Closed Bug 584503 Opened 15 years ago Closed 11 years ago

Thread pane clicks in vertical scroll bar not working properly

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect)

Product:
Thunderbird
Component:
Folder and Message Lists
Platform:
PowerPC
macOS
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: cursus.publicus, Unassigned)

Details

(Keywords: qawanted)

Attachments

(1 file)

screencast showing bug
1.92 MB, application/zip
Details
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10_5_8; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.8 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.1 Safari/533.17.8 Build Identifier: TB 3.1.1 Thread pane vertical scroll bar not working properly. A single mouse click on the bar moves up/down twice the window height hence missing half the messages. A single click on an arrow moves up/down two lines instead of the normal one line. This does not happen with other TB windows or other applications although earlier versions of Firefox did exhibit this annoying behaviour. I have not been able to correct this with mouse speed adjustments. Reproducible: Always
Neville could you do a quick screencast to show what the issue is please ?
Attached file screencast showing bug —
This is my first attempt at creating a screencast - please say if it is not satisfactory. The file is a zipped Apple QuickTime Movie (.mov.zip). I tried several applications but most had severe problems. Almost all stopped or altered the bug - perhaps because they took a disproportionate portion of CPU time on my 733 MHz G4. Several failed to record the mouse button. With my modest frame rate the green blob (for mouse button) has a slight timing error and at one point fails to follow the curser. I found that the bug reduced in frequency as scroll bar length reduced. As you can see I prefer to maximise my Thread pane and open messages in a separate window - I find this more practical with my large Archive based folders. At some point between one third and one quarter of screen height the bug substantially disappears. I am unsure if the bug is related to a timing issue or if contact bounce is involved. The mouse is an optical Apple Pro and is newer than the G4. As I have said the bug does not occur with other TB windows or other applications.
Neville, can you still reproduce?
Whiteboard: [closeme 2011-12-15]
Version: unspecified → 3.1
My TB 3.1.15 still does this. The following applications appear not to do it: Firefox 3.6.24 TenFourFox-7450 8 Safari 5.0.6
hmm, I see you've reported on PPC. Do you have a Mac where you can run version 8 and reproduce?
I see that little has changed since I wrote: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2134247 The system requirements for later versions of TB don't say they are Intel Mac only although this would appear to be the case - exceptionally poor documentation. I only have Intel Linux servers and 733 MHz G4 desktops running OS X 10.5.8. There is quite a large PPC community likely to be stuck in this position for several years.
As far as I can tell none of the 33 bugs from your search match the issue. In checking these I noticed that some remarked on the number of items in the folder. I normally have a few thousand items so I tested a folder with 200 items but the issue is the same. A single click results in the window scrolling twice. However, I have just discovered that the number of rows is critical. It rarely, if ever, happens with 28 or fewer rows but the probability increases beyond that to almost always happening beyond 36 rows. I normally have almost 50 rows. Could it be a timing issue affecting my slower than average computer?
The reason for my question is there's no chance this will be fixed in 3.1.x if it can't be reproduce on version 8. But thinking on it more, for v3.1 it'll be a moot point. A patch wouldn't be backported unless it were a stability or security issue, or widespread super bad user experience
Whiteboard: [closeme 2011-12-15]
FWIW, I don't see this behaviour on Mac OS 10.4.11 on a 1.8 GHz G5 processor with TB 3.1.17 with single clicks. I do observe similar "double-scroll" results if I click and hold the mouse button down for slightly longer than usual.
There are similarities - but a poor match. Within the number of lines displayed limitations given I get a consistent double scroll - not single or more than two. The following notes may assist: 1 - I don't recall getting this with other applications except Firefox and derivatives. 2 - I do not get it with Safari. 3 - I do not have non-standard mouse software. 4 - I have not been able to alter the situation by playing with mouse settings. 5 - I don't use tabs or message panes - everything opens in separate windows. 6 - I have a frustrating, and probably unrelated, Firefox mouse click problem - I frequently have to click on history items twice to get any reaction - is this only when there is not a Firefox window open? - only happens with Firefox and derivatives - not unrelated browsers. To me this appears to be a window opening issue rather than a mouse click timing issue. I accept that the world has moved on. I can live with Firefox limitations as there are many alternative browsers but I expect to be stuck with Thunderbird on my existing hardware for many years and would appreciate any assistance with my scrolling issue. I am happy to experiment with hacks. My limited level of hacking experience can be seen here: http://links.zero.eu.org/thunderbird/
FWIW, again, I'm having some troubles with my install which is throwing a large number of errors on the Javascript console and I just saw this behaviour. I have no idea how to reproduce it.
In comment 38 I said: "I have just discovered that the number of rows is critical. It rarely, if ever, happens with 28 or fewer rows but the probability increases beyond that to almost always happening beyond 36 rows." I have had another play and can expand on the above: 1 - to see my behaviour it is necessary to view a folder with at least twice as many items as rows displayed - I advise at least 100 items for 40 rows displayed. 2 - System Preferences/Personal/Appearance/Click in the scroll bar to: needs to be set to 'Jump to the next page'. This is stored in an invisible file at: ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist 3 - As expected my behaviour does not exist if 'Click in the scroll bar to' is set to 'Jump to here'. 4 - With it set to 'Jump to the next page' the impact of the bug can be reduced by clicking immediately below (or above) the slider. It appears that as long as the click is within the equivalent of a page (perhaps 2) then the problem is removed - it consistently pages as desired ie a viable workaround. Does the discovery of this workaround give any clues to the source of the bug?
I see this bug every startup now, even in safe mode, for every vertical scroll bar (Folder Pane, Thread/) in my main - but apparently very corrupt - profile. I see that it also happens in an ancilliary IMAP-based profile, but only every 7-10 clicks in the vertical scroll bar. Most tellingly, though, I also see it in a fresh profile into which I am loading all of my POP folders. I have no idea whether there are specific steps to reproduce, it's something which just seems to be part of my install now - but I think that's enough to confirm this bug.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
Sorry about earlier typo: for comment 38 read comment 8 I get this on all G3 and G4 installs. I no longer have access to my original Ubuntu but I will try and remember to test it on another Ubuntu later. Those who 'Jump to here' or have fewer than 40 rows will probably be unaware of the bug. I only use Pop so am unable to comment upon IMAP.
Finding the workaround encouraged me to play further. I wondered why Firefox appeared to have the bug intermittently. A clue from a web search resulted in my experimenting with Firefox 3.6.25 Preferences/Advanced/General/Browsing settings. A recent upgrade had asserted 'Use autoscrolling' - removing this corrected the bug - strange that it remained OK after reasserting it! 'Smooth scrolling' is consistently bad. However, whilst Firefox 3.6.25 is now OK for normal html pages it still exhibits the bug when scrolling about:config. Would it be reasonable to concluded that this an XUL issue affecting both Firefox and Thunderbird? I have tried looking at toolkit.jar and greprefs but not found anything useful so far. Any thoughts?
I've used Thunderbird (on Linux) for years and have not seen this bug as far as I remember. Can anyone reproduce this problem in a recent version of Thunderbird?
Keywords: qawanted
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 11 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
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