[Resolved] Horizontal scrollbar - FireFox 3 on XP

alanrf · 29th June 2009

Is there any reason for, or solution to, the non-appearance of the horizontal scrollbar when a page is displayed on an XP box. No problem on Vista with the same page.

There is no Mozilla specific code built into the page, so it is all rather perplexing. I have the feeling that this my be a FireFox / XP issue but specific details are not easy to find.

**TonyT** · 29th June 2009

A Web page should not have a horizontal scrollbar unless elements on the page are coded wider than the viewing area. Are you saying that horizontal scrollbars never actually appear, even when the window is resized smaller? Some toolbars, extensions and themes can cause missing scrollbars. Start FF in its safe mode and test.

alanrf · 29th June 2009

In total agreement regarding the optimum width of a page. However, if a user has a different viewport configuration, say 1024x768 a page that works well in say 1280x800 the scroll-bar nay be needed.

Also, some users, for whatever reason, may compress their viewport horizontally so that the scroll is needed.

The issue only occurs on the Ffx / XP combination and does not occur on any other other browser / OS combination.

Even when pages are viewed on an iPhone, the scroll is possible.

**wildfire** · 29th June 2009

Alan,

No help I know but I'm using XP Home SP3 here with FF 3.0.11 and the horizontal toolbar appears whenever expected.

Have you tried FF's Safe Mode like Tony suggested?

alanrf · 29th June 2009

Hmmm! Yes indeed. In Safe mode the scroll bar does appear.

All I did was enter Safe mode and tried a couple of known 'problem pages' and the bar appeared.

No plug ins were disabled and no changes were made.

Not sure where to go next.

**Westside** · 29th June 2009

In Safe Mode, all add-ons are disabled. Add-ons and plugins are not the same thing.

**wildfire** · 29th June 2009

When in safe mode the addons are disabled. Try disabling them one at a time to see if you can determine the cause.

alanrf · 30th June 2009

Thanks for all of your input.

I have resolved the issue now. It appears that there is a conflict with the Google Toolbar. (version 3.1.20081127W)

In the Options / Layout tab you can choose between
1 Classic Toolbar layout,
2 Replace FireFox search bar
3 Replace FireFox search bar and hide Toolbar.

My local configuration was #2, which blocked the horizontal scrollbar.

Changing the configuration to #1 has resolved the issue.

This issue appears to be specific to XP and I cannot reproduce it on Vista which works 'properly' as configured with #2 configured.