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Comment by mdoms | Hacker News Reader

And still no proper support for pinch to zoom or proper scrolling with touchscreen laptops or Windows touchpads. Every release I hope they will resolve this extremely basic feature. Every release I'm disappointed. Every other browser just works - I don't know if it's native functionality or if they put in the work - but Firefox is just absolutely rubbish here.

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Check about:config apz.allow_zooming is set to true or do a fresh install and wipe all configs if that doesn’t do it, native pinch zoom was added in version 83

It's a fresh install and that's enabled. Let's be clear here: there is pinch to zoom. But it's an extremely half-assed implementation that is most certainly NOT native and feels terrible. I like Firefox but this has been a deal breaker for me for literally years. I don't understand why their zooming and scrolling can be so good on Android but so awful in Windows.

When you pinch does it jump between zoom levels in large increments or is it smooth? The large jumping was the old behavior – check about:config's browser.gesture.pinch settings are all empty and not mapped to ctrl+ or anything. I haven't tried on Windows but on macOS the native zoom is smooth and pretty good

As a last ditch attempt you could try https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-touch-z...

But if that doesn't work it may hint that pinch gestures aren't being passed to firefox properly; try pinch zooming on maps.google.com, if that doesn't work then maybe there's a deeper issue going on

It no longer jumps in big increments but it's still janky and very much non-native.

Why do you mean by non-native?

If it's janky it might "just" be a performance issue. If you could grab a profile from profiler.firefox.com that would be much appreciated

By non-native I mean non-native. I am definitely not going to do that, I will simply keep using Edge.

I'm really struggling to understand what you mean by "non-native" other than "different to edge". But even that's not useful: different how? Too fast, too slow, too sensitive, not sensitive enough?

Firefox has it at least since the last version. Probably it's disabled on your Firefox for some reason?

It's not native, it's a poor, buggy implementation.

What do you mean by not native? What bugs do you see?

What could I possibly mean by not native other than not native?

Bugs from a quick play-around (comparing with Microsoft Edge):

* The zoom with touch pad has a weird latency not present in Edge.

* Zoom on touchscreen is janky and jumps around.

* Zooming in and then out often (but not consistently) stops working half way through the gesture.

* Scrolling behaviour while zoomed is wildly different to native apps like Edge. Scrolling is extremely fast and has some kind of acceleration.

* Pinching while scrolling on the touchscreen lags badly.

It just feels shitty. Firefox devs don't care about a polished experience on Windows touchscreen laptops and it's a dealbreaker for me.

Cannot confirm any of these points (Win 10 pro, Thinkpad T490p). Everything is buttery smooth, and does exactly what I would expect it to do, both zooming and scrolling. (I only tied the touch screen, though.)

Maybe check your touchpad and touchscreen drivers.

It works perfectly in literally every piece of software I use other than Firefox (which I don't use, for this reason).

It will be tough to keep up with Edge/Safari on their respective home platforms going forward. I've been trying to move over to Edge from Firefox on my Windows desktop just because it's clearly the future. Safari works best on my iPhone12 mini. When I get an M1 MBA, I intend to just use Safari.

I haven't been using Firefox for nearly 20 years because of a rendering engine, I've used it because of its features. In the last 20 years, most people have moved from desktops to laptops and phones, native app battery use and performance means a lot more than features.

Drop the snark. Drop the dismissive tone. You have had Fx people replying to you directly. Saying they don't care is shitty behavior from you.

The bug report is 8 years old and they have finally implemented a "solution" that does not work properly.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=789906

We've filed a bug to track these problems: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1682974

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