251356 - Turning mouse wheel up does history back instead of scroll up

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 330993

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Ilian Tzankov]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040626 Firefox/0.9.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040626 Firefox/0.9.1

Turning the mouse wheel up does a history back instead of scrolling the page up.
Scrolling down with the mouse wheel works. This is a problem on Mandrake 10.0
and 9.2 systems. Sorry, I have no windows system to test it.
The first step on the scroll goes back, then the next goes forward and so on.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open any page
2. Follow a link
3. Try to scroll up

Actual Results:  
The browser goes back to the previous page. A second scroll step will go forward
again.

Expected Results:  
Scroll the page up

Comment 1

[David Escott]

Could this bug be related to 175672? Most of my comments are related to that
thread since it is a bit longer, but I can't reopen that bug it so I'm posting
to this thread.

This happens in all my browsers (mozilla/galeon/epiphany) as well as firefox
on Gentoo Linux. I don't believe that I have gestures misconfigured since I 
never turned them on. Is there an easy way for me to check if gestures are 
turned off? If it turns out to be a configuration issue I will report it
upstream to the packagers. 

It also appears to be unrelated to the Mouse Wheel options in the preferences
(changing the alt+wheel binding had no affect). This mouse does have a number
of buttons including left right buttons with the scroll as well as a center
button on the wheel. However the left right buttons are inactive (generate no
X events as this is a newer keyboard not yet supported by X). 


Here is where it gets interesting: If I hold down another button say button 1 or
button 2 (which has a replicated button on the side) while scrolling quickly
back and forth the problem seems to disappear. I don't believe that I am
pressing button 2 (meaning the button under the scroll wheel not the side
button) when I scroll.
I am pressing the middle button, and intentionally doing so seems to have no
affect except that I cannot seem to cause the problem (probably not able to
scroll fast enough).

If you need any other information (my config or anything please let me know).

Thanks

Comment 2

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

*** Bug 271893 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 3

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

(In reply to comment #1)
> This happens in all my browsers (mozilla/galeon/epiphany) as well as firefox
> on Gentoo Linux.

If it happens in all your browsers, does that not indicate that it is not a FF
issue but rather a system config issue? I'm not able to reproduce it myself, so
at this point it seems to be a relatively isolated issue if you're the only one
experiencing it.

It's hard to assign high priority to bugs that seem to only affect one person :).

Comment 4

[David Escott]

I don't know what is causing it. If it is a system configuration issue I'm at a
loss as to what configuration files I should look at. From the standpoint of
possible culprits the only thing I can think of is mouse gestures which I have
never turned on (but nor do I know how to turn them on). 

As to my configuration I have every possible modifier + wheel option set to
scroll the page and this still happens. 

At the very least this has been a problem for at least four people including the
reporter of this bug Ilian Tzankov as well as 175672 reporter John Barnes and
Scott Forsgren also in that (now defunct) thread. It just seems that no one has
really looked into it seriously. 

So please tell me what configuration files I might look at and where, because I
am at a loss for what other configuration options could be at play here.

Comment 5

[bugzilla]

I have this same problem in:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040910
and
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

I'm using a Logitech wireless M-RR578 3 button mouse.  I've
tried all combinations of Tools->options->advanced->mouse wheel and
it still does it.  

It seems to be related to a rapid up/down motion.  For instance if I 
change the mouse wheel behaviour to increase/decrease text size it does
that but STILL does the back and forward in history.

This problem annoys me on 3 stock XP machines all using the same keyboard/mouse
combination (via a Linksys kvm)

I do not have any of the Logietch "helper" applications running.  Explorer
does not show the same behavior.  

Comment 6

[Ben Hourigan]

version: latest nightly

I can confirm this, though for me this is the same bug as 282140. I'm using the
new two-finger scrolling on a Powerbook, and the driver will attempt to scroll
horizontally if the user makes even a small horizontal movement. If this occurs
while the user is trying to scroll vertically, it can look like the resulting
action is caused by the vertical scroll movement, but it is not.

PC users may experience similar confusion if they moved a horizontally-sensitive
scroll-wheel slightly to the left or right while trying to scroll up or down.

The default behaviour for a horizontal scroll-wheel movement should be to scroll
horizontally, not to go back or forward in the history.

Comment 7

[David Escott]

I don't believe this is the same problem, simply because I have no horizontal
scroll wheel. Unless you can explain how rapid vertical scrolling is
misinterpreted as a horizontal scroll, I think these are unrelated.

Comment 8

[David Escott]

I seem to have found a workaround. It does appear to be along the lines of this
horizontal scroll issue. Changing mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action to 0
seems to fix the issue. What is strange about this is that
mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.sysnumlines is currently false and I have no
horizontal scroll wheel. So it seems that firefox is simply misinterpreting the
rapid vertical scrolling as horizontal scrolling. Given that this seems to be a
cause of a number of bugs shouldn't the default action be the 0 (scroll the
page) action?

Comment 9

[dthoang]

In Windows XP, I found that the mouse is sending mouse message 0x020c. I don't
know what that message number stands for though I suspect it is the horizontal
scroll wheel movement. This behavior exists with IE also, so I suspect a
hardware issue. I replace the mouse (a Memorex MX4200) with a Microsoft wheel
mouse and the problem disappeared.

Comment 10

[David Escott]

I had this problem with a number of different mice, including both Logitech and
Microsoft, and it can't really be driver level b/c I am on Linux. Using xev I
never noticed any events that corresponded to a horizontal scroll when rapidly
scrolling (but I also don't know what such an event would look like).
Unfortunately I know have a laptop and can no longer easily test this bug.

Comment 11

[Michal 'hramrach' Suchanek]

This is probably not a Firefox bug. I can reproduce the problem but I can also see button 6/7 events from xev which are supposed to be from the second wheel this mouse does not have.

Comment 12

[Chuck Smith]

(In reply to comment #8)
> I seem to have found a workaround. It does appear to be along the lines of this
> horizontal scroll issue. Changing mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action to 0
> seems to fix the issue. What is strange about this is that
> mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.sysnumlines is currently false and I have no
> horizontal scroll wheel. So it seems that firefox is simply misinterpreting the
> rapid vertical scrolling as horizontal scrolling. Given that this seems to be a
> cause of a number of bugs shouldn't the default action be the 0 (scroll the
> page) action?

Confirming this bug and confirming that the solution noted above works A-OK.  Whether or not it's a Firefox bug, I'm not prepared to say.  But that totally did fix it, in case this tip needs adding to a FAQ or something.

Comment 13

[Tom]

I can confirm the bug and (In reply to comment #11)
> This is probably not a Firefox bug. I can reproduce the problem but I can also
> see button 6/7 events from xev which are supposed to be from the second wheel
> this mouse does not have.
> 

Me too, rapidly scrolling generates 6/7 events in xev on Ubuntu Dapper Drake (latest flight) using my Logitech Trackman Wheel which doesn't have horizontal scroll - indicating it has nothing to do with firefox.

Comment 14

[Kevin Brosnan]

See bug 330993 comment 8 for a solution.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 330993 ***

Comment 15

[Jochen Grees]

I never had this bug before. After update to 
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de; rv:1.9b4) Gecko/2008030318 Firefox/3.0b4
this bug is now a new problem for me. 

In a virtual environment with an WindowsXP-Installation this bug is not active.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.9b4) Gecko/2008030714 Firefox/3.0b4