Robert Posted November 15, 2013 Share Posted November 15, 2013 I installed Xubuntu last night and found the Firefox up/down scroll bar on the right too small for easy use. I recently tried and gave up on other distros partly for the same reason. I didn't know it was a built-in Firefox problem. Any easy fixes for this? A google search showed a variety of fixes on other forums for various Linux distros, but the explainations expected too much prior Linux knowledge, or don't work the same on Xubuntu. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted November 15, 2013 Share Posted November 15, 2013 That is caused by the theme that you're using in Xubuntu. It's not an FF issue. Open the theme manager and choose a different theme. I haven't been using Xfce for a while, so I don't remember right of the top of my head how to do this. It's in Xfce Menu, Settings, I think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Posted November 15, 2013 Author Share Posted November 15, 2013 (edited) Thanks for replying. Theme didn't change it. It must do other things now as there is no Theme Manager. With Appearance/Style (the new theme manager?) I was able to make it slightly wider with one of the styles, but not enough. Also weird now is the large mouse I picked is now only large inside of Firefox. Everywhere else it's small. I could have sworn it was large everywhere when I first changed it, before restarting the computer tonight. I think I'm going to abandon Xubuntu and search for a distro made for people with bad eyes. I have DPI up to 155 but far too many items remain tiny. Edited November 15, 2013 by Robert Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted November 15, 2013 Share Posted November 15, 2013 These are all theme, font settings, and screen resolution adjustments, Robert. Arch Linux (Go figure!) has an excellent wiki manual for Xfce. Check it out --> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xfce I ran Xfce for many years on my main systems, but have recently gone back to KDE. Unfortunately, it's a case of "use it or lose it", I'm afraid. I've forgotten how to tweak Xfce. I still run it on my of my laptops and my shop system, but I don't use those systems on a daily basis. Stand by... if nothing I've suggested helps, others may have better input for you. Regards, ~Eric 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Posted November 15, 2013 Author Share Posted November 15, 2013 I've spend many more hours on this, tried many more fixes I found on google, and nothing worked. One looked promising as I edited a file called gtkrc, but could not save the edited file. /usr/share/themes/Clearlooks/gtk-2.0/gtkrc slider-width = 15 stepper-size = 15 which I increased to 30. No way to save the file though. So giving up. I'd still have to fix the top bar which is too small so it would be endless. Too many things are too small to see or work with on a daily bases. All the distros I tried had the same problems. I even tried chaning the screen resoultion multiple times but that not only made everything bigger, it made everything too big to fix on the monitor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted November 16, 2013 Share Posted November 16, 2013 You have to edit that file as root. I would recommend AGAINST doing that, unless you REALLY, REALLY know what you're doing. By the way, you're only editing one theme (Clearlooks) that way. There are literally 100s of themes out there for Xfce. You can find many of them at http://xfce-look.org/. Snoop around, you may find a theme that is to your liking. I'm afraid if you're somewhat visually impaired, Robert, that you may have issues like this with any desktop manager... Gnome, Xfce, KDE, etc. Some have special features for sight impaired. I'm not familiar with this, so you'll have to do a little research. Luck... and have a great weekend. ~Eric Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Posted November 16, 2013 Author Share Posted November 16, 2013 I tried to log in as Root but couldn't. IIRC it's disabled on ubuntu distros. Tonight I tried a couple more distros and found interesting things in PCLinux. It looked like menus were large and easy to see in screenshots so I made a live DVD. There was scrollbar resizing build right in the appearance settings. It didn't change Firefox, but I thought that might be because it was Live CD view, so I installed it over the Xubuntu problem hard drive for a detailed look. It also has much better font enlargement than most distros so menus looked much better than others, like Mint where the menu text gets cut off. I used the scrollbar settings to enlarge them and found again it didn't do a thing to Firefox. Then I tried the Konqueror web browser and the scrollbar was large and easy to use. So this must indicate Firefox is controlling its own scrollbar width. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alphaomega Posted November 16, 2013 Share Posted November 16, 2013 The information found in this message worked for me to set the scrollbar width. http://ubuntuforums....69#post11792969 Here is a screenshot with the slider-width set to 28 as opposed to 18. HTH 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burninbush Posted November 16, 2013 Share Posted November 16, 2013 Someone here told me about the FF add-on called NewScrollbars (aka Noia Scrollbars) 1.2.1. My requirement was to make them a contrasting color, but there is also a minor width adjustment you can make. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted November 16, 2013 Share Posted November 16, 2013 That will work, AlphaOmega! The .gtkrc file is in the /home/ directory, Robert, so you can edit it as the user and do not need root privileges. Give that a shot, maybe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Posted November 17, 2013 Author Share Posted November 17, 2013 I couldn't find that file in my user directory. I only see it in usr/share/themes. This morning I installed OpenSuse and surprise, the Firefox scrollbar was large like it should be by default. Unfortunately that was the only thing right with that distro. When I enlarged the dpi the menus became bloated and when I installed NoSquint in Firefox the font in forum posts turned into an uneven mess. I couldn't figure out how to install flash either. So I reinstalled PCLinuxOS 64bit. With all the great info you guys posted I was able to log in as root and edit a theme file to enlarge the Firefox scrollbar. Everything else I've tried in this distro is working well. Menus grew without problem and it's as easier to see stuff, easier than Windows XP or 7 on a 1920x1200 monitor. The font size controls are much better than anything else I've seen. Thanks for all the help and patience. The problem has been resolved. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted November 17, 2013 Share Posted November 17, 2013 PCLOS is a great little distribution. Glad you got things working the way you needed them to, Robert. Now, sit back and enjoy! Regards, ~Eric -- Marking this thread "Resolved" -- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Posted November 18, 2013 Author Share Posted November 18, 2013 I tried PCLinuxOS 64 on another computer today and could not get the Firefox scrollbar to resize despite modifying multiple themes. Apparently it will only work if it's done to "scrollbar.rc," which is found here : usr/share/themes/oxygen-molecule/gtk-2.0 Within scrollbar.rc I changed these two 15 numbers to 25 but will probably up it to 30: GtkRange::slider-width = 15 GtkRange::stepper-size = 15 They are found near the top of the file. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted November 18, 2013 Share Posted November 18, 2013 The logical way would be to edit userContent.css in ~/.mozilla/firefox/<profileno>.default/chrome/ Here is an old post, should still work: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=240665 More at: http://www-archive.mozilla.org/unix/customizing.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Posted November 19, 2013 Author Share Posted November 19, 2013 I spent 10+ minutes looking for ~/.mozilla/firefox/ and let file search go for 20 minutes looking for userContent.css. The links also had limited location info. Without a map location I have no idea where to go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted November 19, 2013 Share Posted November 19, 2013 ~ is shorthand for your home directory. If your username is "robert" it will be in /home/robert/.mozilla/ . The "." in front of the file name means it's a hidden file so you will have to select "Show hidden files" in your file manager menu (I guess PCLos is KDE, so that means Dolphin is the file manager). userContent.css is not present by default so you will have to make a new text file and name it that. Then copy/paste the code from the mozillazine post and adjust to taste. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alphaomega Posted November 20, 2013 Share Posted November 20, 2013 Just a side note to add to everything else that has been mentioned: The way I understand things... Modifying the width of the scroll bar in Firefox using a userContent.css file only affects Firefox. Modifying the width of the scroll bar using a ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file affects all apps that use gtk2 like Firefox and Thunderbird. Modifying the oxygen-molecule usr/share/themes/oxygen-molecule/gtk-2.0 file applies to all apps using gtk2 when using that theme. If you switch themes you will have to make the same changes in the newly selected theme. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable in how all this works can clarify if my understanding is not correct. Cheers Hope this helps. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted November 20, 2013 Share Posted November 20, 2013 That's about the size of it, AO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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