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Background info on Firefox zooming capabilities:

When I do the pinch-in movement on my laptop's touchpad on Firefox, the window zooms in, as if it had a magnifying glass. I'll call this the "magnifying zoom".

However, Firefox has 2 other types of zooms. It can zoom only the text (I'll call this "text zoom"), where the CSS property font-size is changed for all text, and it can zoom all elements (I'll call this "elements zoom"), where images, video tags etc., all HTML elements are increased in size.

The main difference between these 3 types of zoom I found are that:

  • the magnifier zoom doesn't change anything about CSS or the page layout, everything stays exactly as it was, the only difference is that the window is magnified, so everything looks bigger.
  • the elements zoom does change the page layout. For example, by increasing the size of HTML elements, it can have the same effect of a media query for a smaller screen size and remove or reorganize column of elements. By changing elements sizes, elements can get reordered around the page. This never happens with the magnifier zoom, where the page remains exactly as it was before, but magnified.
  • the text zoom only changes text size, although this can also trigger a change to the page layout if HTML elements get too big.

I'm currently using a bluetooth keyboard with a touchpad, when I pinch-in using this bluetooth touchpad, I get an elements zoom, instead of a magnifier zoom like the one of my laptop's touchpad. I believe the reason is that my bluetooth touchpad is being recognized as a mouse, and using Ctrl+mouse wheel gets an elements zoom.

Question:

Is there a way to force all pinch in movements or all zooms to be only magnifier zooms? I don't want to change the page layout, I only want to magnify a certain part I can't see properly. Is there a way to pick and choose which kind of zoom I'd like to have?

I only found addons that could let me choose between elements zoom and text zoom, but there's no option for the magnifier zoom.

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  • Some possibilities: 1. In about:config, there are a number of settings that might heklp: search on zoom and scale. Sorry, but I have found little or no info on these settings. 2. As a workaround, use Ctrl with +, - and 0 keys to zoom in, out, and reset to 100%, respectively. Commented Dec 29, 2022 at 1:40
  • @DrMoishePippik Thanks! I tried changing them but weirdly it made no difference, though it should make at least some difference disabling things. Using Ctrl & + or - only triggers the "elements zoom" I talk about, not the "magnifier zoom"
    – flen
    Commented Dec 29, 2022 at 2:59
  • Try built-in OS technology perhaps, such as Windows Magnifier, support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/…, or Ubuntu Zoom, help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/a11y-mag.html.en ? Admittedly, not an answer specifically for Firefox. Commented Dec 29, 2022 at 15:35

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