Firefox Vertical Scroll Bar Not Functioning Properly
Issue
Firefox is having problems with certain web sites
Description
As I visited the referenced Web page, although the page displays normally, vertical scrolling is impaired. Clicking and dragging the vertical scroll "handle" DOES work. However, to scroll up or down by the height of the browser's display area, you'd click in the "blank space" immediately above or below the vertical scroll handle (comparable to using your keyboard's PageUp or PageDown buttons), and this is the scrolling method that does not work. Clicking the vertical scroll arrows does not work either.
URL of affected sites
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/memorialday.asp
Troubleshooting information
AVG Safe Search 9.0.0.825 true {3f963a5b-e555-4543-90e2-c3908898db71} DownloadHelper 4.7.3 true Google Gears 0.5.36.0 true {000a9d1c-beef-4f90-9363-039d445309b8} Java Console 6.0.13 true McAfee SiteAdvisor 3.0 true Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant 1.2.1 true {20a82645-c095-46ed-80e3-08825760534b} ScrapBook 1.3.7 true {53A03D43-5363-4669-8190-99061B2DEBA5} Xippee Extension 2.51 false info@visual-search.net Yahoo! Toolbar 2.1.2.20100119091315 true {635abd67-4fe9-1b23-4f01-e679fa7484c1} Evernote Web Clipper 3.0.0.82006 true Java Console 6.0.15 true Java Console 6.0.16 true Java Console 6.0.17 true Java Console 6.0.18 true
Firefox version
3.6.3
Operating system
Windows Vista
User Agent
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3 ( .NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Plugins installed
- -Shockwave Flash 10.0 r45
- np-mswmp
- NPRuntime Script Plug-in Library for Java(TM) Deploy
- Winamp Application Detector
- Adobe PDF Plug-In For Firefox and Netscape "9.3.2"
- Default Plug-in
- Google Update
- Adobe Shockwave for Director Netscape plug-in, version 11.0
- iTunes Detector Plug-in
- DivX® Web Player
- DivX® Content Upload Plugin
- npdivxplayerplugin
- GEPlugin
- Yahoo Application State Plugin version 1.0.0.7
- 3.0.50106.0
- Office Live Update v1.5
- NPWLPG
- Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) plug-in for Mozilla browsers
- Google Updater pluginhttp://pack.google.com/
- 6.0.12.69
- RealPlayer(tm) LiveConnect-Enabled Plug-In
- RealJukebox Netscape Plugin
- Allows browsing on RealArcade sites with Mozilla browsers.
- Rhapsody Player Engine Plugin
- Java(TM) Platform SE binary
- Next Generation Java Plug-in 1.6.0_18 for Mozilla browsers
- The QuickTime Plugin allows you to view a wide variety of multimedia content in Web pages. For more information, visit the QuickTime Web site.
All Replies (4)
There is some JavaScript working on that page that is causing that weird effect. If I disable JavaScript then it works properly.
Yes, many thanks to poster "Cor-el." Disabling JavaScript, as Cor-el suggested, seems to fix the problem.
However, I'm left wondering. If I leave JavaScript disabled:
(1) Is this preferred or considered more secure than having JavaScript enabled?
(2) Do many Web pages use JavaScript, and if so, will this severely inhibit/"cripple" my browser's functionality for those Web pages that use it?
One last observation regarding the original post and the problematic Web page: After disabling JavaScript, as I use the vertical scroll arrows, the scrolling is extremely slow and Firefox CPU usage jumps to 50%. That's not a complaint about the suggested fix; just an observation.
Thanks.
You can use the NoScript extension to block JavaScript settings and preferences for interactive web pages. There aren't much websites that misbehave like this one and many websites won't function properly if you leave JavaScript disabled.
This may or may not be related, but I was having a similar issue, and it was affecting the same page in Chrome as well!
Turns out my issue was that the page was calling home via AJAX and my bandwidth at the moment was impaired, as I was downloading a big file.
Once I stopped the download, everything went back to normal, with only a tiny hiccup on the page scrollbars once every some seconds, where they would get stuck for a few milliseconds.
This is probably caused by the page using synchronous AJAX calls, instead of asynchronous ones. Synchronous calls will block the browser until a response is received from the server. If bandwidth is compromised, this response will be delayed or even worse, not received at all, in which case the page will stop working (or at least this seems like what would happen, don't know if it is actually true).
Hope this helps.