GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 132197
Horizontal Scrolling Using Modifier Key and Scroll Wheel
Last modified: 2015-03-18 00:50:55 UTC
It is possible to scroll horizontally using a mouse wheel if the cursor is current over the horizontal scrollbar. Having the ability to place the cursor anywhere in a GtkScrolledWindow widget rather than a small area is, I believe, better for accessibility. A modifier key such as Alt, or Ctrl (configurable?) could make this possible. After some investigation. I've found that GIMP (Ctrl+scroll wheel), and Gnumeric (Alt+scroll wheel) both implement this feature independently. BTW, all QT apps have this feature enabled as default. Alt is used as the modifier.
This has also been discussed on the mailing lists here: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2005-May/msg00130.html
Adding the accessibility in case the accessibility people have an opinion about this. It would be nice if someone could summarize the discussion, so we know if there is a consensus about what should be done.
This would be really nice to have, especially considerig the new overlay scrollbars, not just for a11y reasons. Shift+scrollwheel is probably the best option since it's what at least gimp and inkscape use. As a bonus we will have the same combo for all gtk+ apps, avoiding custom implementation using different modifiers causing confusion to users.
Created attachment 299595 [details] [review] scrolled window: Use shift to modify scroll direction It has been a long-standing request to interpret scroll events with Shift held down as horizontal instead of vertical, and some applications are already doing this on their own.
Attachment 299595 [details] pushed as d823c39 - scrolled window: Use shift to modify scroll direction