Chrome/Chromium/Firefox doesn't auto scroll when selecting content downwards

[Marcos]

When trying to select a long text, that goes downwards in the screen, it won't auto scroll.
Seen's the same thing as https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/744580 but I don't think it is a problem in the browsers, since it affect all of them. My guess is that it's a Gnome bug that won't allow the mouse going out of the text area. I don't know if it's relative, but in programs that have a bar in the bottom, it start scrolling right after the pointer touch it. So my guess is that Gnome isn't allowing the pointer to go a bit deeper out of screen's edge, which is common in Windows for example. Maybe because of the pressure thing that brings the messages bar up. I didn't had this problem with Unity for example. If the screen is unmaximized, then it works normally.

firefox:
  Installed: 39.0+build5-0ubuntu0.15.04.1
  Candidate: 39.0+build5-0ubuntu0.15.04.1

Release:
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 15.04
Release: 15.04
Codename: vivid

uname -r:
3.19.0-25-generic

[Deahauhem (deahauhem)]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.0.0) Gecko/20020530
BuildID: 2002053012

On full screen mode, it is not possible to scroll down by selecting text with
the mouse.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Enter full-screen mode (F11 or menu)
2. Visit any page with more than a screenful of text
3. Drag mouse over the text until the bottom of the screen.

Actual Results: Page does not scroll.

Expected Results: Page should scroll.

[Moizd (moizd)]

Reproduced on win2k sp2, build 2002071308. Followed steps as described in the
bug report. used this bug description page itself for the test.

[Rainerbielefeldng (rainerbielefeldng)]

Confirm problem with
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.1a+) Gecko/20020707

[Vhaarr+bmo (vhaarr+bmo)]

CONFIRMED on WinXP trunk build 2002071108.

This is probably because the scroll event is fired when the mouse is pressed,
and enters the status-bar area.. I don't know if thats what happens, but I
assume so (the status bar is not there in full-screen mode).

[Jmd (jmd)]

Linux as well. I can scroll up, but not down.

[Mozilla-bugzilla-o (mozilla-bugzilla-o)]

*** Bug 168120 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Alfonso (amla70)]

*** Bug 202165 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Alfonso (amla70)]

Re: Comment 3
I would say that the event fires when the mouse exits the document area:
if you go to a page with an horizontal scroll bar, then the mouse works to
scroll down while selecting, but if there's no horizontal bar and the bottom of
the document is also the bottom of the scroll then the mouse can't go any further.

Adjusting Summary to reflect that the problem is only when going down.

[Steffen Wilberg (steffen-wilberg)]

*** Bug 248408 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Bugzillamozillaorg-serge-20140323 (bugzillamozillaorg-serge-20140323)]

Filter "spam" on "guifeatures-nobody-20080610".

[Josh Triplett (joshtriplett)]

(I've reassigned this to Core, because it applies to Firefox as well, not just Seamonkey.)

This bug has become significantly more prominent now, because Firefox no longer has a status bar; thus, this applies not just in fullscreen mode, but in any environment where Firefox goes all the way to the bottom of the screen, mouse-based selection does not scroll when the mouse reaches the bottom edge. Environments where this can occur include full-screen mode, many Linux desktop environments (notably the default configuration of GNOME 3, though it also occurs with GNOME 2 if you remove the bottom panel, and with many other environments that don't have anything below the Firefox window), possibly OS X as well, and possibly Windows if you move the taskbar to the top or side of the screen.

As far as I can tell, selecting with the mouse will only scroll in a direction if the mouse moves outside the content area in that direction, not just if it moves to the edge of the content area in that direction. So, if Firefox's content area extends to the bottom edge of the screen, you can't trigger scrolling by moving the mouse to that edge while selecting. In the common case where a maximized Firefox has nothing to the left of its content area, you can also observe this bug by going to a page which scrolls horizontally, scrolling to the right, then selecting some text and moving the mouse to the left edge while selecting; notice that Firefox doesn't scroll to the left. In both cases, you can cause scrolling to occur by having a scrollbar to hover over (right or bottom), having a status bar to hover over, or un-maximizing the Firefox window.

Suggested fix: in addition to scrolling when *outside* the content area in a direction, scroll when the mouse reaches the last pixel *inside* the content area, so that it works to press against the edge.

[Nicolas-barbulesco (nicolas-barbulesco)]

Firefox (29) on Mac OS X also has this problem.

When the window goes all the way down to the bottom of the screen, scrolling down with selecting with the mouse does not work, but scrolling up works.

[Goozak (goozak)]

Not sure how to do it properly, but bug #644621 seems a duplicate of this one...

[Nicolas-barbulesco (nicolas-barbulesco)]

(In reply to Bruno G. from comment #12)

> Not sure how to do it properly, but bug #644621 seems a duplicate of this
> one...

This bug 157456 has a wider scope. The occurrences of the bug are not limited to full screen.

[Bruce Pieterse (octoquad)]

Also present in Firefox Dev Edition 41.0a2 (2015-07-29).

Clumsy workaround is to use the mouse scroll wheel while dragging the cursor down the page.

[Jstutte-4 (jstutte-4)]

Bulk-downgrade of unassigned, >=3 years untouched DOM/Storage bug's priority.

If you have reason to believe this is wrong, please write a comment and ni :jstutte.