Can, or how, certain gestures be disabled?
Hi, I have a bit of an issue with the mobile, android version of Firefox.... I have a disability which makes my fine motor control sometimes a bit dodgy. It's really common for me to try to scroll through a page (using one finger) only to have the page zoom in massively! I guess there's a gesture where if you accidentally drag out from center of the screen it will zoom, and scrolling is achieved by perfectly gesturing straight up and down? It's just very annoying for me since none of my movements are particularly perfect.
Anyway, all that to ask: is there a way to disable certain gestures? The only ones I use are scrolling, if that even counts, and using two fingers to pinch in/out for zoom (far more reliable and controllable).
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i have never encountered this. could it be something specific to your device? can this happen in other zoomable applications, such as a gallery / image viewer? does it occur in web pages that are not normally zoom-able?
regardless, it may help someone to know what device and model you have, and the operating system version.
Ah right, I'm sorry I forgot to include that! I use a budget phone, a Xiaomi Redmi 4x, and my OS is android 7.1.2. My carrier is T-Mobile in the US. It didn't occur to me that this could be something specific to the phone since only the Firefox app does it... Chrome, or another browser, might, but I find it annoying to use. The photo gallery does not (it uses pinch gestures), although that and YouTube is the only apps that override screen rotation being turned off. I can test it all tomorrow to confirm that, though.
Forgot to add: it does zoom on most sites, but not on sites that can't be zoomed in. I just tried it here.
By tomorrow, I meant in a few hours. With quick and rough testing just now, chrome doesn't zoom with random gestures like Firefox does. And I just confirmed in my phone's settings that the magnification accessibility feature is turned off.
Hi Rayna
Thank you for your question. Althought I cannot immediately help with the other gestures, I do have this this article handy that should have with the scrolling of a page:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/slow-down-firefox-android-scroll-speed
I hope that this helps.
I was hoping to find a manual for the device but i have been unsuccessful. It does seem like a weird interaction with ff which is causing the behaviour though, given your description. This may be worthy of something like a bug report or some other way to get attention from actual ff developers / "official" support.
The only other thing i can think of are settings for one-handed use or accessibility. My only current reference is for Android 9, but there is a setting to "reduce sceen size" by swiping up diagonally from a bottom corner. I never know what things are implemented in Android base itself, or by the device vendor. You may have an option like that, although why it would only happen in ff would still be a mystery.
Thank you for the replies, Seburo and CrankyGoat!
Seburo, thanks for the tip on about:config. I don't think scrolling speed will help, but I might be able to find another setting that will :) There's a lot of them!
CrankyGoat, yeah, manuals are getting harder to find lately, I've noticed! Doesn't help that the phone is a cheap international brand. I discovered today while using Chrome that double tapping with one finger then dragging that finger will zoom in/out. Is it possible that FF may be more sensitive to that movement/input, or to double tapping? I wouldn't be surprised about that, since it happens more often if I use the phone (or rather, FF) one-handed, or in any other position where my dexterity suffers, so maybe my fingers jerk a bit and confuse the input. The only thing is, it doesn't happen in any other app that has zoom or double-tap functions, as far as I've experienced. The only thing that might compare is when I use an e-reader app and accidentally select text, but it's *much* more rare for that to happen even though I use e-readers in "poor dexterity positions" much more often (like, in bed). FF is the app that does it the most by a significant margin.
I looked through my phone's settings both manually and by using its search function and can't see anything that would contribute to this. There is a one-handed mode, but that's disabled, and I doubt it's relevant. I definitely turned off any magnification or zoom accessibility. Couldn't see or think of anything else that might explain it - but it's been happening across updates to both FF and my phone's OS (currently "MIUI Global 10.1," although I use Apex Launcher 3.3.3 for UI instead).
I really do appreciate the help, thank you so much :)
Modified by Rayna592
One other thing i just thought of: Maybe ff is interpreting your gesture as a double tap.
You can try to see if this helps: type in the address bar about:config and tap the go button on keyboard. search zoom tap on apz.allow_double_tap_zooming this should highlight and give you a button "toggle" tap Toggle so it says "false" on the left
close ff and restart it. see if your unwanted zoom behavior persists
Ah man, that sounded promising but didn't work. I see a few different ones for zooming and for tapping, so I'm experimenting a little with those, but nothing so far. For all I know, it's not even registering a change. I Quit FF after applying every change, but I just don't see any changes in behavior.
Ah geez. Good luck with the experiments. If i can think of anything else i will certainly post back.