709484 - [10.7] Add a config option to disable support for two-finger horizontal swipe

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Widget: Cocoa, defect)

Description

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

This bug is spun off from bug 668953.

The trunk and prerelease branches have for some time had support for OS X 10.7's (Lion's) new two-finger horizontal swipe.  This feature is about to get into a Firefox release (FF 9) for the first time.

But our support for the two-finger horizontal swipe isn't yet complete -- it doesn't yet implement animation, to allow users to track swipes as they happen.  As a result, it's too easy to accidentally swipe from one page to another.

It's not at all clear how serious this problem is.  There's been some discussion of it at bug 668953 and bug 678891 comment #40 and following.  But for the most part it hasn't gotten beyond vague generalizations -- so it's still inconclusive.

To mitigate the possible consequences for FF 9, Christopher Lee suggested adding a config that would make it possible (in about:config) to disable support for the two-finger horizontal swipe.

I'll shortly post a patch that does this.

Comment 1

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

Attachment: Fix

I tested this patch on OS X 10.7.2 and it behaved as expected.

I'm going to email the Mozilla release drivers
([e-mail]) to ask them if they want this patch in
Firefox 9.  If they say "yes", I'll need them to appoint someone to
review and approve my patch.  So for the moment I've leaving the
reviewer unspecified.

Comment 2

[Alex Keybl [:akeybl]]

Comment on attachment 580660 [details] [diff] [review]
Fix

[Triage Comment]
I took a quick look at input to see if this has been a large source of pain for our users. I only see two results. I'd be more in favor of taking this if we were getting significantly more negative feedback in FF9, or if the pref could be used in conjunction with an add-on hotfix after release. Since we only have a small volume of negative feedback from the past couple of months and the hotfix work isn't in FF9, I think we should be OK with what we currently have in the build.

Comment 3

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

I'm happy with this decision.

I don't think the "two-finger accidental swiping" problem is particularly serious.  Especially as we've had (basically) the same problem for years with the three-finger swipe (on OS X 10.5 and 10.6), without (so far as I know) any user complaints whatsoever.

Comment 4

[Alex]

I'm one of the few users who find this very annoying if I just go about my way, scrolling horizontally, and suddenly switch to a different tab. (I set up Firefox to switch tabs on three finger swipe.)
If there's a working patch, how much work would it be to include that into Firefox? Or would it be possible to build an extension based on this patch? I could probably do this myself.

Comment 5

[Paul O'Shannessy [:zpao] (not bugmail, email directly)]

(In reply to Alex from comment #4)
> I'm one of the few users who find this very annoying if I just go about my
> way, scrolling horizontally, and suddenly switch to a different tab. (I set
> up Firefox to switch tabs on three finger swipe.)
> If there's a working patch, how much work would it be to include that into
> Firefox? Or would it be possible to build an extension based on this patch?
> I could probably do this myself.

If you just want to disable horizontal swipe entirely, you can set the browser.gesture.swipe.left and .right preferences to be empty.

Comment 6

[Alex]

That's the problem. I want to keep three finger swipe, but I don't want two finger swipe on the trackpad.
(So on the Magic Mouse I want to change tabs on two finger swipes, but not on one finger swipes.)