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Release 109 is a step backwards in accessibility

Nomutile
Making moves

As of Release 109, Firefox users who rely on captions and subtitles no longer have the ability to dynamically change the font size on videos (or web pages) by using CMD+scroll wheel on a Mac.  Removing this feature is NOT an improvement for hearing-impaired folks who need to turn on subtitles and adjust the font size quickly and repeatedly depending on the image behind them.  Visually impaired people need to increase font size for occasional uses (e.g., reading/submitting YouTube comments), but don't necessarily want gigantic font size on all other screens.

Mozilla -- please bring back dynamic, extemporaneous, variable font sizing for web pages and videos!

6 REPLIES 6

jscher2000
Leader

Was it this change mentioned in the Firefox 109 Release Notes:

On macOS, Ctrl or Cmd + trackpad or mouse wheel now scrolls the page instead of zooming. This avoids accidental zooming and matches the behavior of other web browsers on macOS.

There is a way to restore the old setting. Here's how:

(A) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

More info on about:config: Configuration Editor for Firefox. Please keep in mind that changes made through this back door aren't fully supported and aren't guaranteed to continue working in the future.

(B) In the search box in the page, type or paste mousewheel.with_meta.action and pause while the list is filtered (on Mac, "meta" key refers to the Command key)

(C) Double-click the preference to display an editing field, and change the value to 3 then press Enter/Return or click the blue check mark button to save the change. For reference as to what different values do:

  • 0 => ignore the action
  • 1 => scrolling normally (default on Mac OS)
  • 2 => go back or go forward in tab history
  • 3 => standard/reflowing zoom (previous default on Mac OS)
  • 4 => flip to horizontal scroll
  • 5 => pinch/magnification zoom

Success?

 

While it worked, this is not convenient for a generic user. There needs to be a preference in the settings page which user can just toggle.

Try the option I described above (screen shot included).  Settings-->General-->Zoom [check the box labeled "Zoom text only"]

Is my mind playing tricks on me, or has the clickable option shchilak described below been added since I posted my original comment above?  I now see an option for "Zoom text only."  And it works!  Find it at:  Settings-->General->Zoom .

That is supposedly a different setting which I use it on my other machine. When you are zooming, that setting just increases the text size instead of the whole UI. So you're telling Firefox to start by default at this percent of base font size.

msjs
Making moves

Seems there is one more thing you need to do to make Ctrl + mousewheel revert to zooming. I tried so many things and none worked on their own. Why would you change this? Grrrrrrrrrrrr!

mousewheel.with_alt.action set to 3 and mousewheel.with_alt.override_x set to -1 worked as did mousewheel.with_meta.action set to 3 and mousewheel.with_meta.action.override_x set to -1 but mousewheel.with_control.action set to 3 and mousewheel.with_control.action.override_x set to -1 didn't.

I changed mousewheel.with_control.action.override_x to 0, 1, 2, 3 and none worked

Set browser.display.os-zoom-behavior to 0 (ignore os setting) and restarted Firefox and finally my settings are back to normal.

This has been annoying me for months!!!