305540 - revision of the mouse preferences panel

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(SeaMonkey :: Preferences, enhancement)

Description

[Petr Cerny [:hrosik]]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv:1.7.11) Gecko/20050731 MultiZilla/1.7.9.0a
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv:1.7.11) Gecko/20050731 MultiZilla/1.7.9.0a

I suggest a revision of the settings panel for mouse in preferences. It should
contain settings for (i.e. assignment of actions to) both buttons and wheel(s)
in combination with possible modifiers.

Why:
1) there have been some requests for horizontal scrolling/panning (see bug #143038)
2) there are more things to do with scroll wheel (some configurable options are
not UI configurable)
3) more precise settings (one thing which personally bothers me is the
wheel-history binding, as I would prefer the setting the other way round:
modifier+scroll_down = history forward/modifier+scroll_up = history backward )
4) there are some problems with the autoscroll feature (see bug #216899) on
systems using the X11 windowing system
5) some users tend to customize functions of the software they're using - mouse
browsing is one of the most common these days

Moreover, good (well-thought) defaults are highly desirable.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

SeaMonkey preference pages are currently being revamped for Toolkit, see bug 394522 et al.

Adding Mnyromyr to CC list: Karsten, you know better than I what to make of this bug.

Downgrading Severity to "enhancement" while awaiting further action or resolution.

Comment 2

[Karsten Düsterloh]

Peter,
the mousewheel preferences have been updated while making them ready for toolkit, so I suggest grabbing a SeaMonkey trunk nightly (http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/seamonkey/nightly/latest-trunk/) and checking if the revised pref panel is more fitting. (Be sure to test with a clean new profile.)

That said, "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv:1.7.11) Gecko/20050731" is truly ancient, you should consider upgrading to SeaMonkey 1.1.8 (http://www.seamonkey-project.org/).

Comment 3

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

No reply in more than two weeks -- resolving INCOMPLETE.

Peter, if you want to REOPEN, please test first with "latest-trunk" build as mentioned in comment #2, and mention "Actual Results" and "Expected Results".

Comment 4

[Petr Cerny [:hrosik]]

latest-trunk means it will go into 2.x or it may appear in 1.1.<some security update> as well?

Comment 5

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

(In reply to comment #4)
> latest-trunk means it will go into 2.x or it may appear in 1.1.<some security
> update> as well?
> 

The whole SeaMonkey preferences system (as well as other parts of the program) is currently being migrated from the "old" XPFE backend to a "New Toolkit" backend; therefore I expect that no "enhancements" or "new features" will ever be applied to the 1.1.x Preferences. Except for "security fixes" (i.e., fixes to genuine "security holes") and similar, those Preferences are essentially a dead end, and any enhancements to the Preferences system will have to wait for the 2.0 cycle.

The latest 2.0a1pre "trunk" builds are posted approximately every 24 hours at the URI given in comment #2. At the moment, they are supposed to be "pre-alpha" builds in preparation for SeaMonkey 2.0, and there are several reasons why they are "not yet ready for prime time", but they are quite usable -- at the user's own risks. I'm "live-testing" them by using them for day-to-day browsing and mailing, and so are some other people, but of course you don't have to do the same if you don't want to.

Comment 6

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

Oh, and I forgot: the new Toolkit backend is simply not present on Sm 1.1.x and earlier, but it exists in Firefox and Thunderbird since (I think) before version 1.0 and it has many advantages, not the least of which being to share more code between Fx/Tb and Sm, and therefore waste less manpower keeping them up.