261435 - OS/2: ThinkPad 600E mouse wheel generates a "Back" command 20% of the time.

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Description

[Stuart Updike]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (OS/2; U; Warp 4.5; en-US; rv:1.8a3) Gecko/20040819
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (OS/2; U; Warp 4.5; en-US; rv:1.8a3) Gecko/20040819

I am running eCS 1.1 on a ThinkPad 600E.  When I use the mouse wheel function by
holding down the ThinkPad's center mouse button and moving the Trackpoint device
up        and down, it generates a "Back" command approximately 20% of the time.
That is, the browser returns to the previous page.

Reproducible: Sometimes
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Hold the center mouse button down.
2. Move the Trackpoint device up or down.


Actual Results:  
About 20% of the time, instead of scrolling the page, the browser will reload
the previous page.

Expected Results:  
The page should have scrolled.

Comment 1

[Peter Weilbacher]

I don't have a Thinkpad to reproduce this, but what is your mouse driver and
what are your settings under Advanced->Mouse Wheel?

Comment 2

[Stuart Updike]

(In reply to comment #1)
> I don't have a Thinkpad to reproduce this, but what is your mouse driver and

My mouse driver is SMOUSE.EXE downloaded from
http://service.software.ibm.com/os2dd/free/SingleMouse/smouse.exe

> what are your settings under Advanced->Mouse Wheel?

No modifier key: Scroll document by: use system default.
ALT key: Move back and forward in browsing history.
CTRL: Scroll document by: use system default.
SHIFT: Scroll document by: use system default.

Comment 3

[Peter Weilbacher]

Does it still happen if you reset the ALT-key modifier to system default? Can
you exclude the possibility that somehow your Thinkpad has a hardware error that
triggers the Alt-function? (I would guess that it is a rather old piece of
hardware...)

Comment 4

[Stuart Updike]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Does it still happen if you reset the ALT-key modifier to system default? Can
> you exclude the possibility that somehow your Thinkpad has a hardware error that
> triggers the Alt-function? (I would guess that it is a rather old piece of
> hardware...)

Tried that.  Problem persists.

Comment 5

[Dainis Jonitis]

Have you "Scrolling" selected in "Scrolling" page of Mouse object and "Use PM
Scroll" in "Scroll Speed" page?

You navigate back forward when you bend TrackPoint stick left or right instead
of up/down, right? 

Comment 6

[Dainis Jonitis]

BTW you can reproduce that on any desktop machine with any three button mouse by
holding down middle button (wheel button on wheel mice).

Comment 7

[Dainis Jonitis]

Actually this is not a bug, but feature :)

Visited page history is navigated as a result of code in nsEventStateManager.cpp
which uses setting "mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action" to determine what
to do once horizontal scrolling is reported by TrackPoint, ScrollPoint mouse or
scroll emulation with middle button pressed.

The default for "mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action" = 2. You should change
it to 0.
There is no GUI for this in Preferences. Use "about:config" instead and word
"mousewheel" as a Filter string.

Possible values for actions are:
0 = MOUSE_SCROLL_N_LINES
1 = MOUSE_SCROLL_PAGE
2 = MOUSE_SCROLL_HISTORY
3 = MOUSE_SCROLL_TEXTSIZE

Due to strange default value of -1 horizontal scrolling will be reversed
(opposite direction). To fix this change
"mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.numlines" to 1.

If you do not want any horizontal scrolling at all set
"mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.numlines" = 0

Comment 8

[Stuart Updike]

(In reply to comment #7)
> Actually this is not a bug, but feature :)

Dainis, Thank you.  That cured my problem, :o) but I would submit for your
consideration that undocumented and undesired behavior is a bug from the
end-user's perspective.  With that in mind, I would respectfully request that a
setting for this be incorporated into the GUI as soon as possible.

> The default for "mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action" = 2. You should change
> it to 0.
> There is no GUI for this in Preferences. Use "about:config" instead and word
> "mousewheel" as a Filter string.

<snip>
 
> Due to strange default value of -1 horizontal scrolling will be reversed
> (opposite direction). To fix this change
> "mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.numlines" to 1.
> 
> If you do not want any horizontal scrolling at all set
> "mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.numlines" = 0
> 
The above outlined steps appear to have cured my problem.  Thank you very much
for an outstanding application!

Comment 9

[Peter Weilbacher]

Somehow I don't understand how the solution in the last two comments relates to
the problem in comment 0, but the problems concerning horizontal mouse wheel
scrolling are in bug 143038 (GUI options) and bug 231718 (changing default
preferences).

Comment 10

[Stuart Updike]

(In reply to comment #9)
> Somehow I don't understand how the solution in the last two comments relates to
> the problem in comment 0, but the problems concerning horizontal mouse wheel
> scrolling are in bug 143038 (GUI options) and bug 231718 (changing default
> preferences).

Hello Peter,

The other responders correctly understood that with the ThinkPad 600E's
TrackPoint device, it is possible to inadvertently command a left or right
scroll when only up or down were intended and thereby get an un-desired "back"
command.

Obviously, I agree with your comment 12 in 14308.  To me, what would make the
most sense would be to have horizontal scrolling be the default for no modifier
key and require some modifer key to get to the "forward" and "back" commands.

Thank you,

Stu