Arch Linux

android

Member

From: San Diego

Registered: 2003-04-18

Posts: 160

SOLVED: click in scrollbar paging behaviour

Hello,

I recently upgraded my system and experienced a change in scrollbar behaviour across a number of apps.

Thunderbird and the other mozilla apps (I use seamonkey as a browser) were effected by this change, as well as xchat and libreoffice. However the vlc media player has not changed behaviour.

Previously, if I clicked in the scrollbar area, outside the sliding bar itself, I would page up or down within the messages of the folder, one page of messages per click.

Now, clicking within the scrollbar jumps directly to a position within the folder proportional to the position clicked in the scrollbar.

I'm hoping there is some config editor setting I can tweek to revert this user interface change.

At first I thought this was a thunderbird specific issue, but now I realize the issue is across a number of apps. Additionally, other people I've asked about this say the behaviour hasn't changed for them (one person on ubuntu, and a windows user) even thought they are running the current thunderbird.

Thunderbird email changed from 31.7.0 to 38.7.1 on x86_64 linux. The timeframe of this upgrade is from around May 2015 to now, April 2016.

Using the pageup/pagedown keys is not exactly the same, as these keys cause the selected message to change to a message within the newly visible page of the messages. I often used this "click in the scrollbar" to page through folders without selecting a new message. (such as in the Junk folder).

Thank you for any suggested workaround...

johnea

Last edited by android (2016-04-18 00:30:55)

drcouzelis

Member

From: Connecticut, USA

Registered: 2009-11-09

Posts: 4,092

Website

Re: SOLVED: click in scrollbar paging behaviour

http://askubuntu.com/questions/295988/h … r-behavior

...also, you haven't updated Arch Linux in a whole YEAR??

android

Member

From: San Diego

Registered: 2003-04-18

Posts: 160

Re: SOLVED: click in scrollbar paging behaviour

Thank you drcouzelis!

Your link led to some interesting reading.

Once looking for gtk-3.0 settings issues, I realized there is also an arch wiki entry:

GTK Legacy Scrolling Behaviour

But the fix there:

~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini

[Settings]
gtk-primary-button-warps-slider = false

Didn't work for me 8-(

However I also learned, embarrassingly enough by reading, that you can also click the right mouse button to get the old page-length scrolling. The left button now implements the new scroll button warping.

Rhetorically, Why would the gnome project implement the new scrollbar warping feature on the only button users were already using in the scollbar? If they had just used the (previously unused) right button for the new feature, it could have been discovered as a "Wow!" instead of a "WTF?!".

This is a good example of why I don't update very often. I've been running arch as my daily desktop workstation since 0.4 dragon. My desktop and workflow are pretty well established.

There's really not much upstream could do to improve my workflow productivity, but there are about a million things they could do to disrupt it.

Seriously, updates are much more likely to screw up users than help them, and as such should be avoided like the plague.

There, I've said it 8-) I know a lot of people don't agree, but that's been my experience, now in my 14th year running archlinux.

The arch community deserves a huge THANK YOU for being the beta testers to the internet, and the cutting edge can be fun, but it will also inconvenience you, sometimes really really badly at the worst possible time.

This one isn't so bad, I just have to click with a different finger than I've been using for the last 20 years, in some apps and not others. Really what are they thinking over at conanical?

Thank you very much again for your help drcouzelis!