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Altering the default functionality of Shift+Mousewheel to scroll horizontally.

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  • 50 have this problem
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  • Last reply by robroy019

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The default functionality of pressing Shift and using the mouse scroll wheel will go forwards or backwards through my history. I would like to change that functionality to be able to allow pressing Shift + Mousewheel to horizontally scroll on websites that have a horizontal scroll bar. I have attempted just about every combination of values in the about:config file for these values:

mousewheel.horizscroll.withshiftkey.action mousewheel.horizscroll.withshiftkey.numlines mousewheel.horizscroll.withshiftkey.sysnumlines mousewheel.withshiftkey.action mousewheel.withshiftkey.numlines mousewheel.withshiftkey.sysnumlines

In every combination, I am unable to get the mouse scroll wheel to horizontally scroll on websites. Some settings will disable forward and backward history navigation, but none will horizontally scroll.

Is this functionality possible using Firefox? If so, are there other values that are somehow overriding what I'm entering for the attributes above?

The default functionality of pressing Shift and using the mouse scroll wheel will go forwards or backwards through my history. I would like to change that functionality to be able to allow pressing Shift + Mousewheel to horizontally scroll on websites that have a horizontal scroll bar. I have attempted just about every combination of values in the about:config file for these values: mousewheel.horizscroll.withshiftkey.action mousewheel.horizscroll.withshiftkey.numlines mousewheel.horizscroll.withshiftkey.sysnumlines mousewheel.withshiftkey.action mousewheel.withshiftkey.numlines mousewheel.withshiftkey.sysnumlines In every combination, I am unable to get the mouse scroll wheel to horizontally scroll on websites. Some settings will disable forward and backward history navigation, but none will horizontally scroll. Is this functionality possible using Firefox? If so, are there other values that are somehow overriding what I'm entering for the attributes above?

All Replies (5)

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For an example of how this should work, see Google Chrome with a page that scrolls horizontally. Many other applications (not just browsers) map shift+scroll to horizontal scrolling. Very useful feature.

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I just realized something... mousewheel.horizscroll might not describe the function 'horizontal scroll' but the actual device meant for horizontal scrolling - like those found on laptop touchpads. This means firefox doesn't have an option to scroll horizontally - or rather it doesn't have the option to link "mousewheel.withshiftkey.action" to "mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action" since action values are:

           * 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.

Modified by choikwa

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Same page scrolls horizontally in Google Chrome but not in Mozilla Firefox 5.0 no matter what combination of the above settings. I'm using a Microsoft Comfort 6000 Mouse with IntelliPoint from Microsoft. Could that be an issue?

Note: the mouse has no hardware support for horizontal scrolling and the driver does not have any options either in this regard for this mouse. So I have to rely on Shift + Mousewheel for horizontal scrolling. Sadly with Firefox 5.0 this is not working.

Modified by olteanra

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I have just found out that even if you have a real horizontal wheel on your mouse that Firefox ignores the direction. I zoomed in to read this thread more clearly which generated a horizontal scroll bars Then when I tried to use my A4Tech wheelmouse to try to scroll horizontally, the screen scrolled vertically instead.