509608 - need option to prevent auto-scroll to bottom on output

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Other Applications Graveyard :: ChatZilla, defect)

Description

[Aki Sasaki (not active)]

I'm currently using Chatzilla (currently 0.9.83 standalone on XULRunner).

I've been searching for a way to prevent it from scrolling to the bottom when someone says something while I'm reading scrollback.  I tend to need to read scrollback the most on the busiest channels, which are the most likely to scroll me back to the bottom while I'm reading.

Is there such an option?  Could one be implemented if not?

Thanks!

Comment 1

[James Ross]

Apart from being two versions out of date, ChatZilla already works like this. Scorll up and it does not scroll down automatically. You need to scroll a couple of lines, but any more and it works fine for me and many other users.

Comment 2

[Aki Sasaki (not active)]

It scrolls to the bottom in #developers for me?
It seems to be more of an issue when I'm only a handful of lines from the bottom, or am in the act of scrolling up while output is coming out.

Comment 3

[James Ross]

If you start scrolling in one of these time periods following a message appearing and haven't made it 160px up by the end, you'll be pushed back down:
 - 0ms to 500ms
 - 500ms to 1000ms
 - 1000ms to 2000ms

If the channel is too active, you might have a problem doing that, I suppose.

The 160px value dates back to 2002, so we could conceivably reduce it, but although the time periods are from 2001, the underlying problem they solve still exists (asynchronous loading of emoticons).

Comment 4

[Aki Sasaki (not active)]

Hm. Will disabling emoticons fix that?
Or maybe my pref request would then have a known side effect on emoticons.

Comment 5

[James Ross]

No, and we can't avoid the code if emoticons are disabled as motifs (the styles applied to the chat area) can do the same "problem" things to other areas.

Also, unless your window is very short a single Page Up gets you more than 160px up scroll and happens instantly (possibly modulo smooth-scrolling interfearing).

Comment 6

[Aki Sasaki (not active)]

Ok, I think that's an acceptable workaround for now.

Before WONTFIXing, is there some other way to fix this issue in the longer term?
Being able to use my mouse scroll wheel or the scroll bar would be nice, as that's how I tend to scroll in the rest of my applications.

Comment 7

[James Ross]

We should be able to reduce the 160px value, it feels too large considering the normal amount of error it will be correcting is less than 1 line of text, but that will take some experimentation.

If you're happy with it, we can morph this bug into one for investigating and improving the scrollback detection (which is pretty old, as I found in comment #3).

Comment 8

[James Ross]

Attachment: [checked in] Only scroll down at message time, not later

This doesn't entirely fix this bug, as you still need to scroll up 160px to avoid falling down, but it gives you the entirety of the time between messages to do it (rather than the periods mentioned before).

Comment 9

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Comment on attachment 423190 [details] [diff] [review]
[checked in] Only scroll down at message time, not later

r=me assuming you've verified that we do remove this progress listener when the view is closed so we don't run the risk of leaks or weird breakages.

Comment 10

[James Ross]

Comment on attachment 423190 [details] [diff] [review]
[checked in] Only scroll down at message time, not later

http://hg.mozilla.org/chatzilla/rev/e9861c1de2ed

The Leak Monitor extension was having periodic fits while I was trying to decide if this leaked anything or not so I've erred on the side of caution and made it remove the listener on delete/hide-view (but not exit). I could not reliably make it leak w/ or w/o this though.

I also fixed a simple bug in checkScroll from the new document.body code that kept breaking while testing.

Comment 11

[Aki Sasaki (not active)]

No updates in 8 years, and I don't use Chatzilla anymore.