Absolute Scrolling

A Firefox and Chromium extension that turns middle-button dragging into direct page positioning. Cursor displacement maps to the page's full scroll range, so scrolling stops as soon as the cursor stops.

Quick usage

1. Hold the middle mouse button over a page or scrollable panel.
2. Move up or down to scroll vertically, left or right to scroll horizontally, or move diagonally for both.
3. Stop moving to stop scrolling. Release the button to finish.

The position where you press is the anchor. Returning the cursor to that point returns the page to its starting position. Press Escape to cancel a gesture, or hold Alt before pressing the middle button to let the page handle the click normally.

Vertical movement defaults to 1×: moving through 20% of the viewport moves through about 20% of the vertical scroll range. Horizontal movement defaults to 4×, so the same movement covers about 80% of the horizontal range.

Open the toolbar popup to:

• Turn middle-button scrolling on or off.
• Set separate vertical and horizontal multipliers from 0.25× to 20× in 0.25× steps.
• Disable the extension on the current page, an entire site, or a custom URL pattern.

Install

Absolute Scrolling requires a desktop browser and a mouse with a middle button.

Install Firefox from a GitHub release

For permanent installation, choose a GitHub release containing a signed .xpi, then:

1. Open about:addons in Firefox.
2. Select Install Add-on From File from the settings menu.
3. Select the downloaded .xpi and confirm Add.

The extension stays installed after Firefox restarts.

Try it from source

Use the same about:debugging page, click Load Temporary Add-on…, and select extension/manifest.json from this repository. After changing the code, click Reload beside Absolute Scrolling and reload any open webpages.

Install permanently

Standard Firefox requires extensions to be signed by Mozilla. Releases created with signing enabled contain a signed .xpi. Unsigned release ZIPs and Build Firefox workflow artifacts are intended for temporary testing or submission.

See Mozilla's guides for temporary installation and signing and distribution.

Load unpacked in Chromium browsers

Chrome, Chromium, Edge, and Brave can load the extension directly from a folder; no Store account or publishing is needed.

1. Open Actions → Build Chromium, choose Run workflow, select the branch, and leave tag empty. You can also use an existing successful build.
2. Open the completed run, download chromium-bundle under Artifacts, and extract the ZIP. GitHub requires you to be signed in to download workflow artifacts.
3. Open the browser's extensions page: chrome://extensions, edge://extensions, or brave://extensions.
4. Turn on Developer mode.
5. Click Load unpacked and select the extracted folder containing manifest.json.
6. Open or reload a normal webpage, then pin the extension from the toolbar's extensions menu if desired.

No version tag or signing credentials are required. Keep the extracted folder in place while the extension is installed.

To build locally instead:

1. In this repository, run npm run build:chromium (Node.js 22 or later is required).
2. Open the browser's extensions page: chrome://extensions, edge://extensions, or brave://extensions.
3. Turn on Developer mode.
4. Click Load unpacked and select this repository's dist/chromium folder.

To use the extension on local file: URLs, open its details on the extensions page and enable Allow access to file URLs. Re-run npm run build:chromium after source changes, then click Reload for the unpacked extension.

For a lasting download link, manually run Release Chromium with a version tag. It publishes a development ZIP without signing credentials. Its optional signing checkbox also adds a .crx when CHROMIUM_PRIVATE_KEY is configured. A CRX signed with the project's key is not Chrome Web Store signing; standard Chrome on Windows and macOS restricts installation of self-hosted CRX files to managed environments. Use Load unpacked for development. See Chrome's distribution guide.

Disable on selected pages

Open the toolbar popup and scroll to Disabled pages:

• Disable this page excludes the current URL path.
• Disable this site excludes every HTTP and HTTPS page on the current hostname.
• URL pattern lets you exclude a custom group of pages.
• Remove enables matching pages again, unless another saved pattern still matches.

Rules take effect on open pages immediately and stay on your device. Query strings and #fragments are ignored.

Pattern	Matches
https://example.com/docs/page	That exact HTTPS path
https://example.com/docs/*	Paths beginning with /docs/
*://example.com/*	Every HTTP and HTTPS path on that hostname
*://*.example.com/*	The hostname and all its subdomains
file:///path/to/documents/*	Local files beneath that path

A bare value such as example.com/docs/* is shorthand for *://example.com/docs/*. Paths are case-sensitive. These are URL patterns, not regular expressions.

Compatibility

• The nearest scrollable panel under the cursor is used; otherwise the document scrolls.
• Vertical, horizontal, diagonal, nested-panel, frame, shadow-DOM, and right-to-left scrolling are supported.
• A gesture stays in its original scroll container instead of spilling into the outer page at an edge.
• Links, form controls, editable content, media, canvas, and draggable elements keep their normal middle-click behavior.
• Normal wheel scrolling and left/right clicks are unchanged.

Browsers do not allow extensions on protected pages such as about: and chrome: pages, their built-in PDF viewers, and some vendor sites. A site with custom mouse or scrolling behavior may also conflict with the gesture. If a page does not respond, check that the browser granted the extension access to that site.

Privacy

The extension makes no network requests and transmits no data. It stores only the enabled state, movement multipliers, and disabled URL patterns on your device. Page content, browsing history, and mouse positions are not stored.

The tabs permission lets the popup read the current URL and keeps page exclusions working in frames and after in-page navigation. The content script runs on supported webpages so it can handle the gesture.

Development

Build instructions, tests, release steps, implementation details, and the project layout are in DEVELOPMENT.md.

License

MIT