Scrolling left and right using Alt scrollwheel?

(Not sure if this is the right place but as I only use Linux Opera I don't know if this applies to other platforms.)

When a fixed-width page spills off the edges is there a way to easily scroll left and right using the scroll wheel? I know the arrow keys can go left ang right but it means taking my right hand off the mouse, scroll right a bit, back to the mouse...

Konqueror allows for Alt-scrollwheel to scroll the window contents left and right but I cannot fathom how to do this in Opera or if it is even possible to customise mouse actions like this? The (annoying) panning feature of middle-click is not an option! A two-way scrolling ball like the Mac mouse would be nice but unfortunately I don't have that type of mouse.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

While not quite as easy as a modifier key, if you move the mouse over the horizontal scrollbar it'll also do what you want.

Thanks for the reply.

Originally posted by Frenzie:

While not quite as easy as a modifier key, if you move the mouse over the horizontal scrollbar it'll also do what you want.

I know I can do that but it means taking my eyes off what I'm reading, locating the scroll bar and scrolling a bit then trying to pick up from where I was. Not quite as fluid as holding down Alt and scrolling the wheel...

Opera used to do that, not certain when or why they stopped. Not that you couldn't use imwheel to arrange that if you wanted ...

Opera does support horizontal scrolling if your pointing device does (such as a tilt wheel or a second scroll wheel), so I'm not certain that Alt+scroll should just automatically do that.

Originally posted by sgunhouse:

Opera used to do that, not certain when or why they stopped. Not that you couldn't use imwheel to arrange that if you wanted ...

Why? And can it be put back in or re-enabled?

I find imwheel is not a solution. Opera is best placed to understand the contaxt of Alt-scroll. I don't always want Alt-scroll to be left and right.

Opera does support horizontal scrolling if your pointing device does (such as a tilt wheel or a second scroll wheel), so I'm not certain that Alt+scroll should just automatically do that.

Alt-scroll currently does nothing so why not (re)assign it back to this task? A multi-axis scroll ball would be cool but, as I said above, my mouse only has a single-axis scroll wheel.

I struck on the idea of assigning the keys z and x to scroll left and right respectively. (I had already reassigned f and b to go Forward and Back respectively so z and x were unused.) That works and now puts scroll left and right within reach of my left hand.

z         Scroll left
x         Scroll right

I then tried to modify the mouse setup in a similar fashion. Following what I had done to get z and x working, to the Mouse setup Browser Window section I added the lines:

WheelUp Alt           Scroll left
WheelDown Alt         Scroll right

This does not want to work at all though. Alt-scroll continues to just scroll up and down.

I couldn't find out what Opera call its scroll wheel events. It has ScrollLeft and ScrollRight so I figured ScrollUp and ScrollDown would be obvious names for the scroll wheel.

I replaced ScrollUp with Button4 and ScrollDown with Button5. Finally, it now works. Sort of. When Opera get to the left edge of the page Scroll left actually scrolls up and similarly for the right edge of the page Scroll right scrolls down. WTF? What kind of behaviour is that?! The keyboard doesn't do this so why does the scroll wheel version?

Is this some kind of mental challenge from the Opera developers? When you solve one puzzle another one rears its ugly head? When we complete the quest will a pop-up appear saying "Congratulations. You may now proceed to Level 2." ... Grrrr.

After some googling for the Mouse Setup names (which I didn't find) I did discover that Opera allows Ctrl-Alt-leftclick+drag to drag the page around. A possible solution but not as fluid as Alt-scroll. I have Caps Lock mapped by X to Ctrl so it's a bit easier on the carpals.

Is there a list of what Opera calls the various input buttons and things?

Is there a way to stop it scrolling up and down when it reaches the page edge?

Any other ideas?

Thanks.

Most are obvious. Scroll buttons (for up and down) can't generally be reassigned ... Opera used to refer to everything as Buttonn, they only recently added WheelLeft and WheelRight.

You might check to see if they'll allow Button4 and Button5 to actually work there ...

Originally posted by sgunhouse:

Most are obvious. Scroll buttons (for up and down) can't generally be reassigned ... Opera used to refer to everything as Buttonn, they only recently added WheelLeft and WheelRight.

You might check to see if they'll allow Button4 and Button5 to actually work there ...

I did. It works insofar as I can tell Opera to assign the action Scroll left to Button4 Alt and similarly Scroll right to Button5 Alt. It's what Opera does with it that is now the new challenge.

Any idea on how to stop the scroll up/down when it meets the left/right edge of the page?

Or any idea how to re-enable the Alt-scroll action that (in my opinion) Opera should have as its default?

Thanks.

If it is working otherwise, then it's similar to the other thread - you need to find an action to stick in there when Scroll Left (Right) is not vaild.

May not be the best choice, but I'll use the same "Zoom to, 100" that we have in the other thread. The command would then look like this:

Scroll left | Zoom to, 100

(or of course right in place of left).

The "vertical break" is commonly used as an "or" symbol. How Opera handles it: if the action on the left is valid, it does that action. If the action on the left is not valid (in this case, because you can't scroll farther), it does the action on the right. If both actions are not valid, then it performs the default action (scrolling up or down).

Ahh. Now its behaviour make more sense, even if it is a bit lame.

I use zoom all the time so I would need to find something else. By trial and error I hit upon Zoom point and it seemed to do nothing yet kept Opera a happy puppy. That seems to have solved it.

So, for anyone else trying to do the same thing I used:

Button4      Scroll left | Zoom point
Button5      Scroll right | Zoom point

I've no idea what Zoom point should do. Hopefully it's not going to cause problems somewhere else. Is there a list is of the actions and their effects? All I can seem to find is a list of names which is no more helpful than the drop-down list already in Mouse setup.

It would be nicer if Opera did this by default.

sgunhouse, many thanks for your help.

The list(s) I'm aware of are on the Opera wiki: AllActionsListPlus. They are woefully out of date - the page refers to "Opera 9.5 betas" - but they are what we have.

It says that Zoom point is a variant of Zoom in with an offset ... makes sense to me. If you wanted to zoom in on a specific point you'd need to use an offset to compensate for the new location. Of course, you could just use Zoom in or Zoom out with a value of 0 (or not listed). If you say Zoom in, 10 then it would increase the zoom 10%, so therefore Zoom in, 0 (or just Zoom in - missing parameters are presumed to be 0) does nothing.

Those are the same lists I was referring to. Says what they are called but not what they do.

Thanks for info about zoom. So "Zoom point" on its own is quite safe? Would "Zoom in, 0" be preferable or no difference?

Safer? Should be no difference. I'd use Zoom in or Zoom out because they are more familiar is all ... and as I explained you don't need the ", 0" at all.

Why don't you use the option 'fit to width' ? Its supposed to fit the page in the window no matter how narrow it is, so no horizontal scrollbar appears. preferences->webpages->fit to width

I do. Quite often. But on some pages the css is broken by design leaving the page ugly and unreadable.

Thanks for the tip though. It could be handy to others. Fit to page is very useful and should be on every browser as standard.