Option to disable scroll wheel next/prev but not next/prev buttons

[RunLikeCrazy]

I support this request. I'd like someway to completely disable the scroll wheel from navigating to the next or previous photos. My problem isn't always while editing photos; sometimes it is simply when I'm browsing thru photos one by one - I use the right and left arrow buttons on the menu for doing that. But often I accidentally nudge the scroll-wheel and find myself 5 or 10 photos away from the one I was looking at.

I've tried updating "Program Specific Settings" in Control Panel - Mouse Options to disable the scroll-wheel for Irfanview, but for whatever reason, doing that did not affect IrfanView at all, and instead caused problems with my mouse functionality in other programs. (I'm using Windows 7).

[WellOiledPC]

I do not have a problem: in full-screen mode, I use the PageUp/ PageDown keys and in windowed mode, the Right & Left Arrow Icons. It may however be useful, if an option to disable Mouse Scroll is allowed - one size does not fit all!

[John_Ha]

Can I too support the request for an option to disable the "mouse wheel scroll".

It seems strange that accidentally touching the scroll wheel should move the the next image in the folder and lose any work done on the previous image. If the next image is so large that scroll bars appear, then I cannot return to my first image unless I keep the scroll wheel enabled in Properties. If there happens to be a PDF in the folder, and I don't have the PDF add-in, I get an error message

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

The problem with too many options is that people take even longer to find out how best to use it.

IrfanView is primarily an image viewer. If you must use it to edit images but keep losing your edits, check the setting in Properties, Start/Exit "Ask to save changes..."

[John_Ha]

Disable scroll wheel

IrfanView is primarily an image viewer. If you must use it to edit images but keep losing your edits, check the setting in Properties, Start/Exit "Ask to save changes..."

Bhikkhu

Thank you!!! That is an excellent workaround for my particular problem!

I thought there would be an option somewhere... :-))

[gdonn001]

Hi Bhikkhu

You say "IrfanView is primarily an image viewer", and that is what I primarily use it for - for viewing scanned images of historical plans. As such, these are very detailed and I spend most of my time looking only at a particular image, zooming in and out and panning around it. The images are named according to government-issued reference numbers, so one image almost never has any relation to the ones numbered either side of it.

Because of this mouse wheel issue, Irfanview is NOT my default viewer (otherwise it would be). All of the other CAD, design or image programs I currently use (or have used in the past 25 years... - when was the mouse wheel invented?) use the mouse wheel to either zoom in/out or scroll up/down the page. Nothing else I use uses the wheel to go to the next/previous file.

The only extra option most of us are asking for is one to disable changing files via the wheel mouse. The current options in Irfanview do not specifically do this, and the suggestions are only workarounds if the user adheres to specific rules (eg visible scroll bars, entire image visible, etc).

[TSX]

+1 for an option to disable prev/next file browsing using the scrool wheel.

It's so annoying to loose the file you're seeing just because you accidentally hit the wheel (or perhaps because you're trying to horizontally pan the image and didn't notice that it's not clipped). I use IrfanView only on my desktop, but I imagine that for those who uses the touchpad "wheel regions" on a laptop it can be much worse.

Not to mention that binding a input device to two different and unrelated function is a very very bad UI design decision.

[brookefox]

I humbly join this action/request for an option to disable prev/next file browsing using the scroll wheel, for the main reasons mentioned - inadvertent loss of edits. As the quick editing functions have gotten more robust, I use them more and love them, but when I lose edits I gnash.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

As the quick editing functions have gotten more robust, I use them more and love them, but when I lose edits I gnash.

In Properties, Start/Exit options check the box that says, "Ask to save changes on program exit or file/image change."

I already said that above, but apparently you missed it.

[Mij]

Its not that I have any problem with this Feature Request, but since a new version has just been released you could wait a very long time for this to happen — probably six months at least.

......and that was 4 years ago !

[HateScrollWheel]

I love Irfanview, and recommend it constantly to others.

But the scroll wheel changing images is a constant thorn in my side. And the only way to disable this is to completely disable all navigation (even the spacebar!)... it is like being punished for not wanting the scroll wheel auto-magically navigating for you (which is always by accident).

Ok, whew, now that is off my chest.. back to using this (mostly excellent) program!

[pdops]

+1 for an option to disable prev/next file browsing using the scroll wheel.

[Picodon]

This is a good start - a mouse config panel would be even better

I have had the same problem as many: a mouse scroll wheel all too happy to move very slightly in the midst of some minute editing. I was certainly happy when, after an update, I saw option "ask to save changes". Nonetheless, I am disappointed that the behaviour of the scroll wheel remains unchanged.

A shortcut or input control that radically changes its function while the application remains in the exact same work mode, depending instead on minor technicalities such as whether the document fits whole or not inside its window (therefore subject to change as the window is resized or as the image itself is resized or zoomed), that's an outstanding candidate for becoming a classic example cited in UI design courses.

I understand that a number of users may find it very practical to use their mouse for specific tasks. And we all know that mice have only so many buttons. Also, having five locations in preferences saying something like "do this with your right mouse button instead of the default behaviour" is equally problematic. Perhaps the preferences dialogue box could have a "mouse" tab dedicated to configuring mouse buttons and gestures. It would contain a table of mappings. The user could create new mappings or edit/delete existing ones. A mapping would consist of a button/gesture/combination and, optionally, a keyboard modifier (like Control, Alt or Shift), associated to an action (for example: zoom in and out, move forward and backward, scroll up and down, etc.) selected from a drop-down list. If desired, a distinction could be made between windowed and full-screen modes (I don't find that appealing but others might).

As for switching documents in particular, I think that there are alternatives that are not only superior to the scroll wheel but also well established.

The scroll wheel is designed to scroll (surprise!), not switch. When there is nothing to scroll, it is supposed to do nothing. It is best associated to operations that are visually smooth and continuous or progressive and may require fine control, like scrolling or even zooming. Actions for which you'd wish to have a knob or a slider. It is ill-suited for triggering discrete events like switching documents. With IrfanView, rolling the scroll wheel on my mouse is fairly unpredictable: it can move back or forth one, two or even three documents at a time, with the associated seizing and flashing (loading a large image is not exactly a real-time operation). Such erratic operation is both useless and improductive. I suppose that if pressing (not rolling) the scroll wheel revealed one of those mostly-useless eye-candy rolodex-type 3-D displays of all images in the current folder or play list, then one might be tempted to use the scroll wheel to browse through them. But there are two problems: (1) that feature does not exist (yet!) and (2) frankly, it's not needed, the existing thumbnail viewer is a much better solution.

Many mice have two side buttons which are commonly used by web browsers to move forward and backward and (yes!) IrfanView supports those as well. Isn't that enough? For those mice that lack those buttons, several web browsers also support button combinations: left then right (together) = forward; right then left = backward (unfortunately, IrfanView does not yet support those combinations). Then there are mouse gestures. I presume that one could invent other combinations that are not too strange, but the scroll wheel probably does not even belong to that list.

In conclusion, I think that the current proposal (essentially, to add an option to disable the document switching functionality of the scroll wheel in all circumstances) points to the right direction and I support it. I would also add that it should be the new default. And I hope we can later get a more flexible configuration of mouse buttons and gestures (and keyboard shortcuts, while we're at it).

[Andy2No]

i finally got round to updating to 4.33 - 4.25 did everything I needed, except for the scroll wheel / browsing buttons behaviour. I upgraded hoping that had been fixed by now. Sadly not.

I don't see why the two behaviours are controlled by the same option tick box. Users of Irfanview see them as entirely different behaviours, based on this discussion so far. I know I do.

Pressing the arrow buttons is something I'm not going to do by accident so disabling them makes no sense. Touching the scroll bar on my touch pad, intending to scroll the image, not change to another one so quickly it may as well be at random, is something I do all the time, unless I disable the "View all files in directory.." option.

Assuming all that gets changed is to stop that option affecting the arrow buttons, I don't see how it could take more than twenty minutes to fix this problem, that's been a major irritation with Irfanview for years. Is it open source? If so, point me to the code and I'll fix it myself.

[Mij]

Pressing the arrow buttons is something I'm not going to do by accident so disabling them makes no sense. Touching the scroll bar on my touch pad, intending to scroll the image, not change to another one so quickly .....
Assuming all that gets changed is to stop that option affecting the arrow buttons, I don't see how it could take more than twenty minutes to fix this problem, that's been a major irritation with Irfanview for years. Is it open source? If so, point me to the code and I'll fix it myself.

No it is not open source. Irfan Skiljen who wrote the program makes or approves all of the changes. He does not generally read this forum however (he does not have the time) so it needs someone to contact him directly to request that a feature be changed. The reason I have never done that over this issue is because over all the years that this and other threads have discussed it there has never been a consensus over what precisely needs to be changed. There is a general feeling that the dual action of scroll wheel, arrow keys, etc. is somewhat unsatisfactory. Some though, like you, do not want the scroll wheel ever to change which image is displayed, others want it always to do so, and there is a similar lack of agreement over what the other controls should do.