That little square thing beneath the keyboard on laptops... the trackpad touchpad pettingpad whatever you want to call it...

When you drag your finger down the edge of it, it scrolls in most applications.

In IE 6 and 7 it works great. In firefox 1.5, the mouse pointer changes to the icon that says it's supposed to be scrolling, but it doesn't scroll. Doesn't move at all. I thought, hey, I'll wait until they fix that bug in firefox 2.0. But now I've got firefox 2.0 and... nothing. Doesn't scroll. Little scrolley icon appears, but no movey.

Anyone got any ideas? I see this question *Asked* on google, but not answered.

I'm not sure what you mean... It seems to be working for me in OSX...?

It works on my panasonic R5 laptop. Maybe there is a mouse driver you can update ?

Aye - worky on Dell D620 and my thinkpad thingy in Firefox

Must be driver related?

Isn't it the "use ms office compatible scroll only" option?

Interesting idea, Schido, but the screen you are showing is from a proprietary Logitech mouse driver control panel, something I don't have on the laptop in question. It's a petting pad, not a mouse, and it's not even logitech.

I will, however, search around and see if this thing has a similar option.

Is it the Microsoft generic driver or is it a proprietary driver?

Not sure, I'll have to check it out when the laptop is back in my hands again next week. It's on its way to Phoenix today with Vix.

Yes, i just googled that image, my current mouse driver doesn't have that option.
I remembered it from some old driver, pretty sure that was a generic microsoft driver, might have been windows 95 though.

More googling with better search terms gives me hints here and here. I'll give these a try when the laptop comes back.

I'm curious to know why this issue even happens. Why are the mouse drivers for the touchpad being coded to scroll only for certain somewhat hardcoded application entries? Why not just have the driver say "I'm a scroll wheel"?

I've had no issues using the two fingered scrolling in Windows on my Macbook in any app, so clearly there is a proper way to do this.

Oh well, guess this is yet another odd mystery to chalk up on the Windows side.

Your Googlefu is weak. Searching for "firefox scroll touchpad" gives several results near the top. A Bugzilla case which explains that its actually the touchpad driver itself. It decides on what keycodes to send based on what the current app is.

Somebody says to update your drivers and another says to change the button mapping.

Finally got my hands on the laptop and tried the things linked from this thread (both by me and others)...

- Update the driver:
Newest generic driver from Synaptics: refuses to install.
Driver from Toshiba's web site: Same driver as what's already installed.
Let Windows search for a newer driver: Cannot find a better driver than what you've already got.

- Change the button mapping: The option they say doesn't exist on my screen. They say that under "buttons" there should be something that says "Scroll", and nothing says that, there's just left button and right button.

- Edit the ini file in the Synaptics folder to add a "Mozilla" section with certain values underneath it:
That section and those exact values are already there.

Just in case... Try editing the Firefox settings using "about:config" in the address bar. There's an option to adjust the amount of scroll for scroll-wheel devices. You should Google for the correct properties to adjust.

Even in Mac OS, Firefox 1.x never scrolled by the same amount as other applications.

Okay, good suggestion, I'll give that a shot the next time I get my hands on the laptop. However, a couple of things make me expect it won't work:

- When I do engage the touchy scrolly petty thingy, the page scrolls zero amount whatsoever. Not like it scrolls "not enough lines", it scrolls not-at-all.

- If I plug in a USB mouse with an ordinary scroll wheel, it works just fine.

My Sony laptop uses an Alps touchpad and driver.

Unfortunately my problem is on a Toshiba laptop with a Synaptics driver.

By the way, let me reiterate that the petting pad *DOES* scroll in other applications, just not in Firefox.

Also, when Firefox is up and I make an attempt to scroll, the little icon appears indicating that it's *trying* to scroll, but nothing happens.

This makes it sound like Bruno's suggestion is the culprit. Except that a mouse with a scrollwheel works fine. Hm. Stumper.