Different type of 'zoom' ?
This is a tricky one to explain....
Firefox used to zoom the 'content' of webpages...make the icons, pictures and text larger and rearrange things on the page to accomodate the magnified items. For example on the home page the icons for my favouraite pages would 'grow' when I zoomed in and then display less of them on the page when they were too big.
I liked this type of zooming.
However, on a recent reinstallation of firefox 'zooming in' has changed. Now when I zoom it simply magnifies the entire page page, uniformly.
Hope this makes sense to somebody who can help me get back to my original way of zooming.
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Update....I found a workaround. If I press CTRL and the + or - I can get the same type of zoom in and out as I used to get using the touchpad.
Would still be nice to know how to get back the ability to zoom that way using the touchpad though...
In Firefox 83, we got the much-requested "magnification style" pinch zooming. To turn that off if you prefer the old way:
(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.
(2) In the search box in the page, type or paste apz and pause while the list is filtered
(3) Double-click the apz.allow_zooming preference to switch the value from true to false
More info on about:config: Configuration Editor for Firefox.
Does that work on yours?
Hmm...that works but only while I am stil in the same instance of firefox as the one in which I made the change.
As soon as I close firefox and reopen it I am back to square one...despite the change you suggested still being toggled the way you suggested. Thanks anyway.
By the way...given what you have told me about ff83 I have now learned that I should be able to get my prefered type of zooming by pressing CTRL at the same time as pinching. However it is way way too sensitive to be useable. Perhaps they will fix that in time.
Hmm, I don't know why that would be specific to one session. Perhaps it works in concert with another setting.
There is a second preference that is needed for magnification-style pinch zooming on Windows, but I don't know what else it controls, so I don't know whether it is a good idea to switch it to false:
apz.windows.use_direct_manipulation
Since this was false in Firefox 82, it's most likely okay to set it back to false.
Preference source: https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Experimental_features#UI
Modified by jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
Can you tell me what default setting should be for the apz.allow_zooming_out one in ff83 ? I think I toggled that in error.
I don't know, but if there is a leftward arching "reset" arrow at the far right position, you can click that to restore the default value.
Got it thanks