Why tilting mouse wheel right & left does NOT seek in a YouTube video - instead moves the page?

Med1aN1ck

In Firefox when I watched a video on YouTube and the focus was on the flash player, tilting the mouse wheel right & left would jump forward & backward in the video respectively. In Vivaldi this results in the page being moved left & right, why is this so? Why is the command not being sent to the player but to the browser in general instead? Does a workaround exist?

Med1aN1ck

In Firefox pushing the mouse wheel left and right seeks 5 seconds forward or backward in the youtube video player if it is focused on. This helps me a lot, as I listen to foreing language videos and often want to rewind back to listen to a phrase again. It would be very helpful to have this mouse capability in the Vivaldi browser too. Can the reason be determined and then perhaps troubleshooted with a java script or an Autohotkey hack ... ?

I mean this:

to result in jumping forward and backward 5 sec. in the player on YouTube .

pafflick

Probably not if one don't have such mouse on board. You're the only person to ever report such issue. I guess that mouses with tiltable wheels are not too popular...

My mouse is configurable so that I can bind keystrokes to some of the mouse buttons. If you could bind the left & right arrow keys to your scroll wheel tilt, then you would have a workaround for YouTube - though it might then break your workflow in other apps.

zaibon

@Med1aN1ck
This function is bound for vlc-player and youtube to the keyboard shortcut "Shift + Left / Right Arrowkey)" so you might use this instead as a substitution until there might be an implemented function in Vivaldi.

Med1aN1ck

Clarification: I'm not talking about implementing an extra feature into the Vivaldi,

but just wondering why the Left & Right keystrokes bypass the Youtube flash or HTML5 player (I've tried both) and instead affect the web-page scrolling left and right. I believe the tilting of the mouse wheel sends regular keyboard strokes 'Left' and 'Right arrowkey', yet in Vivaldi (and Chrome) they scroll the web-page, and do not affect the flash player, whereas in Firefox and IE these mouse keystrokes influence the actual Yotube flash player jumping back and forward 5 sec. ... ?

It must be something deep inside the code which blocks from reaching the player - any ideas?

pafflick

@Med1aN1ck said in Why tilting mouse wheel right & left does NOT seek in a YouTube video - instead moves the page?:

I believe the tilting of the mouse wheel sends regular keyboard strokes 'Left' and 'Right arrowkey'

I believe they don't. That's easy to check, actually. Open any text form (like a reply to this post or a new document in Word, Notepad etc.). Type some text, so that it's not empty. Try pressing arrow keys left or right to see if the cursor moves. Now try tilting the scroll wheel. If the cursor doesn't move, then the scroll wheel doesn't send any keyboard's keystrokes.

@Med1aN1ck said in Why tilting mouse wheel right & left does NOT seek in a YouTube video - instead moves the page?:

(and Chrome)

That's probably the most important piece of information you've given so far, regarding this issue. It will mean that it's a Chromium bug actually, just like @dLeon suggested, so you'll probably have to nag the Chromium developers to fix this...

Med1aN1ck

@pafflick said in Why tilting mouse wheel right & left does NOT seek in a YouTube video - instead moves the page?:

I believe they don't. That's easy to check, actually. Open any text form (like a reply to this post or a new document in Word, Notepad etc.). Type some text, so that it's not empty. Try pressing arrow keys left or right to see if the cursor moves. Now try tilting the scroll wheel. If the cursor doesn't move, then the scroll wheel doesn't send any keyboard's keystrokes.

Yes, it doesn't send Left & Right, it sends is Wheel Right" & "Left". Having tried AHK to remap the keys, it doesn't work either in Viv and Chrome, does anybody have a clue why?

Med1aN1ck

SOLVED!

Just had to unload the process "wh_exec.exe" which resides in my mouse installation folder and this simple AHK script:

#NoEnv
#SingleInstance Force
SendMode, Input
SetTitleMatchMode, Regex

#If WinActive("YouTube")
WheelRight:: Send, {Right}
WheelLeft:: Send, {Left}
#If
return

lets the mouse wheel's left & right tilts seek in the Youtube player (5 sec).

pafflick

Since the issue is solved, consider this just as a comment/remark. I've just played around with my mouse to do some tests for another topic and I realized that it has the "Tilt left/right commands" available in its software configuration.

0_1491829737234_upload-965df365-c3f5-4a00-9a68-b778d714728e

I've assigned those commands to my mouse buttons and tried to use them to seek in YouTube videos, but it didn't work in any browser (I've tried Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, and Opera). It didn't move the page either (even in Vivaldi). It moved the page only when the zoom was set to "enormously large" so that the vertical scrollbar appeared.

Med1aN1ck

The advice that was given on forums, was to unload among other "Microsoft crapware", which get in the way of the mouse communicating with browsers. After that if the mouse firmware doesn't offer re-programming, the only option is to use AHK script.

pafflick

@Med1aN1ck Well, after trying it by myself, I've come to a conclusion that either your mouse sends different "tilt" commands than mine or the thing you've experienced (ability to seek in YouTube video player) was actually some kind of a bug. Just like in this case:

Med1aN1ck

No, the installed firmware converted the 'tilt' commands to 'Right-Left Arrowheads' in Firefox and IE, and failed to do so in other programs. What I did was to employ AHK to translate the mouse tilt commands into 'Right & Left' for Vivaldi only and had to unload this firmware for the script to work. So the firmware (the "wh_exec.exe" process) translated the tilts inro R&L in Firefox and suppressed the AHK script in other browsers. Unloading it made AHK to do its job properly. You're being too ignorant with that "joke"

pafflick

@Med1aN1ck said in Why tilting mouse wheel right & left does NOT seek in a YouTube video - instead moves the page?:

it doesn't send Left & Right, it sends is Wheel Right" & "Left".

@Med1aN1ck said in Why tilting mouse wheel right & left does NOT seek in a YouTube video - instead moves the page?:

No, the installed firmware converted the 'tilt' commands to 'Right-Left Arrowheads'

Since you didn't provide that information (about your firmware) earlier and now that you've said something completely different about the "keys" being sent (as you can see in the quoted posts above), that puts you in no position to call anyone who tries to help "ignorant", especially if you mislead them by providing incomplete or wrong information.

Anyway, the bottom line is that the issue has been resolved and that we know whose to blame for it (as it was your software's fault from the beginning). I don't think that there's anything else of value that we could possibly add to this topic, so let's end it here.

Med1aN1ck

There's absolutely no contradiction in those two statements:
There are two different sets of commands:

Mouse wheel tilts: {WheelRight} & {WheelLeft} to borrow AHK laguage
Keyboard Arrowheads: {Right} & {Left}

My mouse wheel sends to the PC the commands {WheelRight} & {WheelLeft}. For some reason, the commands which Firefox and IE receive with the firmware process (wh_exec.exe) loaded are {Right} & {Left} and the Chrome-based browsers receive only {WheelRight} & {WheelLeft} (AHK remapping is suppressed), so the forth and back winding in Youtube flash player in Firefox and IE happens, while in the Chrome-based ones it does not. Unloading the process, all commands that reach the programs from the mouse wheel tilts are only {WheelRight} & {WheelLeft}. Which with the AHK remapping script above can be converted to keyboard {Right} & {Left}.

Although it's only my supposition, that wh_exec.exe creates the mess (translates for certain programs and suppresses the translation of commands for others...), the solution with that process unloaded is universally applicable and not at all ignorantly and stupidly particular as in the bad joke you introduced...

pafflick

@Med1aN1ck said in Why tilting mouse wheel right & left does NOT seek in a YouTube video - instead moves the page?:

My mouse wheel sends to the PC the commands {WheelRight} & {WheelLeft}. For some reason, the commands which Firefox and IE receive with the firmware process (wh_exec.exe) loaded are {Right} & {Left} and the Chrome-based browsers receive only {WheelRight} & {WheelLeft}

I only realized this now, that I told you to perform these test in a text editor (for the sake of simplicity), but the one thing that I don't know (which I thought I knew) is whether the mouse tilt is translated into arrow keys for FF & IE arbitrarily or whether it's actually a more sophisticated program, so that it translates those button presses only when it detects certain content type (like eg. video). I assumed that it somehow works only for the video, but it seems like my assumption could've been wrong? Can you confirm?

@Med1aN1ck said in Why tilting mouse wheel right & left does NOT seek in a YouTube video - instead moves the page?:

the solution with that process unloaded is universally applicable and not at all ignorantly and stupidly particular as in the bad joke you introduced...

Given the information you provided at that moment, it could've been anything (including a bug) and as bad as this joke might seem to you (everyone has their own opinion), the fact remains, that (likewise) the source of the problem was located outside of the software in question (quite far away actually, as one doesn't even have to do anything with the other). It's just that narrowing down something like that is particularly difficult without the proper hardware (as I mentioned in my 1st post) or with only a scant amount of information about it.

Med1aN1ck

@pafflick said:

I assumed that it somehow works only for the video, but it seems like my assumption could've been wrong? Can you confirm?

I don't know what makes the mouse commands be translated into keyboard commands in FF and IE. And see no point investigating it. Could be an Add-on of Firefox and built-in "translation" in IE. Having got ridden of the process, which also enforced the number of lines scrolled at 3 and didn't allow to change it permanently, I'm not interested in knowing.

@pafflick said:

the source of the problem was located outside of the software in question (quite far away actually, as one doesn't even have to do anything with the other).

Don't try to sound cleverer than you are ... One doesn't understand what you are trying to say. The problem WAS IN THE MOUSE SOFTWARE'S process wh_exec.exe, as was reported by others, that it was "Microsoft crapware" which blocked the AHK script...

Your joke didn't fit my situation and was rather offensive and rude, which is the reason I disliked it.

pafflick

@Med1aN1ck After reading my post with the "horrifying" joke I realized that I was actually right - the thing you've experienced was indeed a kind of a bug (the other suspicion about my mouse sending different "tilt" commands was most likely wrong).

Now, why I attached the picture: sometimes people confuse the actual root cause of their problems with something rather irrelevant (in this case: blaming software update to break some functionality that was never meant to be there in the first place, like CPU overheating).

That is in a way similar to seeking for the source of the problem in a place that is rather irrelevant to the actual issue. In this case: suspecting the browser to lack some capability, while it was never actually meant to be there in the first place (because - as it turned out - every other browser lacked that capability, as it was provided by some 3rd party software).

The fact is that I didn't make that picture (I just grabbed it off the Internet), so there was no way for it to represent this particular case precisely, in each aspect. It was rather a loose remark, intended to show how looking for the cause of some issue may sometimes lead to a misconception.

@Med1aN1ck said in Why tilting mouse wheel right & left does NOT seek in a YouTube video - instead moves the page?:

was rather offensive and rude

For sure it was my mistake to assume that someone else will understand a message in the same way that I understand it. But the biggest mistake was probably forgetting that on the Internet, on forum boards like this, it's really difficult to recognize in time, that some people might be absurdly oversensitive by taking everything personally, against all common sense.

Point taken, lesson learned.