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Monday 19 June, 2006

Scrolling in Firefox with Synaptics Touchpad

Filed under: Technology — Steven A. Stehling @ 13:11

One of the few drawbacks I discovered with using Firefox was a problem with my touchpad mouse on my laptop computer. When browsing websites, it’s fundamentally important that users are able to scroll up and down the screen. Sure you don’t need to use the mouse to scroll, but it’s often the most convenient method. However, Firefox absolutely refused to properly recognize the scroll action on the touchpad. My solution was to simply plug in an optical mouse, which I actually prefer, but when I’m out and about sometimes I don’t have the space or surface to use that mouse. That led to lot of animosity towards Firefox and I have no doubt many users have encountered this problem and as a result have chosen not to use Firefox.

There is a solution however. I searched many times and always came up empty handed, until now. First of all, this solution is designed for Synaptics Touchpads. If you have a different device, this exact solution won’t work, but similar steps may be effective.

I suggest writing down the instructions or bookmarking this page so you can finish fixing the problem after restarting your computer.
Step 1.
Visit the Synaptics website and download the latest device driver. Make sure you download the Generic Synaptics Device Driver specific for your operating system. Once you have it downloaded, unzip the file and execute the Setup file. The driver will install quickly and then you’ll need to restart your computer.

Step 2.
This may seem unusual, but once the computer is restarted, play around with your mouse for a little while. When drivers are updated, sometimes older functions are disabled which is really annoying if you rely on some of those functions. Keep in mind that you may need to re-enable some settings after installing the new driver. You’ll be able to change your mouse settings from the Control Panel. If you find you lost some functionality you don’t want to lose, you can revert back to the old driver. In the Control Panel select Mouse then click the Hardware tab. Select the Touchpad device and hit the Properties button. On the Driver tab you’ll see a button called Roll Back Driver. Click that and it should reinstall the old driver. Of course you’ll have to restart the computer again.

If you don’t have a problem with the latest driver, you can continue on to the fix. If you need to revert, you can still continue on with the fix, but it may not be effective. It’s worth a try though.

Step 3.
Go into the Control Panel and open the Mouse settings. Click the Hardware tab, select the Touchpad and click the Properties button. Next click the Advanced Settings tab and change the Wheel Detection setting to Look for wheel. OK the changes and yes, you’ll have to restart the computer. Luckily, that’s the last step. Firefox should now be able to detect the Touchpad scroll.

*UPDATE
If there are any other problems or questions you have, let me know. I can try to figure it out, or point you in the right direction. Don’t run out and pay for tech support from the Geek Squad or something like that. The internet has a wealth of knowledge available and plenty of people that will answer questions for free. Think of it as open source tech support.

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57 Comments »

  1. Comment by André de Abreu — Monday 26 June, 2006 @ 10:13

    the new driver (8.1.2) Dont need step 3 … only install and rebook … your firefox work fine with synaptics scroll !!!

    Tanks

  2. Comment by Tor — Friday 30 June, 2006 @ 1:36

    Step 3 wasnt needed for me either. Thanks! Nothing else worked for me, and this is just what I needed!!!

    :-D

  3. Comment by Safi Mansoor — Sunday 6 August, 2006 @ 12:45

    Sweet..

    I just love the browser except for some issues with it (scrolling from my touchpad not available included). Now I can scroll using the new driver. I didn’t even need to go to the control panel. Just a restart and things were fine.
    Thanks Steve….

  4. Comment by M23 — Sunday 20 August, 2006 @ 23:24

    Thanxs! solution works great, Now firefox works perfectly!

  5. Comment by Dave — Wednesday 30 August, 2006 @ 1:06

    Installing the new driver did the trick. The scroll bar now works great with firefox on my Hp dv1000.

    thanks

  6. Comment by Jerry — Friday 8 September, 2006 @ 17:34

    I had the same problem, and I’m glad I came here for the solution. I downloaded Synaptics XP version 8.3.4, installed and rebooted, the scroll works fine now on my Acer 5003WLMi. Good help!

  7. Comment by Karlo Fox — Tuesday 17 October, 2006 @ 19:06

    This is the correct way to approach the problem of the touchpad, it works and it is very simple, i installed synaptics xp 8.3.4 and rebooted and that was it. Hope, others will follow thru and solve the problem of the touchpad with this great tip.

  8. Comment by Sawyer — Thursday 16 November, 2006 @ 20:51

    Help me please…
    I just installed Firefox 2.0, and all of a sudden, my username/password isn't being inserted in the signon window (it always was before). I tried the usual suspects–I did not mistakenly tell FF not to remember the password for this site; and I also tried the remember password bookmarklet, but all to no avail–FF will not ask me to remember this password. What do I need to do to get around this?

  9. Comment by Xander — Friday 17 November, 2006 @ 15:21

    Please add firefox cookies/bad web sites immunization in next version!
    Firefox 2 cannot reject third party cookies!!!!!!!!

  10. Comment by felix osorio — Tuesday 21 November, 2006 @ 21:26

    thanks, it really worked

  11. Comment by Henrik — Sunday 26 November, 2006 @ 13:34

    Thanks for help with solving an annoying problem!

  12. Comment by Steven A. Stehling — Monday 27 November, 2006 @ 22:48

    Sawyer, when you upgrade Firefox, I believe it deletes saved username/passwords. I’m not certain of this since I never use that feature. You should try telling Firefox to remember passwords for that site and enter the username/password.

  13. Comment by Steven A. Stehling — Monday 27 November, 2006 @ 22:57

    Xander, I am not affiliated with Firefox development, so I cannot make that change.

  14. Comment by Jen — Wednesday 29 November, 2006 @ 0:11

    Wow, it works!! Thank you soo much… i had to dodge firefox to use other sub-par internet browsers just b/c i really couldn’t stand the touchpad not scrolling in FF. Then after the unreliability of other programs i switched back to FF and used it w/o the scroller… but now it’s perfect! Oh, and the 3rd step was not required. Thanks so much for posting this, Steve! =D

  15. Comment by Dekemi — Sunday 3 December, 2006 @ 5:54

    I am using Firefox 2.0. Just installing the lates driver from Synaptics did the tric for me. I didn’t have to change / do anything else

  16. Comment by Anonymous — Saturday 9 December, 2006 @ 11:43

    Same here. Just install and everything works.
    Have an Acer Ferrari 5005

  17. Comment by Vaz — Thursday 14 December, 2006 @ 10:11

    Thank you. I wouldn’t browse in Windows anymore because I refused to use IE and couldn’t stand firefox not scrolling.

    I’m still not going to browse much in windows, but at least now I can without hating it. :P

  18. Comment by Anonymous — Saturday 30 December, 2006 @ 19:58

    Thanks, I followed another link to Gateways’ downloads and updates, and after being unable to download, tech support told me that site was only for recovery. I was so frustrated, until I found your solution here.

  19. Comment by AKT — Saturday 13 January, 2007 @ 23:38

    Thanks for the info, actually I did the opposite and just uninstalled
    synaptics drivers on my gateway and use the default PS/2 win driver
    and all is good with scrolling with firefox now… strange but works.

  20. Comment by Linz — Sunday 21 January, 2007 @ 0:15

    Thanks that was driving me crazy!

  21. Comment by Giorgos — Sunday 21 January, 2007 @ 6:32

    man, you can’t imagine how long i’ve been looking for something like this!!!

    it really helped!!

    thank you!!! :)

  22. Comment by Marco — Thursday 25 January, 2007 @ 5:43

    Thank you, thank you, thank you!

    I hated Scrolling without an Mouse in Firefox - now i like it even more.
    The newest driver was the solution.

    Let’s surf & scroll :-)

  23. Comment by Anonymous — Sunday 4 March, 2007 @ 14:42

    Thank you very much for this. You might be interested to know it also works for Thunderbird.

    Harold Fuchs
    London, England

  24. Comment by Anonymous — Wednesday 21 March, 2007 @ 23:50

    Thanks so much!

  25. Comment by Scott — Thursday 5 April, 2007 @ 17:48

    Looks like everyone is having success, but I cannot get this to work completely for my situation.
    I have downloaded the latest driver from the Synaptics site and installed it. This does fix my scrolling problem. But the problem is that this disables my LCD screen on my touchpad. I have a Toshiba Satellite 5105-S607. It also disables my handy third mouse button.
    As for step 3, I do not have an Advanced Settings tab in that menu.
    Does anyone else have an LCD touchpad? Does the latest driver support this?

    Please help…

  26. Comment by "Tattoo" Art Dodger — Wednesday 2 May, 2007 @ 22:05

    Thank you so much! You saved me and my lousy laptop.

  27. Comment by Dev45 — Wednesday 16 May, 2007 @ 8:09

    The new driver did it thank you !!!!!!

  28. Comment by juliana_mae — Sunday 27 May, 2007 @ 13:55

    Thank you so much!

  29. Comment by Pet — Thursday 14 June, 2007 @ 11:46

    Many thanks, it works very fine with new driver. Thank you.

  30. Comment by Matthew Stevens — Thursday 5 July, 2007 @ 22:26

    thank you so much! i couldn’t stand browsing the web without scrolling. Now it works fine in firefox on my gateway tablet PC.

  31. Comment by Elizabeth — Monday 6 August, 2007 @ 18:50

    Thank you thank you thank you
    Mine worked originally on my toshiba with vista, then one day, *poof*. Now it’s working great

  32. Comment by Nell — Wednesday 3 October, 2007 @ 9:31

    Yay, thank you for your helpful information, I now am a happy firefox scroller

  33. Comment by Jen* — Wednesday 17 October, 2007 @ 22:16

    thank you SO much for this - i was about to go back to IE7 [which i don't hate] - but now i’ve got what i want. thanks. ::scrolling along::

  34. Comment by Edzilla — Monday 5 November, 2007 @ 6:03

    Thank you so much!!
    It worked great on my evo N410C

  35. Comment by henhen — Friday 9 November, 2007 @ 12:00

    Thanks I A. The new driver will not install, error is “require XP x64″. There is only one winXP driver on synaptics home page. What is XP x64 (64 bit right?). I have a hp pavillion zt1135, running XPHome 5.1 build 2600. Suggestions please. Thanks again.

  36. Comment by Henhen again — Saturday 10 November, 2007 @ 12:43

    Me again - I SOLVED MY OWN PROBLEM!
    Rather than download from the SYnaptics homepage, I updated my driver through the control panel, mouse properties, advanced driver properties update. My existing version was 6 point something. The auto update returned a sriver 5.1.2600 (which number matches the XP version running on dis machine). Reboot and I M SCROLLING IN FIREFOX. Hooray.

  37. Comment by Chris — Sunday 25 November, 2007 @ 2:15

    thanks for this.
    and as for the driver.
    the one on synaptic’s site for xp is the one that is 2000/XP
    not the XP-64

  38. Comment by mattr — Tuesday 4 December, 2007 @ 22:18

    The fix is pretty easy. The problem can easily be fixed
    by simply re-installing the driver for you synaptics device.
    I’ve had this problem time and time again where it will not
    detect the scroll feature of my pad. But reinstalling the driver
    seems to make XP/Programs “remember” it’s there.

  39. Comment by Steven A. Stehling — Wednesday 5 December, 2007 @ 10:19

    I’m disappointed with Firefox development over this issue. This is specifically a problem with Firefox that has so far been uncorrected. The development team know of the problem, but as far as I know it has not been corrected with any of the updates. Perhaps this will be fixed in Firefox 3.0 which will be released in the coming year.

    The link to the Mozilla development page that details the issue is below. It doesn’t actually detail the problem very well, just acknowledges that it exists.

    http://kb.mozillazine.org/Touchpad_virtual_scrolling

  40. Comment by Ara — Friday 21 December, 2007 @ 18:29

    Thanks. Another Satisfied user. I used version Synaptics_Driver_v10_1_8_XP32.exe.

  41. Comment by Panther — Tuesday 25 December, 2007 @ 2:01

    Thanks! This works great for me. I was really bummed about Firefox not working with my new laptop, but happily, I won’t be switching back to IE!

  42. Comment by Justin — Tuesday 25 December, 2007 @ 13:04

    This worked like a charm, has been bothering my forever trying to fix this. Thanks for this, really helped me out!

    Justin

  43. Comment by Brian — Thursday 10 January, 2008 @ 20:53

    Great post! I have been dealing with this problem for over a year. Worked great

  44. Comment by Justin TM — Sunday 13 January, 2008 @ 16:45

    Thanks for a great fix to a really annoying problem!

  45. Comment by Amy — Thursday 17 January, 2008 @ 17:51

    Thanks so much, this worked perfectly!!

  46. Comment by CeF — Monday 21 January, 2008 @ 13:56

    It’s great. But it didn’t work for me with the first shot. I closed the Restart now window and restarted the computer manualy. It doesn’t work. Then I found on another forum that I have to restart my computer from the Restart now window and now it works.

    And I did not need the 3rd step.

  47. Comment by BC — Sunday 27 January, 2008 @ 13:40

    This advice worked great! Thanks! Now FireFox is AMAZING!!

  48. Comment by sugarjed — Sunday 13 April, 2008 @ 9:21

    Worked perfectly. I gos so used to using the arrow keys the touch pad now feels like a new toy.

  49. Comment by Carlos Matute — Sunday 27 April, 2008 @ 19:25

    Excellent! Thankyou very much, this worked great for me. I love Firefox and have had this little annoyance for ever, but now it’s gone. Thanks again!

  50. Comment by Anonymous — Tuesday 29 April, 2008 @ 23:03

    #36 was the only thing that worked for me- installing the driver manually didnt work on my hp dv1510 laptop

    Thanks

  51. Comment by Julie — Saturday 12 July, 2008 @ 22:18

    Thanks! All i had to do was install the driver and restart!

  52. Comment by roi — Monday 28 July, 2008 @ 6:51

    really really appreciated! 10x alot

  53. Comment by Krissi — Wednesday 13 August, 2008 @ 4:31

    Hi!

    This worked for me, too; thanks a bunh.

    I do have one problem though . . . On my Gateway NX570 (Media Center), the virtual scroll won’t work on the bottom portion of Outlook Express (preview pane). My OS is XP, and I did download the correct driver.

    The virtual scroll works everywhere else it’s supposed to — weird, eh? Anyone have any ideas on how to fix it?

  54. Comment by Steven A. Stehling — Wednesday 13 August, 2008 @ 5:41

    It may be that the preview area is not the ‘active window’. That will happen with programs with frames. You could try moving the mouse over the preview pane or left-clicking on it and then trying to scroll.

    It could also be that it’s not going to work with OE. It is a striped down and stupid version Outlook. You’re not supposed to be content with OE, you’re supposed to get frustrated that it doesn’t do everything right and you then upgrade MS Office with Outlook.

  55. Comment by Krissi — Thursday 14 August, 2008 @ 8:33

    Thanks for the advice, Steven, and I understand your dislike for OE; however it does what I need it to do except for this issue, and personally, I’m not fond of Outlook — I do use Office 2007 though.

    On my other older Gateway laptop, the new Synaptics driver works everywhere, including both OE frames. On the Gateway NX570, I made sure the preview frame was active when I tried to scroll — that was the first thing I did. I also tried to left-click; that doesn’t work either; however, if I right-click, it will work, but then I have a drop-down menu hanging about.

    Any other ideas?

  56. Comment by Leandro — Friday 3 October, 2008 @ 6:04

    Thank you very much for all the instructions. Now, my synaptics devices is working properly with the firefox 3.0.1

    Leandro

  57. Comment by morph — Monday 13 October, 2008 @ 3:35

    hi there,
    i have a dell laptop with an alps touchpad. i installed the drivers and the scrolling did work - the vertical scrolling in firefox was fine, but didn’t got so lucky with the horizontal scrolling and the “go back one page” and “go forward one page” actions, which are supported by the driver. this seems to be a firefox related problem, because in the ie7 this functions work just fine. also in explorer(folder browse). that’s why i write here, despite the fact that this blog is somelike synaptics driver specific. i read posts about playing around with config-parameters in firefox(about:config -> mousewheel.??? and mousewheel.horizontal.???), but got nothing to work.

    my question: does horizontal scrolling and go back/go forward work with your touchpads on firefox? did you do any additional stuff to get it working?

    that’s really pitty, because until now firefox was THE browser for me. i didn’t experience any problems with it. this whole scroll thing began to decrease the authority of firefox in my eyes :(

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