Strange middle button behavior in Firefox and Opera

August 27, 2005 11:15 AM

When I try to use the middle mouse button (scroll wheel) in Firefox and Opera to open a link in a background tab it will sometimes "jump" down a few lines, not clicking the correct link and sometimes clicking a wrong one, and then jumping back to the first position as soon as I let go of the button. This is unbelievably annoying. The mouse is a "Genius NetScroll+Eye PS/2".
posted by signal to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Maybe you are doing a mild scroll while pressing the middle button.

Why not fix the mouse options and reduce the sensitivity of the scroll (i.e. decrease number of lines scrolled per finger move)
posted by webmeta at 12:34 PM on August 27, 2005

The mouse on one of my work PCs does the same, and it's certainly a pita. I think it's just a "feature" of the mouse, and probably best fixed by a replacement mouse, though mine doesn't do it often enough that I've bothered. I doubt adjusting the sensitivity would make much difference -- even a small scroll would likely move the pointer off the hotspot, and a slowed scroll would be annoying in itself. Mice are pretty cheap to buy.
posted by anadem at 1:58 PM on August 27, 2005

The jumping back and forth pretty much rules out the "mild scroll" idea.
The thing is, it only happens in Firefox and Opera, not in any other program that uses the mouse wheel, so I'm thinking it's not a hardware issue.
posted by signal at 3:58 PM on August 27, 2005

I've had the same experience even with Logitech mice, but never with any of my Razers
posted by krisjohn at 4:03 AM on August 28, 2005

"The thing is, it only happens in Firefox and Opera, not in any other program that uses the mouse wheel, so I'm thinking it's not a hardware issue."

You have other programs that both support scrolling and use the middle-click?
posted by catachresoid at 10:17 AM on August 28, 2005

AutoCad and 3dsMax, as well as most cad applications make extensive use of the scroll wheel and middle click.
posted by signal at 3:45 PM on August 28, 2005