Sometimes, when things change, you draw the wrong conclusions. And way too early.

For example, when I upgraded my laptop to debian's upcoming `wheezy' release recently, I started to get that "If I wipe through that scrolling area fast enough, it'll be like as if the document I'm scrolling gains momentum and scrolls further, even though I'm not actually using the scrolling area anymore"-feature in about every application I was using.

So I figured, awesome! Someone implemented that in the server so I get that everywhere for free! ...because you know, I knew a similar feature from a document viewer named evince. In that application you could grab a page with the middle mouse button and throw it in one direction and it would keep scrolling for a while depending on how rapidly I moved the mouse while dragging the page... This new behaviour felt similar and I liked it.

The problem is this: The feature is not limited to one application. If you switch focus to another program, that program will start to scroll. Also, if you press a modifier key that modifier will change what the remaining simulated scrolling motion does.

Here is an example of the second problem: I'm browsing the web using, say, firefox. I'm scrolling in a page and then decide to switch to another tab. So, I'm pressing CTRL, because I'd like to hit CTRL-TAB. But what does firefox do if you hold CTRL and then use the scroll-wheel? Right, it changes the font-size of the current page. And that is what happens here, too.

So, the last days I spent a sizable amount of time to reset font-sizes in firefox.

This morning it got so bad that I figured, I'd rather turn that feature off again. After all, it was just nice to have but not essential. And if it keeps messing with my workflow, it has to go.

Here's how:

synclient CoastingSpeed=0

You're welcome.