Tim, the Enchanter

What manner of man are you that can summon up code without C# or Java?

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Autoscroll in Safari, Firefox

The Autoscroll Bookmarklet

Bookmarklets are actually a cool little concept – make a link that runs a JavaScript command and inject code into any web-page. Brilliant! Combine this with an obsessive computer nerd with some free time on a Saturday evening (for example, me), and you get following:

Autoscroll – The Bookmarklet

Works in Safari and Firefox. If you’re lucky it might work in Opera, Camino, and Konqueror. If you’re at least as lucky as this guy, it might work in IE.

Usage

Click the really big link above to activate auto-scroll (you may want to make your window small enough to have significant scroll space

Here’s the buttons to push:

0-9	: Set scroll speed, 0 being stand-still and 9 being skim-speed
–	: Decrease speed
=	: Increase speed
shift + –	: Decrease speed quickly
shift + =	: Increase speed quickly
q	: Quit

Installation:

If you’d like to pack this sweet action with you, drag the “Autoscroll” link to your bookmarks tool bar.

posted by Tim Harper # 11:07 PM

Comments:

Nice. I wasted a few hours trying to get firefox or opera to scroll for a telepromter. Now I can click and go, while adjusting on the fly using a keyboard.

# posted by

TheStandUpPhysicist : November 17, 2008 8:55 PM

Thank you! Since I can't use a mouse, Firefox's native autoscroll function is inaccessible to me. But now I can click the link with Mouseless Browsing, and there it goes. Beats losing a keyboard key to an AutoHotKey script.

# posted by

hand2mouth : May 6, 2009 9:07 AM

Hey, I'm certainly glad you found it useful! Thanks for stopping by :)

I saw your post about Dragon's inability to middle click... bummer. I'm a big fan of DNS myself, and am considering either buying MacSpeech, or upgrading to 10 and staying with Parallels. How do you like DNS 10?

# posted by

Tim Harper : May 6, 2009 9:20 AM

FYI, this script has saved me from tendonitis. I use it daily. Thank you.

# posted by

pope52 : May 13, 2009 8:29 AM

Thanks. Really useful.

# posted by

goborobo : June 7, 2009 1:19 AM

Gracias Awesome setup/play...

-jmnoq

# posted by

jonathan : June 19, 2009 6:06 PM

This is great. Thanks so much!

# posted by

Angela : August 28, 2009 3:01 PM

What a good bookmarklet it is! But it doesn't work in iPhone safari.　Prease make it for iPhone!!!

# posted by

yamamoto : September 17, 2009 10:02 PM

I was looking for a way to slow down auto scrolling using a mouse and found this site. This is exactly what I wanted but using the keyboard. I see lots of queries regarding this but no similar answers for mouse control. Thanks for your efforts. There is obviously a need for this to read on line.
Dave

# posted by

David : October 1, 2009 1:27 AM

Tim,

I use your this bookmarklet daily and was curious how to modify the code such as to set a new default scroll speed.

Thanks for making this available.

Best,
Tom

# posted by

Tom : December 9, 2009 12:24 PM

Hey Tom,

The source code is in there. It's a bit encoded, but with a little bit of effort you could decode it easily. Then search for a bookmarklet encoder to encode it back up again.

The speeds are there at the top. It's an array of [pixels to move, delay between movements]. It's using a logarithmic scale, doubling the amount of pixels and the delay every time the delay goes below 25 (browsers tank at that threshold).

# posted by

Tim Harper : December 9, 2009 1:34 PM

Found it. Somehow I'd missed ss_speed variable in the URL encoding, so I wasn't understanding how you set the default scroll value.

To those who want to do likewise, just change "ss_speed=1" to whatever predefined speed you want. The number corresponds to the scroll speed key you'd press on your keyboard.

Best,
Tom

# posted by

Tom : December 9, 2009 1:56 PM

Esc does not seem to work. 0 stops scrolling. Esc does nothing. Not sure what it's supposed to do. Running Snow Leopard, Safari, on a Mac Pro.

# posted by

Weeb : December 16, 2009 10:47 AM

hmm... it used to :S Maybe Safari changed the keycode sent by escape.

At any rate, been thinking about mapping it to Q as well.

# posted by

Tim Harper : December 16, 2009 10:49 AM

Nicely done. Tweeted and FBed.

# posted by

decaturcomp : December 17, 2009 10:29 AM

Brilliant! What an incredible time saver. Used in conjunction with Readability (both recommended by ScreenCastsOnline's Don McAllister) your service is truly enchanting.

# posted by

Doc : January 2, 2010 10:52 AM

Please help me out.I've been enjoying using this bookmarklet! My question is, how do I start scrolling without using the mouse? I was searching for the answer to that, to no avail...Mouseless Browsing does not help with a bookmark...or, at least I could not find how to do that... Anyone, help me start scrolling with keyboard?

# posted by

EverEvolving : January 19, 2010 9:53 AM

@everevolving:

You could just assign a keyword to it: just open the bookmarks manager, select your bookmark in the bookmark toolbar folder, expand the little arrow to get more options, and type "as" under "keyword".

With this setting, whenever you type in "as" in the address bar, auto scroll will get invoked.

There may be a better solution, like some Firefox plug-in that enables you to set hotkeys to bookmarks, but without any additional extensions, this should do the job and allow you to activate it without having to use the mouse.

# posted by

Tim Harper : January 19, 2010 10:04 AM

Hello Tim,

Can I use this script in a Firefox Add-on? Also could you contant me via cotcaro (at) gmail . com

# posted by

cotcaro : January 29, 2010 5:34 PM

I love this. Thanks to 30DCplus for this great tip

# posted by

Elke : February 12, 2010 3:58 AM

Thanks! this will be great for reading drum tabs while playing.. heck any tabs at all

# posted by

Chad : June 23, 2010 3:08 PM

IS there a way where once it gets the the bottom if a webpage to automatically return to the top and scroll down again? Like a looping scroll?

# posted by

Dallin : January 31, 2011 12:40 PM

not without modifying the source code, no. However, with modifying the source code, the sky is practically the limit.

# posted by

Tim Harper : January 31, 2011 12:42 PM

Can it work on an iPad?

# posted by

Richard : May 30, 2011 12:19 AM

@Richard - you'd probably need to modify it to work on an iPad. I mean, it might work as is if you hooked up a bluetooth keyboard. It's the lack of a keyboard that might be a problem.

# posted by

Tim Harper : May 30, 2011 12:55 PM

Tim, the Enchanter

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Autoscroll in Safari, Firefox

The Autoscroll Bookmarklet

Usage

Installation:

Archives