If you’re a Firefox user, you know that there’s a lot of customization that can be done to the scrolling experience. You can change how fast the scrolling happens, how much it scrolls back and forth, and even how much it jumps around. One of the most popular customization options is SmoothScroll. SmoothScroll is a JavaScript library that lets you control how your Firefox scrolls. You can use it to make your browsing experience more smooth and responsive, or to improve performance on specific websites. To use SmoothScroll in Firefox, first add it to your Firefox profile by opening Mozilla Firefox’s preferences and clicking on the “Add New Profile” button. Then enter “smoothscroll” into the “Profile Name” field and click on the “OK” button. Once you’ve added SmoothScroll to your profile, open Mozilla Firefox and click on the three lines at the top of the window called “Options.” On the left side of this window, you’ll see a list of options called “Smooth Scrolling.” The first option in this list is called “Speed.” You can change how quickly or slowly Smooth Scrolling happens, but keep in mind that this will affect all pages in your browser. The second option is called “Backward Scrolling.” This setting lets you control how far back (or forward) your scrolling should go when starting from a previous page or document. The third option is called “Jumping.” This setting lets you decide whether or not smooth scrolling moves between different documents or pages automatically. If you choose this setting, then Mozilla Firefox will automatically move between documents or pages when they become available (i.e., when they’re changed in some other way). Now that you know about SmoothScroll’s three options, let’s take a look at an example where these settings might be useful: customizing scrolling speed on a website!

Note: Version 0.44.19.20090811.3 shown here.

Installation & Setup

Once you have the SmoothWheel extension installed, the best place to start is with the options. In the Options Window there are only two tabs that you need to focus on to make adjustments.

In the “Basic Tab” you can make adjustments for Scroll Speed, Scroll Step Size, hotkey-type options, whether to use your keyboard or not, the option to disable SmoothWheel, and a compatibility mode. Once you have made any changes, simply click the “Apply Button” to immediately try them out before closing the window (very convenient!).

Here you can see the options available in the drop down menu for Scroll Speed.

For Scroll Step Size, you can make your mouse wheel really move that webpage! Notice that not only can you select how much of a page is moved per step, you can also select the amount in screen pixels (terrific!).

With the Advanced Tab, you can make adjustments for Adaptive Duration, Adaptive Step, Bigger Step, Smaller Step, FPS Limit, and Enable Soft-edge. So many options to customize your scrolling experience perfectly!

This is one of the wonderful things about the SmoothWheel extension. If you are uncertain about what a particular adjustment will do, simply hold your mouse over the drop down menu for a detailed explanation (very nice!). This is the explanation for the FPS Limit drop down menu on the Advanced Tab.

Conclusion

This is a wonderful extension for anyone wanting to make some serious adjustments for the way they scroll webpages. No more slow scrolling with this extension working for you!

Links

Download the SmoothWheel Extension (Mozilla Add-ons)

Download the SmoothWheel Extension (SmoothWheel Homepage)