560533 - mousewheel*action settings ignored, up-wheel moves back/forward in history

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Russ Fink]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100401 Ubuntu/9.10 (karmic) Firefox/3.5.9
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100401 Ubuntu/9.10 (karmic) Firefox/3.5.9

In FFox 3.5.9, Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, scrolling up on my mouse wheel always moves back/forward through history, despite setting all of mousewheel*action to 0 and mousewheel*sysnumlines to false in about:config.  

I do not get the behavior when connecting a USB mouse directly to the system, and have not encountered this problem on my other platforms.  I am using a Raritan SwitchMan KVM and an IntelliMouse PS/2 compatible mouse when seeing this behavior.  Xev reports 4,4,8,9 for an up-scroll, and a 5,5,8,9 for a downscroll.

I have searched all over for this, adjusted xorg.conf ZAxisMapping (no effect) and cannot resolve it.  

Is there some other keyboard shortcut that perhaps my mouse-up is emulating that moves back/forward in history, that I can't find documented?  If so, I will try to disable that and see if it fixes the problem.  Thanks.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Use a Raritan SwitchMan and PS/2 adaptors on either Dell D610, or Dell GX260 (perhaps more)
2. Open a tab, open a page within the tab, open a child page, another, and so on to build up some tab history
3. Verify that scroll-down works as expected.  Scroll up, and it starts cycling through the tab's history. 
4. NOTE, the up-wheel works fine if there's only one page in the tab's history.  It's only when the tab has shown more than one page that this problem occurs.
5. Go to about:config, search on "mousewheel*action", set all actions labeled "2" to 0 to disable the action.  Search on "mousewheel*numlines", set all to 1.  Search on "mousewheel*sysnumlines" and set all to "false" to ignore the system hints.
6. Close the browser, restart.  Verify persistence of settings in about:config.
7. Repeat steps 1 & 2 above, observe same behavior.
Actual Results:  
The contents of the tab move back/forward in history regardless of about:config.  If I had to guess, some options in about:config are being ignored, or there's a keyboard shortcut that moves the tab back and forward in history and the Raritan is mimicking that somehow. (I tried alt-left, and it never goes forward, only backward, so it's not that.)

Expected Results:  
The up-wheel should honor the "do nothing" settings in about:config

Workaround is to never click on a child link, always right-click and open in a new tab.  Not a solution - it eats up tab-space and memory, but if I know a page is going to have a lot of content, that's what I do.

Comment 1

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Reporter, are you still seeing this issue with Firefox 3.6.13 or later in safe mode? If not, please close. These links can help you in your testing.
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Safe+Mode
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles

You can also try to reproduce in Firefox 4 Beta 8 or later, there are many improvements in the new version, http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Comment 2

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

No reply, INCOMPLETE. Please retest with Firefox 3.6.13 or later and a new profile (http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles). If you continue to see this issue with the newest firefox and a new profile, then please comment on this bug.