Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2021 December 30

= December 30 =

disable text zooming in firefox
Firefox has a number of hot keys and mouse events that cause the browser text to get larger or smaller. It's quite easy to trigger those by accident and mess up the text. My mom does that all the time and I have to fix it. I found a preference to disable mouse wheel zooming, but ctrl-minus and ctrl-minus still zoom the text. Quick web search didn't find a cure.

Is there a way to disable this "feature"? It can still be possible to zoom the text through the view menu, but it should be harder to do with accidental key presses. Thanks. 2601:648:8202:350:0:0:0:9435 (talk) 22:02, 30 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Is there a setting in about:config called toolkit.zoomManager.zoomValues? This information may be horribly out of date (I stopped using Firefox due to the deterioration in its configurability in recent years) but if the setting exists, it's a string, and you could try setting it to 1 for a single zoom setting of 100%. Or perhaps it wants 14 comma-separated values, I don't know, in which case you could make them all 1. Card Zero  (talk) 01:00, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Hmm, interesting, thanks. No I didn't know about that.  I'll check into it. 2601:648:8202:350:0:0:0:9435 (talk) 03:56, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
 * If that doesn't work, you can use this plugin [//addons.mozilla.org/en-NZ/firefox/addon/shortkeys/] which enables you to assign custom actions to hotkeys. The major limitation is it only works when the page has finished loading. Early on I think it's irrelevant since before the page has started loading you won't adjust the zoom of the actual page. But I assume there is going to be a short window where you can adjust zoom of the page and the shortcut still works. It also only works on pages, doesn't work on the URL bar but I assume it's rare that your mum is adjusting zoom from within the URL bar. (To be clear, when you are on the URL bar you still adjust the zoom level of the page, it's just that your custom shortcut key doesn't work from there so ctrl++ and ctrl+- still work to adjust the zoom level of the page your on.) Oh it also doesn't work on the Mozilla addon site, as no addons seem to. I assume this is some built in limitation to prevent dodgy addons installing even dodgier addons e.g. replacing safe addons with dangerous ones. BTW I've tested and confirmed it does work for overiding the ctrl++ and ctrl+- on the latest 95.0.2 Firefox Portable on Windows, you can assign them to do nothing and they no longer function. However I have not reviewed the source so I'm not vouching that the plugin is safe. If you don't trust it or the limitations are too much, on Windows you should be able to use AutoHotkey to "disable" any shortcut keys. Effectively AHK takes over the shortcut and performs whatever action you've told it to. See [//www.autohotkey.com/docs/misc/Override.htm] and if you have problems, the general concept is common enough I'm sure you can find hundreds or more discussions. Nil Einne (talk) 16:07, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
 * The shortcut to reset the zoom level is Ctrl (control-zero). If she remembers this, then she can reset the zoom level after accidentally changing it. LongHairedFop (talk) 20:08, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
 * She will also have to guess that the page is not intended to be presented with huge or tiny text, and remember that zooming is a thing. These are the first hurdles to cross before remembering ctrl-0. Card Zero  (talk) 23:00, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Firefox, very helpfully, shows the current zoom level at the end of the address bar (unless its 100%). If there is a percent icon there, she should press Ctrl before doing anything else. LongHairedFop (talk) 12:43, 3 January 2022 (UTC)