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Disabling drag/selection scrolling

  • 4 replies
  • 0 have this problem
  • 19 views
  • Last reply by Sabin

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I don't want to be able to scroll the page by selecting text. That's what the scroll wheel is for. More often than not this 'feature' just results in frustration as scrolling the page selects more text. Can I just disable this altogether somehow?

I don't want to be able to scroll the page by selecting text. That's what the scroll wheel is for. More often than not this 'feature' just results in frustration as scrolling the page selects more text. Can I just disable this altogether somehow?

All Replies (4)

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Are you selecting with the mouse or with the keyboard?

This feature allows to select more text than is currently visible. You can possibly start selecting at the end and go up if you want to start at the bottom of the screen.

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I'm using my mouse. I appreciate the response but I don't need help understanding how this functionality works. There are literally 3 other methods I can use to scroll the page (drag the scrollbar, use arrow keys, use the scrollwheel) I don't need this feature and I don't need to be convinced to keep it when it evidently gets in the way and is clearly completely redundant.

I do really appreciate your help, but unless you are telling me how to disable the functionality I don't want to receive inbox alerts, thank you very much.

Edit: Ah I guess what you're saying here is that disabling the functionality isn't possible because text can be selected above the viewport and having the browser not scroll the page when text is selected elsewhere is just not valid. I disagree. If you know a way to not move the page when text is selected beyond the viewport ANYWAYS please let me know.

Modified by Sabin

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The only way to prevent scrolling is not to move the mouse down to select the last line, but to extend the selection by going to the end of the line or use the Shift key to select the range. I personally find it easier to start at the bottom in such a case or switch to the keyboard for more control.

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Actually scrolling is possible to trigger even when only selecting text on a single line. Go to an article on wikipedia, scroll down the page until there's text along the top, and highlight any one word along the top of the document. If you have the same bug on your build as I do you should see the page scroll 50+ lines up for no explicable reason.

You're probably inclined to tell me now that this is individual problem with the website itself and not the responsibility of firefox to fix but you'd be missing the point. Many other websites all over the internet have similar issues triggering frustrating behaviour with text selection. As a work a around it would be really nice to just disable page scrolling on drag scrolling altogether seeing as the feature is literally only ever triggered on accident, completely redundant, and evidently problematic.

I understand there's work-arounds like "switching to the keyboard" or installing another browser, but the reason I'm asking this question is because I don't want to use a work around and I just want to know if I can disable this useless problematic functionality.