Middle mouse button horizontal scrolling seems not to work
I use the middle (3rd) mouse button to side-scroll, but in the new version it does not seem to work reliably. I've waited, thinking it'll get fixed, but...
Anyone else have this issue?
So basically it works first time to horizontally scroll with the middle button (wheel, 3rd button) depressed, but after one or two uses it usually stops working, especially if I use the wheel for vertical scrolling in between tries. At this point, the little circle still appears for a second when I try to use the middle-button scroll, but only scrolls a few pixels and stops.
Workaround: alt tab out+in, or change tabs, - these work sometimes. If/when they do not (which is often); reloading the page is the only solution.
While it's not a huge issue, it is rather annoying.
All Replies (6)
Hi, I don't have a 3rd mouse button so can't confirm your findings, and pressing the wheel starts auto-scroll. If it works sometimes, perhaps the mouse has an intermittent issue?
You could try holding down the Shift key when you start Firefox to start in Safe Mode. More - Diagnose Firefox issues using Troubleshoot Mode.
If it works in Safe Mode, disable any theme or extensions you have - 3-bar menu > Add-ons > Themes/Extensions and restart Firefox; then if it's OK, re-enable them one by one until you find the culprit. You may need to restart Firefox after enabling some extensions.
Note that you can however, side-scroll by holding down Shift + mouse wheel - even easier if you enable Windows Sticky Keys (Control Panel > Ease of Access).
If your question is resolved by this or another answer, please take a minute to let us know. Thank you!
Modified by Scribe
Thanks for your suggestions!
It's not the mouse, firstly the 'fix' of reloading the tab works all the time, second, the button works in other programs (eg chrome) perfectly well, and it used to work in firefox before the big messed up update, too.
The shift method (similar to the wheel tilt) scrolls at about 10px / rotation and thus perfectly useless. I've tried to increase the tilt scroll, but it seems to just bug out, but I'd expect no less from windows.
The aim is quickly scroll to the right. In some cases it is another screen's width or more (this is in a web based data management system, hence the interesting page layout).
Safe mode: the issue persists.
Now, more testing and it seems that the one thing that triggers this fault is using the mouse wheel - funnily, shift-wheel will also cause the fault. (not in chrome, though!)
Modified by ozimage
Please update to version 60 https://support.mozilla.org/en/kb/update-firefox-latest-version
Note that during the first week only a small percentage of users gets the update offered to make it possible to check for serious issues that weren't detected during the testing. If such issues are detected then updates will be suspended to avoid too many users are affected.
Auto-scrolling (middle-click with the mouse scroll wheel) is working for me in both directions (up/down and left/right) in Firefox 59 and in Firefox 60.
Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions ("3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Add-ons -> Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem.
- switch to the DEFAULT theme: "3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Add-ons -> Appearance
- do NOT click the "Refresh Firefox" button on the Safe Mode start window
I've updated to the latest version, that did not change anything. Going on.
I'm in safe mode, and that does not change a thing either - however, I'm now realising that other factors might be at play here. Not all pages show the issue.
Many thanks for the help so far, I'll keep digging. Could be a specific issue to this system (hopefully!).