(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Hello all.

After some searching -- it's not that obvious -- I found that the way to get
Seamonkey's, U-Light's and Firefox' scrollbar to scroll down the html page
page by page is to add the following to file < settings.ini > in directory
~/.config/.config/gtk-3.0: The previous "warp" behavior was driving me nuts. This warp behavior is
when the page scrolls down to the same proportion of the page as your
cursor is on the scrollbar. E.g., you put your cursor ¾ down the scrollbar
and click, and the page goes down to the last quarter of the page. If you
want to read what's in between, you have to scroll back up. Of course,
the scrollbar provoked the same "warp" behavior on the page going
backwards.

With the modified GTK-3.0 setting, if you put your cursor ¾ down the
page and click, the html page will get there, but step by step, so you can
read the text between the top of the page and the last quarter of the
page. It doesn't just "jump" there. Of course, now it does the same
progressive step-by-step motion when you click up the scrollbar, too.
(Phew.)

Source :
https://askubuntu.com/questions/774200/ ... in-firefox

IHTH.

That sounds like it is nothing to do with the browsers, just gtk itself, so it would affect every gtk3 app.
What does the middle mouse button do? That behaviour is very useful, but traditionally it is achieved with the middle mouse button.
I guess they're pandering to Windows, since the middle button STILL isn't very useful there.

Oh, and why would you choose to use a gtk3 browser? Are gtk2 builds getting hard to find?
I primarily use Arch now, and have been building gtk2 seamonkey myself, mainly because the gtk3 builds were so buggy (I haven't tried them for a few months).

disciple wrote:What does the middle mouse button do? That behaviour is very useful, but traditionally it is achieved with the middle mouse button.

Or, Google has just told me by shift-click, which is very useful when there is no middle button.
It turns out there is other high-tech stuff now, but nothing that makes me want to use gtk3 apps.
https://blog.gtk.org/2017/10/11/a-scrolling-primer/

disciple wrote:

disciple wrote: It turns out there is other high-tech stuff now, but nothing that makes me want to use gtk3 apps.
https://blog.gtk.org/2017/10/11/a-scrolling-primer/

Sigh with you on that gtk2 was so much better.

Hello disciple.

The bug occurred in two browsers of the Mozilla family, U-Light and
Seamonkey-2 48. Both are advertised as GTK2 apps. Why would they pick
up an absence of setting in a GTK3 config file?

The programmer was lousy, or exactly at the moment he was writing that
line, his girl friend distracted him, or his reviser introduced the bug, or there
were code mites on the initial storage disk? Who cares. Anybody can
conjecture on any aspect of this until the cows come home.

The important thing for me is that I found a cure. I could have kept it for
myself, but I'm relaying it. One needs it, one uses it; it's that simple.

Best regards.

Ya, that scrollbar behavior drove me nuts when it first appeared (about a year ago...?) - but after awhile, I've gotten used to it, and now actually prefer it. It's a great way to instantly hone in on a specific area of a loong web page, and the scrollbar is right there under the cursor to "fine tune" from there. Different horses...

Good find, though - I'd surely have used it then, if I had known...

Bob

musher0 wrote:Hello disciple.

The bug occurred in two browsers of the Mozilla family, U-Light and
Seamonkey-2 48. Both are advertised as GTK2 apps. Why would they pick
up an absence of setting in a GTK3 config file?

That's actually a little hard to believe. Where did you install them from and is that the same place that they were described as gtk2?

In any case, I'm glad it is working nicely for you, and if anyone finds it doesn't work for them because they have gtk2 apps, I believe the same option exists in the gtk2 config (but with false as default), but it is also overridden by popular gtk2 themes or engines, so look into that.

p.s. - As an alternate solution with similar behavior, I find Firefox scrolls progressively (albeit rapidly) to the current cursor-over-trough position by right-clicking instead of left. Best of both worlds...?

Otherwise, enabling Autoscrolling (in preferences) and clicking the scrollwheel button (popping up that little up/down arrow circle thingie) is great for controlling the page's scroll speed. Right down to a hands-free trickle of a long read.

Bob

disciple wrote:

musher0 wrote:Hello disciple.

The bug occurred in two browsers of the Mozilla family, U-Light and
Seamonkey-2 48. Both are advertised as GTK2 apps. Why would they pick
up an absence of setting in a GTK3 config file?

That's actually a little hard to believe. Where did you install them from and is that the same place that they were described as gtk2?

In any case, I'm glad it is working nicely for you, and if anyone finds it doesn't work for them because they have gtk2 apps, I believe the same option exists in the gtk2 config (but with false as default), but it is also overridden by popular gtk2 themes or engines, so look into that.

We have enough things to tweak in Puppy already, I am not looking into
anything else, thank you. If the programmers at Mozilla or elsewhere did
not anticipate this bug, I am not going to do their job for them.

And please, please, please, do not believe me. (The nerve you have...)

All I'm saying is that (at least) seamonkey can be built with either gtk2 or gtk3, and depending on themes and whatnot you could possibly run a gtk3 version without realising it.

If the programmers at Mozilla or elsewhere did not anticipate this bug, I am not going to do their job for them.

That's how open source works though. Especially for a big project like seamonkey, which is developed by volunteers (i.e.it isn't actually their job).
When I next have a box with seamonkey running I'll try removing the gtk3 config to see if I have the same problem.

disciple wrote:What does the middle mouse button do?

I am at work, and don't have a mozilla based browser handy to check on, but it did nothing in the gtk3 apps I could quickly check in my WSL instance.
When I posted years ago about this I seemed to be saying that the setting also fixed middle-click in scrollbar, and I found another reference that seems to confirm it. So either the behaviour has changed subsequently, or it depends on code in the application (since at least firefox also has a config option that affects it). IMHO that functionality is far more useful than the high-tech features they've added, so I'd call that another epic useability fail in GTK3.

this is probably my largest pet peeve with gtk3, its nice to know theres a setting to make it reasonable again.

musher0,
Thank you so much for finding that fix!

I am creating an EasyOS build with Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver DEBs, and geany text editor exhibited that scrolling behaviour.

I am appalled that they have made that the default behaviour!

Bionic Beaver is driving me nuts in another way (as well as the scrolling)...

The geany DEB uses gtk3, so I recompiled it, choosing to link against gtk2.

Oh, the resultant geany executable is still linked against gtk3, libgtk-3.so.0 and libgdk-3.so.0. Haven't been able to discover why.

As sucky as the entire gtk3 debacle is, it does seem to me that Puppy will eventually just have to adopt it, and live with the consequences in order to remain relevant... as the large majority of Linux forces-that-be continue to migrate in that direction. I'm just afraid we'll be left behind..!?

I guess the big question then becomes when, and how...

Is it even really feasible? Possibly - but with a HUGE amount of work, I'm guessing...?

Bob

I think the question is whether if you wait long enough everyone will be using QT and GTK3 will be irrelevant.

If anyone else is patching their GTK3 builds, you might like to check out this patch, which fixes another of the most annoying GTK3 changes (IMO, anyway):
https://askubuntu.com/questions/471201/ ... 14-04-gtk3

I can't imagine how they could possibly think gtk-auto-mnemonics is worth keeping, but not gtk-enable-mnemonics!