How to disable screen zoom?
 

This feature, which I didn't ask for, keeps getting me in trouble.
If I accidentally press Alt when momentum scrolling is happening, then every movement of a web page downward will be incorrectly registered like a down arrow key being pressed, which it is not, and zooming in will rapidly happen.

UPDATE
This defect is caused by the very bad idea from the X project which implements momentum scrolling in the DRIVER, not in the UI library layer like is done on iOS, Android, MacOS. So the driver sends a series of vertical up/down arrow keys to simulate momentum. Even after scrolling is stopped because the top/bottom has been reached, the keys keep coming because the DRIVER has no idea that the app doesn't need them anymore. This is clearly bad design. In fact it's an inversion of responsibility.

So stop pressing Alt when you are scrolling. Problem solved. Or stop using computers.

In xfce Settings > Settings Editor > xfwm4 > zoom_desktop

He who defends crap work often produces it.

You're complaining about a feature that can be disabled.

As to your determination on why this happens, again, this is outside of the scope of Slackware, which just tries to package upstream packages as they provide them. You need to take these types of bug reports to upstream and hopefully they'll decide to get a fix implemented. If they don't implement a fix, but a patch is available, make the Slackware dev team aware of it and they'll balance the fix against the desire to stay vanilla and will decide what to do.

To be fair, Alien Bob's post was pure provocation and not helpful at all. Obviously the OP knows the problem can be solved by not pressing Alt while scrolling, but I can see how that can be difficult with the whole scrolling "momentum" thing going on if one uses the Alt key frequently in their workflow. He asked how to disable screen zoom, not how to stop pressing Alt.

Correct. The reason? I invite you to visit the content of other posts by this user that he created on this forum.

I don't care to, but I'll take your word for it.

I found the exact same thing keeneadt did after googling "disable alt scroll zoom". The very first link for me is How can I disable Alt-Scroll zoom in Xubuntu 14.04? on askubuntu and the first answer is to do what keeneadt posted.

The real solution isn't to stop pressing alt, and Alien Bob knew that. But it seemed MozillaUser3172 hadn't even tried searching for this and comes in to complain about a feature (since this is a feature on xfce) that can be easily disabled with minimal searching on how to disable it.

No, only the screen zoom part can be disabled.

There are two zooms affected: The screen zoom and the window zoom. The latter is just as problematic.

To explain again, in Firefox if I scroll with momentum and the window hits the top or bottom, the Synaptics "kinetic" momentum feature keeps sending up/down key presses, because the browser has no way to inform it that the scrolling has stopped, thus after scrolling ends one has to wait for a while before pressing CTRL.

So he slanders me and you blindly believe him? Smart.

I assumed it was all well designed. After I posted the original question, I found out that momentum scrolling was implemented as a terrible hack that any respectable programmer should be find repulsive.

Maybe you should provide more information on the post so that people can better help you. You didn't mention your DE at all, but after googling "alt scroll zoom" it seems to imply it is xfce based and led us to provide the answers that were provided.

These are xfce features and if something is not able to be configured, that will need to be addressed through xfce devs. You may also want to try posting in https://forum.xfce.org to see if they're aware of some other option to change the behavior of this function. If this is that frustrating to you, you may want to try a different DE/WM.

Probably doesn't care all that much ;)

Correct.

I am trying to figure out what we are discussing. Sounds like this occurs in the browser. If this is the case, it's a browser issue not a Slackware issue.

Alt+Scroll Up/Down does nothing on my desktop (Plasma5) (Slackware64-curent)

Alt+Scroll in Firefox allows scrolling between pages of history on a selected page (tab). Alt+Scroll Down, move the page to the previous history page, Alt+Scroll UP move the page to the next history page. If there is no history for that page (tab) then nothing happens. I'm not saying this is normal, but this is what happens for me with Firefox (68.6.0esr (64-bit)).

Stop pressing the Alt key might help.

This is not iOS, Android or MacOS.

I am of the opinion that the non-pressing of Alt as an alternative to Alt pressing is a worthwhile pursuit and I will spend a few minutes each day in conscious deliberate preemptive non-pressing of the Alt key. Although I have no present problem with excessive engagement of the Alt key, one cannot be too careful about such matters of weighty import. In the past I had reflexively pressed the F key when I meant to press Esc but after several weeks of concentration and caffeine therapy am I now able to press Esc with relative ease.

It sounds like this might be an xfce feature that can be used on various applications that are opened. It seems like the issue OP is running into is easily found in Firefox when you scroll really fast with a touchpad and then after the page reaches the end and scrolling stops on the screen, pressing alt, but then the touchpad driver continues to attempt to scroll, which activates this feature.

I don't know why OP is running into this issue so frequently... I don't think I've ever had a need to press alt frequently, especially after scrolling. But as I mentioned earlier, OP would need to take this complaint to xfce devs if there is truly no way to turn off this feature (and maybe the xfce forums would help determine that better) or figure out how to get the touchpad driver "fixed" (since OP is so adamant that it is shoddy programming that implemented this scrolling effect in the driver).

Ah okay, a touchpad. :hattip:

I am not a fan of touchpads. I prefer the mouse. Going to have to try this out on one of my laptops.