alps touchpad drivers in Windows can be configured via the
Mouse Properties control panel in the "Gestures" tab.  Your comments below make
it sound like you might not have Windows installed, unless something's changed
the Linux driver doesn't support the back/forward gestures so you might be out
of luck then.

As I reported earlier Netscape 7.1 does support these gestures, so someone over
there figured out how to make this work... too bad they're not sharing.  


d_mandell@yahoo.com: is it possible that alps special cases netscape7.1?
I ran a test on capturing via KEYDOWN but this didn't trap the ALPS events.
Interestingly enough, the left corner and right corner functions do work
(I mapped them to context menu and autoscroll) so it appears that there is
some mechanism that can trap ALPS (or Windows is mapping some ALPS functions).

I need to work with the stuff that does work to see how it works and then see
if I can put in the stuff that doesn't work. Plugging away...
I've had no luck in trapping the message. I posted something to one of the
Windows programming newsgroups asking for help. 
Some more playing around with SPY++ (program that displays messages in for a
process) shows the messages flying around. I used Xemacs as it's an open source
program and was able to see the messages for the horizontal scroll (it works in
Xemacs). There were no messages for BACK and FORWARD though.

So it appears that you have to do something to enable these messages or I would
expect SPY++ to report them. Even if the program ignores them. So I'll wait for
some info from the newsgroup.

If I don't hear from them in a while, I guess I need to grab the source code for
Xemacs to look at their code to capture horizontal scroll. Should be easy as I
have the Windows tags from SPY++.
Michael Moy:  Are you sure that you've got "Use Back/Forward Buttons" enabled in
the Alps driver?  Assuming it's enabled if you're in say Firefox and you drag
your finger from the center of the touchpad to the left corner of the touchpad
the mouse cursor should stay still.  

Before you rip your hair out trying to figure this out it might be a good idea
to make sure that this feature is functional.  I suppose if you opened up IE and
tried going forward/back that'd be a good functionality test.

timeless:  I don't know, Netscape 7.1 was released after this driver was, so it
seem likely to me that this isn't the case.  I also seem to recall that Netscape
6.0 (yes, I used 6.0 for a while) also had back/forward working as well.  

I'm not a developer so the help I can offer is fairly minimal, but if I can
offer my assistance I'd be happy to.
Yes, it's functional. Works fine in IE. The horizontal scroll works fine in 
Xemacs. Neither work fine in the Palm Desktop though.

(In reply to comment #25)
> Michael Moy:  Are you sure that you've got "Use Back/Forward Buttons" enabled in
> the Alps driver?  Assuming it's enabled if you're in say Firefox and you drag
> your finger from the center of the touchpad to the left corner of the touchpad
> the mouse cursor should stay still.  
> 
> Before you rip your hair out trying to figure this out it might be a good idea
> to make sure that this feature is functional.  I suppose if you opened up IE and
> tried going forward/back that'd be a good functionality test.
> 
> timeless:  I don't know, Netscape 7.1 was released after this driver was, so it
> seem likely to me that this isn't the case.  I also seem to recall that Netscape
> 6.0 (yes, I used 6.0 for a while) also had back/forward working as well.  
> 
> I'm not a developer so the help I can offer is fairly minimal, but if I can
> offer my assistance I'd be happy to.
well, if netscape7.0 was released before, the driver could whitelist netscp6.exe
and netscp.exe...
Timeless:  Well, if it's just looking for the executable name one could try
changing the Firefox/Mozilla executable name to netscp.exe.  I tried that and it
didn't seem to have any effect.  I also tried changing the name of the Netscape
executable, back/forward still work.
Neither works for me. I am using Firefox 1.0 on an airis laptop (windows xp home
sp2 and "Synaptics PS/2 touchpad").

I must say that it works on almost any windows control that supports scrolls
(but not on KVirc(Qt) and Firefox).

I like very much touchpad scrolling feature, no other scrolling method is both
comfortable and accurate. I agree it's a must-have.
See http://www.moox.ws/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1218#1218 for a possible solution.
I'm going to give it a try.
That old driver disabled all my ALPS stuff so I don't recommend it. I need to
find the new drivers again.
Does this just happen with Als touchpads? Bug 236257 says that this does not
work at all.
Only the latest Synaptics driver disables edge scrolling in Mozilla.  However if
you remove the new driver and install the older 7.8.10 driver, you will be able
to scroll in Mozilla again.
To everyone on the CC list:

I made a thread over at the mozillazine forums in hopes that someone would help
out and maybe make an extension, Please, go register for the furms and reply to
this topic:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=1149517#1149517

This way, extension developers will know there is interest in this. So just post
replies saying that you are interested in a fix!
Also, anyone on the CC list should VOTE for this bug!!
I really think that a code fix is needed here. Just need someone that knows how
to enable the thing in Windows.
I have the exact same problem using a Synaptics touchpad with Windows XP and
Firefox 1.0.  Scrolling worked just fine in Firefox until I upgraded to the
latest touchpad drivers, and then (while it still works in all other programs
I've tried, including non-MS ones) it doesn't work in Firefox anymore.

I'm not an expert, but I think the drivers are now using a different method to
send the scroll event/message to the window.  When I scroll now, the mouse
cursor turns into a tiny scroll bar, but nothing happens.  Just figured I'd give
my $0.02 so you can see that it's not just an Alps problem.
*** Bug 245302 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Confirming on my Toshiba M30 with Synaptics touchpad.  Pretty annoying issue,
but it's only horizontal scrolling that's not working (nothing works with the
latest synaptics driver, actually, but I'm using v7.9.2 supplied by toshiba so
it's ok). 

Gonna request blocking Firefox 1.1.
Flags: blocking-aviary1.1?
I just tried out the new Netscape 8.0 beta, back/forward no longer works in it.
 Whatever voodoo Netscape was using in previous versions has been lost. 
Horizontal scroll works, fwiw.
using HP Laptop compac nx9030

bug: cannot scroll vertically with the synoptics touchpad.

Just updated to driver 7.12.7.0 downloaded form synoptics.com

Problem persists

please contact me at searret@terra.es if solution available

thank you very much. Keep it up! firefox is great! (even without vertical
scrolling ;) )
Same issue, no back/forward mouse navigation AND more importantly no horizontal
scroll from TouchPad with latest driver (v.7.12.7) from Synaptics.
Please fix this, it would be very helful.  I have serveral laptops I recently
accuired for family.  I of course installed firefox first thing, but the scroll
doesnt work:(   I told them how much better and secure firefox was, so the
listen and got firefox.  Thanks for making a fix in the future.
Same problem with Compaq presario x1000 notebook and synaptics touchpad with
scrolling mouse.
Flags: blocking-aviary1.1? → blocking-aviary1.1-
I just wanted to put my two bits in:  I have an HP pavilion ze5600, running
WindowsXP Home with the latest Synaptics driver (v.7.12.7).  I have the same
problem as described by others in the latest versions of Firefox (1.0) and
Thunderbird.  I will probably just try an older version of the Synaptics driver.
Only to add another vote: toshiba M200 with Alps Touchpad, driver 6.0.302.3; FF
1.0.2
Vertical scrolling works, horizontal does not. Forward / backward areas do not
work. Top left and right edges set to FWD / BACK but do also not work in FF.
All above working in IE.
Would love to see a fix or extension "understanding" the fwd/back areas/gestures
on the touchpad.
Lars
No vertical scrolling on a new 3000 Series Gateway.
Synaptics touchpad with 7.12.xx drivers
very annoying!
Blocks: majorbugs
No longer blocks: majorbugs
Is there any way this can be slipped in with 1.1 beta?
a) there's no fix here to "slip in". b) this is marked as not blocking 1.1.

as soon as a fix is produced it will be added.  has anyone tried contacting Alps
about this?

PS. after 50 comments you can stop confirming.  in fact, you can stop after 2. 
chiming in doesn't get things done faster.  the only way this is getting a fix
is if someone codes one.  if you can't then please vote or cc but please don't
comment.
Maybe the fact that so many are chiming in is an indication that we all feel
this is an important issue that needs to be fixed! It only affects EVERY
NOTEBOOK that uses Synaptics hardware, which is, oh, about 80%. Certainly if any
of us could code a fix, we'd have done that, instead of expressing our
frustrations here. 

How many votes will it take to get some attention to this bug (which affects
Thunderbird and calendar too)?
Assignee: win32 → christopher
I spent two days looking at this a while ago. I couldn't find a usable code
example to try to get this in. If anyone has an open source program where
this works, please let me know and I'll take another shot at it.

I think that I looked around the ALPS site but I didn't find anything useful
there.

(In reply to comment #49)
> a) there's no fix here to "slip in". b) this is marked as not blocking 1.1.
> 
> as soon as a fix is produced it will be added.  has anyone tried contacting Alps
> about this?
> 
> PS. after 50 comments you can stop confirming.  in fact, you can stop after 2. 
> chiming in doesn't get things done faster.  the only way this is getting a fix
> is if someone codes one.  if you can't then please vote or cc but please don't
> comment.
I used a form on Alps' website to send the following:

I wanted to contact you on behalf of the Firefox development community.  The
community has had trouble developing a fix for
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=202615
which is a bug regarding Alps drivers not passing along their back/forward
functions in a normal manner.  I was hoping it was possible for you to give more
information to the community, either at the bugzilla site, or through me if you
wish. Thank you for your times.

Hopefully they will contact us with some useful info.  I'm just a lay user, so I
really hope that wording was right.
The eMule client has support for this (in the transfer window.)  Maybe someone
could have a look at the source for that?
(In reply to comment #51)
> I spent two days looking at this a while ago. I couldn't find a usable code
> example to try to get this in. If anyone has an open source program where
> this works, please let me know and I'll take another shot at it.

I've gotten back/forward to work in Firefox 1.0.2 (packaged with Ubuntu Hoary)
using the latest Synaptics driver (0.14.2) and a kernel patch that I found on
the Ubuntu forums (the Alps stuff is apparently included in the latest kernels).  

I'm still trying to figure out where the back/forward controls ARE with my
setup, I didn't explicitly turn them on, and currently this only works on the
bottom portion of the touchpad (whereas in Windows it works with motion on the top.

If you want my help testing anything on your behalf send me an email and we can
talk.
(In reply to comment #53)
> The eMule client has support for this (in the transfer window.)  Maybe someone
> could have a look at the source for that?

I meant horizontal scrolling, BTW.

As far as back/forward, I had a look in Spy++ at what happened when I used that
in IE.  It seemed to think that Alt-LeftArrow or Alt-RightArrow was being
pressed.  Of course if that was the case, Firefox would see it.

I'm not really a programmer, have done some very basic event hooks in VB in the
past, so I have no idea if that's helpful or not!

PS wouldn't Event Handling be a better component for this bug?
no
Component: GFX: Win32 → Widget: Win32
QA Contact: ian → win32
I believe that the issue is actually with the ALPS Apoint software. Here's my
theory:

Apoint is deciding whether to translate the page forward/page back and
horizontal scroll actions into the appropriate messages based on the nature of
the window that the mouse is over. The "nature" being the title and the window
class. If you do a strings apoint.exe, you'll see that there are constants for
IEFrame, Netscape and other telltale strings. So they're hard-coding details of
other applications. How elegant.

Try this experiment: bring up a standard console window. Verify that the page
forward/page backward gestures don't do anything in particular. But note that
the mouse cursor doesn't move, an indication that apoint recognizes the gesture.
Now, say "title foo - Netscape". THis will set the title of the console window
so that it looks a bit like a netscape window. Damned if the page forward/page
backward gestures don't give the visual feedback now.

However, if you change the title of the console window to "Foo - Microsoft
Internet Explorer", this does not make the fwd/back gestures work. So it must be
checking the window class as well for some programs.

So, to make this work with Firefox, either the window class and/or window title
need to be changed to match some program that apoint already knows about and
regards as a browser, or we need a patch to apoint.
I'm not so sure.  I'm seeing the same problem (horizontal scroll), and my laptop
has a Synaptics touchpad.  It doesn't seem that isolated.
This may throw a monkey wrench into the pattern, but I thought the observation
may be of use.  Recently had to resort to my Compaq Presario 1688 when my home
PC's SCSI HD suffered spindle/motor failure, and installed SeaMonkey 1.0a clean,
new profile, etc.  My laptop has a Synaptics Touchpad V4.6 installed; drivers at
the time of installing SeaMonkey were v. 7.1.2, running on Win 98SE.

With those drivers, both vertical and horizontal scrolling were non-functional.
 The little scrollbar icon would appear, but scrolling didn't happen (had to
click-drag the scrollbar instead).  So I checked Synaptics driver database, and
the current Win 98 drivers are at v. 8.1.3.  Uninstalled v. 7.1.2 drivers,
installed new v.8.1.3 drivers, and--gentlemen, behold!--both horizontal and
vertical scrolling work in SeaMonkey 1.0a.  Perhaps an answer for Synaptics
Touchpad users, at least.

The only drawback to the v. 8.1.3 drivers is they no longer have a setting for
the "snap-to" function for the mouse pointer, which I miss.  I can't speak to
the back/forward functionality issue of these drivers, since I'm not using them.
(In reply to comment #51)
> I spent two days looking at this a while ago. I couldn't find a usable code
> example to try to get this in. If anyone has an open source program where
> this works, please let me know and I'll take another shot at it.

Horizontal scrolling works in the open source audio editor Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/). Might be worth a look.
*** Bug 319810 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
> Horizontal scrolling works in the open source audio editor Audacity
> (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/). Might be worth a look.

I just sent an email to the Audacity team.  Hopefully they'll be able to help.
functions work ok in BOINC manager too, if that helps?
thanks!
(In reply to comment #59)
> My laptop has a Synaptics Touchpad V4.6 installed; drivers at
> the time of installing SeaMonkey were v. 7.1.2, running on Win 98SE.
> 
> With those drivers, both vertical and horizontal scrolling were non-functional.
>... Uninstalled v. 7.1.2 drivers,
> installed new v.8.1.3 drivers, and--gentlemen, behold!--both horizontal and
> vertical scrolling work in SeaMonkey 1.0a.  Perhaps an answer for Synaptics
> Touchpad users, at least.

also reported in bug 20618 Comment 284
> The only drawback to the v. 8.1.3 drivers is they no longer have a setting for
> the "snap-to" function for the mouse pointer, which I miss.  I can't speak to
> the back/forward functionality issue of these drivers, since I'm not using them.


Just downloaded Firefox, but without the Back and Forward TouchPad functionality, will eb switching back to Explorer. 
I don't see enough value add to make up for this missing feature.

If it is an Alps problem, then can Mozilla contact them on Dell users' behalf?

Just downlaod the latest Synaptic Driver for XP ver 8.1.2.0 from

http://www.synaptics.com/support/index.cfm

AND ALL IS WELL!11
Nonsense. The Synaptics driver has no horizontal or vertical scrolling at all, and the cursor moves painfully slowly at the fastest setting. Clearly this driver is not intended for use with an Alps touchpad.
Note the subject of this bug..... "...using the Alps touchpad"  I have a Dell Latitude D800 with an Alps pad and an Inspiron 8100 with a Synaptics Pad.  They are different pads with different manufactures using totally different drivers.  2004-12-01 was when Synaptics first raises its ugly head, 8 months after the bug was first reported.  So now almost 3 years later we are still no closer to a solution.  I would help, but these deep fundamental driver issues are far, far, far over my head as far as skill level is concerned.  It seems so odd that the program can catch and use the scroll up and down commands but no one can seem to capture the left/right slide or corner tap information.  
I will confirm that the new Synaptics drivers did fix the problem with my Synaptics pad on a Gateway notebook.  In fact, In the process I discovered that not using any Synaptics drivers at all worked as well (just use microsofts default drivers).
I hope this isn't considered spam, I just wanted to let everyone know that I was emailing alps in hope of a possible fix....

Hi,

I am writing to you as a representative of the firefox developer community regarding Bug #202615, located here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=202615 . The problem is that horizontal scrolling, as well as back/forward functionality does not work for Firefox. I hope that you can provide some information that will help the development community resolve this problem. Please feel free to email me back or just post on the bug status page. I will relay any information I receive to the developer community as well. This bug affects a large user base, as your touchpad product is installed in popular laptops such as the Dell 600m and D600 models. Thank you for your time.

--Garet

This was sent to their american offices, UK, and even ireland... Hopefully there will be a response this time, as I sent an email once before.  The UK office said they aim to respond in 1-2 business days, so maybe we'll get something this time.
I have an Emachines m622uk8x with a touch scroll bar next to the touchpad. The scroll bar works in everything, even Firefox 1.5 - sort of. I say sort of because it apparently only works when a page is loading, then promtly stops as soon as the page is loaded. I hope this helps someone!
No, I haven't updated any drivers yet - it's mainly just an annoyance right now.
(In reply to comment #66)
> Just downlaod the latest Synaptic Driver for XP ver 8.1.2.0 from
> 
> http://www.synaptics.com/support/index.cfm
> 
> AND ALL IS WELL!11
> 

correct.... I had problems after having finally installed SP2 for XP... nothing worked on my synaptics touchpad, with driver 8.1.2.0 everything is fine
Please read the bug title "...using Alps touchpad."

This is not about Synaptics touchpads!

Sorry for the bugspam, but hopefully I'm preventing more in the future. There must be a separate bug for Synaptics since it is different hardware with a different driver and probably different methods of communication with applications. 
Indeed

see: 
bug 56892
bug 20618 comment c247 and bug 20618 comment 280 281 and bug 20618 comment c284
Summary: No mouse page back/forward or horizontal scroll using Alps touchpad. → No mouse page back/forward or horizontal scroll using Alps touchpad. [not synaptics]
Whiteboard: synaptics see comment 74
Good that I found that here via www.firefox-browser.de forums.
I have the same issue with my Dell D600. Alps driver is the latest version that was available on Dell.
I use the mouse gestures 1.04 add-on in the meantime, but it's not the same than the gestures fwd/bckwd provided by the alps driver that work perfectly with IE and Win Explorer, but not Firefox...
Hope alps will respond or the devs will solve it. It's something minor, but very annoying, when u used to it...
(In reply to comment #26)
> Yes, it's functional. Works fine in IE. The horizontal scroll works fine in 
> Xemacs. Neither work fine in the Palm Desktop though.
> 
> (In reply to comment #25)
> > Michael Moy:  Are you sure that you've got "Use Back/Forward Buttons" enabled in
> > the Alps driver?  Assuming it's enabled if you're in say Firefox and you drag
> > your finger from the center of the touchpad to the left corner of the touchpad
> > the mouse cursor should stay still.  
> > 
> > Before you rip your hair out trying to figure this out it might be a good idea
> > to make sure that this feature is functional.  I suppose if you opened up IE and
> > tried going forward/back that'd be a good functionality test.
> > 
> > timeless:  I don't know, Netscape 7.1 was released after this driver was, so it
> > seem likely to me that this isn't the case.  I also seem to recall that Netscape
> > 6.0 (yes, I used 6.0 for a while) also had back/forward working as well.  
> > 
> > I'm not a developer so the help I can offer is fairly minimal, but if I can
> > offer my assistance I'd be happy to.


Hack the silly Alps driver yourself, here's a supposedly working how-to: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=459994&#2496389
Good find Flaky.  This does appear to be the cause of, and solution to, this issue.

The apoint.exe application apparently determines when to use the back/forward action when triggered based on the name of the active application in the titlebar.  

There are currently two available solutions:

Changing the last word in the titlebar (of any application) to read "Netscape" will trick the apoint driver into sending the back/forward actions.  This can be done in Firefox using the "Titlebar Tweaks" extension.  [Information courtesy of Ed1 on the mozillazine forums]

A more technical solution involves opening the apoint.exe file (normally located at C:/Program Files/Apoint/apoint.exe) in a HexEditor (such as xvi32).  First save a backup copy of the application.  Then search for the string "Netscape" in the executable, and replace it with " Firefox", the space is required so as to fully overwrite the original string.  Save the file and restart apoint.exe (or your computer) and enjoy.

The latter solution works for me using driver version 5.10 on a Dell Latitude, however should be applicable for all current driver versions and laptop models. 

I have submitted a description of the problem and a link to this bug report to Alps through their website requesting an official patch or driver update.  This is a trivial fix, so if we're lucky they might do so.  I'll post back if I receive a response.
Unfortunately the titlebar tweaks solution does not work for me. I've changed the titlebar to end in "Netscape" (no quotes of course) and nothing changes. It may be because I use tabs or some other obscure reason, but unfortunately...I'm left as I was. Sigh. (I went and tried on IE and it still works there)

Not that eager to go the hex edit route.
The hex edit worked for me except when the focus would somehow end up deep in the internal window structure of Firefox.  As someone has said before in this bug, the way that the Alps driver effects it's action is by looking at the window title and actually giving different responses based on that information.  Therefore it seems like I could get the focus to a point inside of Firefox where the window name that the Alps driver would see did not contain the ' Firefox' at the end and would therefore not work.
Patching apoint.exe using a hex editor to replace "Netscape" with " Firefox" does not fix horizontal scrolling. Firefox needs to respond to horizontal scroll commands from Alps touchpads. This is a serious problem for laptop usability.
How about we make a new bug about horizontal scrolling, since the back/forward thimg isn't a bug.  Isn't the scrolling issue just a case of a message being sent by Windows (WM_HSCROLL or something) and nothing being done with it?
I am not sure I agree that horizontal scrolling is truly a separate bug.  What appears to be the problem here is that the Alps driver is assuming all sorts of things about the environment that the mouse pointer is in.  It is all tied to the Alps driver and how Firefox responds to it's output.  The hexedit of the driver is _NOT_ a solution.  It is a workaround for the tech-savvy but I sure wouldn't suggest my mother try that solution.  I think this might need to be re-titled "Alps touchpad driver issues" if you want to change something.  Maybe need a more top level evangilist to contact Alps from Mozilla Foundation.  Seems that it is very much in Alps interest especially seeing as Firefox is growing in it's market share.
That's definitely the case for the back/forward problem, but horizontal scrolling works for me on a number of other programs.  I'd almost go so far as to say Firefox is the only program I use that doesn't support horizontal scrolling with this trackpad.  This would indicate to me that the driver is issuing a standard Windows event message that isn't getting captured by Firefox.

Can someone who's actually a developer confirm or deny this for us?
Unfortunately the workaround modifying the apoint.exe or the FF titlebar does not work with version 5.3.302.3 of the Alps driver. In this version a hex-editor will find three instances of "Netscape" in the apoint.exe but changing them to " Firefox" doesn't help. And this driver is the only one available for Toshiba Notebooks. I will now try, if my touchpad will work with the Dell version of the driver.
I Also have a Toshina M70-122 Alps pad with v6.0.305.6 driver, the hex method Tittlebar don't seem to woork...


Guess I wait for better days
Using firefox 2 on ACER Aspire 1690 with synaptics touchpad. Updating to the latest driver ver 8x makes scrolling possible in firefox but disables the polar navigation button. Using the driver ver 7 supplied on the machine and the only one available on the ACER ftp site enables all the touchpad and polar navigation button in all programs except firefox browser.

It's about time you show us your prowess and set this right as doing without the scroll function is a hell of a way to browse.
Check out http://www.ghostrecon.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=42674
Very easy hex edit fix - change "Netscape" in apoint.exe to " Firefox" and it works great. Still would like to see a firefox-based fix though. The address you want is at around 1ADFF, close to where it is in the screenshots in this article. Confirmed with latest dell driver.
Needs a fix. above dont work
Have same problem with Alps touchpad gestures not working with Firefox. Changed "Netscape" to " Firefox" in Apoint.exe as was suggested. Back/forward gestures work now, BUT only on pages which have their title length less than 80 characters. (the title of the page is text that is between <title> and </title> tags). On pages with longer title, gestures will not work. It is very inconvenient since in forums, some topics can be shorter and some longer, so you never know if back gesture will or won't work this time.
Just checked this issue with Firefox 2.0.0.14 on two different laptops: Dell D630 (XP SP2) and Toshiba Protege Tablet M205-S100 (XP SP3). They have significantly different Alps software (meaning no individual hack-Alps-driver can ever apply).

The principal comparison I did was regarding the horizontal scroll since that's  the basic functionality expected to work in all GUI software. So I opened plain Notepad - horizontal scroll worked, I opened Firefox - nothing. 

For Back/Forward events I used straight file explorer for comparison (start C:\WINDOWS from cmd). Double-click on system32 then generate Back/Forward events from touch pad - works. Equivalent in Firefox (open one page, then click some link) - nothing.

Tried the variant where TouchPad corners are explicitly assigned Back and Forward events (to rule out possible re-interpretation of finger movement) - same result - Firefox shown no reaction to them.

Also, on one laptop (Dell D630) Firefox is default browser and on the other (Toshiba Tablet) IE is default browser and it is IE 6.


this issue appears to be fixed in Alps 7.5.303.105 - see post on [url=http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=459994&start=45]mozillazine forums[/url]
I confirm that the problem has been solved by the new Alps driver.
I've been battling this for two years and never got gestures to work on my Dell D400 with Firefox. With new driver, back/forward gestures finally work in Firefox.
Thank you very much, Simon!
Having this problem on my Sony VAIO in Windows. Up and down scroll works just fine, side to side does not.
While comment 92 is correct (there's been an update), Dell doesn't provide this update for their users, and other apps seem to be able to read the horizontal scrolling correctly, maybe something should be done about this on the Firefox side? They are a major hardware provider and this particular device is included on _many_ computers worldwide.

I'm testing the software update now.
Assignee: christopher → nobody
URL: http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com/conte...
blocking2.0: --- → ?
Flags: wanted1.9.2?
Whiteboard: synaptics see comment 74 → [See comment 92, fixed by Alps] [Dell does not provide this update]
Won't block the release on this, but we'd definitely take a patch.
blocking2.0: ? → -
Duplicate bug: 557045
With driver v. 7.5.2015.1105 (probably newer than the one in comment 92), Back/Forward works, but not horizontal scrolling. The horizontal scroll buttons of the Acer 5720 also don't work. Zooming using the left side of the trackpad works fine (though I found myself accidentally using it, so disabled it).
horizontal scrolling does not work.
sony vaio e series
alps pointing device for vaio version 7.105.505.304
firefox 3.6.8
Horizontal scroll does work with driver TC70018700D on Firefox 3, but has stopped working in Minefield nightlies.
Depends on: 605357
I am also experiencing problems with an Alps track-pad on a Sony VAIO driver version 7.202.505.113. I am using Firefox version "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.12) Gecko/20101026 Firefox/3.6.12". I really wish this would be fixed.
Not sure if this is relevant, but, I forgot to say that am using windows 7 x64 and this bug is still present in the FF 4.0b7.
see bug 605357
Flags: wanted1.9.2?
I have a synaptics touchpad with the same problem. Vertical scrolling works fine, but using the touchpad to scroll back and forward does not work, even after setting

mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action;2
mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.numlines;-1
mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.sysnumlines;false

The scrolling works in Chrome and IE, but I don't know why it's not in firefox.
(In reply to Sébastien Delahaye from comment #1)
Dropping qawanted due to later discussions.
Keywords: qawanted
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 7 years ago
Resolution: --- → INCOMPLETE
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