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Scrolling Horizontally with Firefox

posted at 9:52 am
on Aug. 30, 2005

Comments: 6 so far

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As far as I know, this is the world’s only horizontal scrolling blog.  Because of that, you may be saying to yourself, “Hey, Trav, what’s up with the horizontal scrolling blog?”

Well, I could give you a long, artist’s tortured explanation of why horizontal scrolling makes sense for me—I think in long lines, I think in different directions, this is a metaphor for life—but really, that doesn’t matter so much as this important fact: it’s quite easy for you to scroll horizontally if you have a scroll wheel on your mouse.

Just hold down the SHIFT button and use the scroll wheel.  You’ll zip left and right with the easy of a sparrow through a barn.

That is, unless you’re using Firefox.  Firefox creators decided, in their infinite wisdom, to make left and right scrolling jump you ahead and back in your browser history.  This was a dumb decision, made even more dumb when the Mighty Mouse from Apple came out.  You see, using any trackball, you end up probably doing a little bit of left and right scrolling when you’re trying to scroll up and down.  Trackball and Mighty Mouse users therefore go whizzing around cyberspace everytime they try to scroll a Web page.

To fix this, follow these steps, which I discovered on this site:
1. go to “about:config” (i.e. type it in FireFox’ address field)

2. set mousewheel.horizscroll. withnokey.action to 0

3. set mousewheel.withnokey. sysnumlines to false

4. play around with the mousewheel.horizscroll. withnokey.numlines and mousewheel.withnokey. numlines values until you’re satisfied with the scrolling speed



 
 

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Comments

 

 

WHOA, WHOA, WHOA!

If you are using Firefox, all you need to do is:

1. Click and HOLD your wheel.

2. Safely move side to side.

This whole SHIFT key thing is like sooooo Windows ME.

 

Posted by Shane Birley  at  1:26 pm on Aug. 30, 2005

 

 

 

And when scrolling side to side, (depending on how far to the left or to the right you move the mouse) the faster or slower the scrolling goes.

Sheesh.

Changing settings is like so lame.

 

Posted by Shane Birley  at  1:28 pm on Aug. 30, 2005

 

 

 

Um, I'm not using firefox, and the SHIFT thing still scrolls me forward and back in the browser, at work and at home. As pretty as your design is (and it is!) it's a pain in the arse!

 

Posted by hermitdeb  at  6:07 am on Aug. 31, 2005

 

 

 

In IE, Shift + the scrollwheel accesses your browser's history. It's the hold-the-scrollwheen-down things that scrolls side to side.

 

Posted by Jason Priestly  at  8:45 am on Oct. 11, 2005

 

 

 

Welcome to the club. I have been doing it for over two years now. You dress yours better, though.

 

Posted by Chris Collins  at  1:42 pm on Oct. 23, 2005

 

 

 

...and even though no-one is interested I would like to add that as of now (FireFox 1.5.0.6, and probably earlier) horizontal scrolling works just fine in MacOSX with a "Mighty Mouse".

 

Posted by Johan Forsberg  at  10:19 am on Aug. 18, 2006

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You can scroll right easily by holding down the SHIFT key and using your scroll wheel. (Firefox users trying this will end up jumping to old Web pages until a) Firefox releases a fix, b) they change their settings like so.)