No scrollbar on Firefox?

[r_avital]

Hello,
Using Kubuntu 18.04, Firefox 63.0.3 (64-bit). Logged on to a site with plenty of information to scroll down (say, a news site). No scrollbar whatsoever in Firefox. Identical version of Firefox on a win10 machine shows scrollbars. I've tried (on the kubuntu machine) to go to about:config in FF, and turn on anything having to do with scrollbars, turn off anything that might disable them, to no avail.

Anyone ever heard of this before?
TIA

[Goeroeboeroe]

As far as I know it's not possible to hide the scrollbar in the settings of Firefox. But since that happens in your case, maybe I don't know enough
It is in theory possible for a site to hide a scrollbar, but that's pretty insane to do. And if it is an issue with the site, the scrollbar would be invisible on Windows too.

Have you tried starting Firefox in safe mode? It will start with every extension, setting, etc. disabled/standard. To do that type in a console:

firefox --safe-mode

and click on 'Start in safe mode'. (NOT on 'refresh')
(Maybe it's too detailed for you, but I don't know how much you know.)
If you have your scrollbar, the issue is probably because of some setting or extension. You can find what setting/extension by changing or disabling everything one by one.

After reading your message again, I think you meant you have nowhere a scrollbar, not only on just one site. Well, that doesn't change the above idea.
I'm still running 14.04, so I don't know how this is working in 18.04, but I've had some problems with scrollbars. That's years ago and I'm no Linux guru at all, so I don't remember what I did to fix that. It was something in the settings of Linux. But I'm afraid if the above solution doesn't work, somebody else here with more knowledge of Linux will have to reply.

[chimak111]

Can you try with the chromium browser on the same os and same machine? What happens there?

[Qqmike]

Since I'm not sure how long tonight I will be around here, and I'm not sure this is the OP's solution anyway, but I'll drop the following just in case it might help somehow. In the following case, there was a scroll bar on the Desktop screen, and it shouldn't be there, and the solution had to do with rendering, as explained here:
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...roll-bar-on-it

[r_avital]

Thanks, solved the problem. See below.

[r_avital]

Yes, in Chromium, the scrollbar shows.
I messed with this a little further, and it turned out to be the GTK3 I was using -- "Clearlooks Phenix" -- The default "Breeze" GTK3 theme showed the scrollbar on FF, just not the color/width I wanted. I did find a "Clearlooks-phenix-master" theme which solved the problem for me (I happen to like a somewhat wide vertical scrollbar). Of course, with the next Kubuntu LTS or next version of FF, this or something else will break again. Never a dull moment.
In any case, thanks to all, and a Happy Thanksgiving!

[chimak111]

I control things by making a ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css file with

scrollbar.vertical slider,
scrollbar.vertical .slider {
min-width: 5px;
}

changing 5px to whatever other value feels right. And that value overrides whatever the theme sets.

And if you add

    background: pink;

you can have pink as the color of the "thumb" which, depending on the theme, may not contrast well enough with the "trough".

Of course, this doesn't apply to non-gtk3 applications, obviously!

And quite off-topic, but you can throw in

* { caret-color: red; }

to make the insertion bar (when your typing text) red but this works only in some gtk3 applications

and I'll stop there!

[jlittle]

I control things by making a ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css file ...

Thank you, that's fantastic. I used to use an add-on to control the scrollbars, but it bit the dust. From a KDE user's perspective GTK has always been a dark art to me. I like very thin scrollbars with a bright thumb, and it would have taken me a long time to discover that background sets the thumb colour.

[chimak111]

Thank you, that's fantastic.

Glad to be of help

[Goeroeboeroe]

Yes, in Chromium, the scrollbar shows.
I messed with this a little further, and it turned out to be the GTK3 I was using -- "Clearlooks Phenix" -- The default "Breeze" GTK3 theme showed the scrollbar on FF, just not the color/width I wanted. I did find a "Clearlooks-phenix-master" theme which solved the problem for me (I happen to like a somewhat wide vertical scrollbar). Of course, with the next Kubuntu LTS or next version of FF, this or something else will break again. Never a dull moment.
In any case, thanks to all, and a Happy Thanksgiving!

Ah, now I remember. That solved it for me too, years ago.

[r_avital]

All excellent info, thanks for that!