616771 - Having option to horizontal scroll by shift+mousescroll.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 143038

(Firefox :: General, enhancement, P3)

Description

[kchoix]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-CA; rv:1.9.2.12) Gecko/20101027 Ubuntu/10.10 (maverick) Firefox/3.6.12
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-CA; rv:1.9.2.12) Gecko/20101027 Ubuntu/10.10 (maverick) Firefox/3.6.12

mousewheel.horizscroll might not describe the function 'horizontal scroll' but the actual device meant for horizontal scrolling - like those found on some laptop touchpads and mice. This means firefox doesn't have an option to scroll horizontally via shift+mousescroll - or rather it doesn't have the option to link "mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action" with "mousewheel.withshiftkey.action" since action values are limited to:

           * 0 - Scroll document by a number of lines (given by the numlines property)
           * 1 - Scroll document by one page
           * 2 - Move back/forward in history
           * 3 - Make text larger/smaller
           * 4 - Scroll document by a number of pixels (given by the numlines property) 
http://kb.mozillazine.org/About:config_entries#Mousewheel. 

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[kchoix]

Current Firefox Mainline 6.0.2 reserves shift+mousescroll as "webpage back/forward".
It would be nice if user could add an option to switch this to horizontal scrolling just like
google Chrome. 

Or, if this is undesirable, then at least allow user to assign hotkey to access horizontal scrolling.

Comment 2

[cousteau]

Right now (Firefox 17 and newer), the options seem to be: [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Gecko:Mouse_Wheel_Scrolling]
* 0: do nothing
* 1: scroll contents
* 2: go backwards/forwards in history
* 3: zoom in/out

I propose adding an option 4: scroll contents in the other axis (modkey+vert = horiz; modkey+horiz = vert).  Most mice and some touchpads don't have an option to scroll horizontally.  Personally I'd set this behavior to the Shift key (most common behavior on most applications) and leave the Alt key for the history thing, but I guess that's up to each one's preferences.

Comment 3

[Sven Marnach (old non-work account)]

This seems to be a duplicate of bug 143038.

Comment 4

[u636583]

mousewheel.with_shift.action is already 4 by default (as per bug 143038 ) in Firefox 67.0(at least) and shift+mousewheel does horizontal scrolling.

Comment 5

[cousteau]

(In reply to howaboutsynergy from comment #4)

mousewheel.with_shift.action is already 4 by default (as per bug 143038 ) in Firefox 67.0(at least) and shift+mousewheel does horizontal scrolling.

Indeed; it seems this was fixed in Firefox 58. Good! I guess this bug can be closed as well.

Comment 6

[MarjaE]

This may help some users, but this shouldn't be the only solution because it will be inaccessible for other users.

1. It seems to rely on scrollwheels. I've got bad tendon issues from using scrollwheels in 2010-2011. Not everyone can use these, and some may get injuries from systems always encouraging them to use these.

2. It seems to rely on the combination of the shift key with the scrollwheel. Not every keyboard has such a wheel, and not every mouse has the shift key. Sticky Keys doesn't always work with 2 devices, so this won't be an accessible combination for 1-handed users, or 2-handed ones with coordination issues.

Comment 7

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

(In reply to MarjaE from comment #6)

This may help some users, but this shouldn't be the only solution because it will be inaccessible for other users.

Please file/find a separate bug since this bug was specifically about using a keyboard modifier with a scroll wheel.