No horizontal scrollbar in Firefox

Discussion about official Mozilla Firefox builds
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ltsnow
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No horizontal scrollbar in Firefox

Post by ltsnow »

There is no horizontal scrollbar on this page with Gran Paradiso, Minefield, or Firefox 3.0.3 for that matter:

http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/


IE7 works fine.
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malliz
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Re: No horizontal scrollbar in Firefox

Post by malliz »

Works For Me with last nights Minefield and a custom theme.

Edit also WFM with 3.0.3 with a custom theme and using the Default theme
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Canyonero
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Re: No horizontal scrollbar in Firefox

Post by Canyonero »

The site disables overflow-x explicitly, so it doesn't show.
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ltsnow
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Re: No horizontal scrollbar in Firefox

Post by ltsnow »

Canyonero wrote:The site disables overflow-x explicitly, so it doesn't show.


I knew something was wrong because I just tried it with a totally clean version of Firefox 3.0.3 and got the same result. How could it work for malliz? Of course, I could see the whole site if I changed the screen resolution to 1024x768 (I use 800x600). Why does this not affect IE7?
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malliz
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Re: No horizontal scrollbar in Firefox

Post by malliz »

ltsnow wrote: How could it work for malliz? Of course, I could see the whole site if I changed the screen resolution to 1024x768 (I use 800x600). Why does this not affect IE7?

And both the PC's I tested on use 1024x768
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vsim
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Re: No horizontal scrollbar in Firefox

Post by vsim »

Canyonero wrote:The site disables overflow-x explicitly, so it doesn't show.

Is this how it' s supposed to be ? Why would this be ?

There's another related issue that I find annoying at times. Sometimes, on not-too-well-designed pages, there's a frame that has a horizontal scroll bar, but the page/frame is also very long (vertically). So I'm at the top and I want to see what's on the right of the page, but in order to do this I have to go to the bottom of the frame where the horiz. scroll bar is. And sometimes it's not even very easy to find that scroll bar.

Obviously, what would be needed is that FF always displays a horiz. scroll bar when the contents of the page is wider than the window, regardless of what the page said. I can't imagine any good reason why it wouldn't do so.

added: This might belong to the features page.
mattcoz
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Re: No horizontal scrollbar in Firefox

Post by mattcoz »

Canyonero wrote:The site disables overflow-x explicitly, so it doesn't show.

Actually, this is what it does:

Code: Select all

overflow: -moz-scrollbars-vertical;

So it's specifically showing the vertical scrollbar and only the vertical scrollbar in Firefox. Why? Who knows?

So there is no problem here, both Firefox and IE7 are displaying the site exactly as the site is written.
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Stifu
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Re: No horizontal scrollbar in Firefox

Post by Stifu »

vsim wrote:Obviously, what would be needed is that FF always displays a horiz. scroll bar when the contents of the page is wider than the window, regardless of what the page said. I can't imagine any good reason why it wouldn't do so.

A good reason not to do so: it'd most likely break sites that currently work (for example, a site that'd use an alternate way to scroll the page, using JS or whatever). In the end, it'd penalize developers who know what they're doing, for the benefit of those that don't (not to mention compatibility issues with other browsers)... The best way to "fix" these issues would be to contact the webmasters of these badly-designed sites. Anything else would be a hack the behavior of which wouldn't be intuitive, and which could cause problems in current sites and hinder future web developments.
vsim
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Re: No horizontal scrollbar in Firefox

Post by vsim »

Stifu wrote:
vsim wrote:Obviously, what would be needed is that FF always displays a horiz. scroll bar when the contents of the page is wider than the window, regardless of what the page said. I can't imagine any good reason why it wouldn't do so.

A good reason not to do so: it'd most likely break sites that currently work (for example, a site that'd use an alternate way to scroll the page, using JS or whatever).

My guess is it could be done so that current sites continue to work. Of course I can't be sure. However, compatibility issues aside, it would be a feature worth having IMO.
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Stifu
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Re: No horizontal scrollbar in Firefox

Post by Stifu »

vsim wrote:My guess is it could be done so that current sites continue to work. Of course I can't be sure. However, compatibility issues aside, it would be a feature worth having IMO.

I don't think so... Web sites can be complex, and all can use this property in many different ways. Besides, it's always better to keep things simple, as opposed to add a bunch of unneeded hacks in Firefox, applying a certain rule only in certain cases (which would make the code less clear and more bug-prone)...
Following your idea would clearly go against what Mozilla has been trying to do since the beginning: promoting standards and making life good for good developers, and promoting "evangelism" to webmasters of badly-designed sites (ie: explaining to them why and how they should fix their site).
schapel
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Re: No horizontal scrollbar in Firefox

Post by schapel »

There's simply no way Firefox can read the minds of web developers to figure out what they meant. If there's something wrong with a web site that causes it to display incorrectly in Firefox, the web site should be fixed. Complain to the site.
mattcoz
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Re: No horizontal scrollbar in Firefox

Post by mattcoz »

vsim wrote:
Canyonero wrote:The site disables overflow-x explicitly, so it doesn't show.

Obviously, what would be needed is that FF always displays a horiz. scroll bar when the contents of the page is wider than the window, regardless of what the page said. I can't imagine any good reason why it wouldn't do so.

Good reason: BECAUSE THE PAGE SAID SO.

Standards should not be broken just because you think you know better. There are plenty of good reasons why a developer would want to disable scrolling, and they have to explicitly do so for it to happen.
vsim
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Re: No horizontal scrollbar in Firefox

Post by vsim »

mattcoz wrote:There are plenty of good reasons why a developer would want to disable scrolling, and they have to explicitly do so for it to happen.

Such as ?

Anyway, at the very least it could be done as a user option. Maybe sometimes disabling scrolling is legitimate, but there are also plenty of cases when it's not. Fixing the page is not always an option, and even when it is it's annoying enough.

added: In the case of long frames that do have scroll bars, which I was talking about before, another option might be to display their scroll bars at the bottom of their visible area, instead of at the bottom of the frame (which is not visible). Maybe this would be less disruptive.
Canyonero
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Re: No horizontal scrollbar in Firefox

Post by Canyonero »

Its just part of the general tug and pull between giving web developers freedom and giving users control. You still have control in the end, and you could write a user stylesheet or something to reenable the scrollbar, or make the site look completely different, or even to make it act completely different.

Unfortunately, userchrome and usercontent are still pretty advanced for average users to deal with, and I´d rather see that UI refined/exposed better than another pref for this one small situation. But that´s just my take.
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Stifu
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Re: No horizontal scrollbar in Firefox

Post by Stifu »

As Canyonero said, I guess your only bet would be messing with UserContent.css...
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