Very tiny scroll bar in GNOME Shell

Question

I have recently upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10 with GNOME Shell. Everything is okay except the scroll bar, especially in Firefox. It's very, very tiny, especially in long pages!

Also, I don't know why there is a very small gap between scroll bar and border of screen so I can't click on scroll bar without seeing it .

Screenshot:

Answer 1

One can tweak the scrollbars of Firefox assuming that the overlay scrollbars aren't being used. Unfortunately,if I understand correctly, scrollbars (in Firefox) are "anonymous content". That means one can't tweak them using userChrome.css or userContent.css. To tweak scrollbars, I use the Stylish extension for Firefox.

After you've installed it, you'll be able to style your scrollbars: Here's my very simplistic version:

@namespace xul url(http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul);   
/*scrollbars*/
scrollbar { -moz-appearance: none !important; background: #777 !important}
scrollbar[orient="vertical"] { width: 7px !important}
scrollbar[orient="horizontal"] { height: 7px !important}
scrollbar thumb {
-moz-appearance: none !important; 
-moz-border-radius: 4px !important;
background: maroon !important;
min-width: 8px !important;
max-width: 8px !important;
border: 1px !important;
}

If you go over to the forum for that extension and look around, you'll find more parameters to tweak.

As already pointed out, the length of the vertical scrollbar is usually a function of the length of the web page. There maybe a way to set a minimum length but I haven't looked for that.

Answer 2

I think the problem is not with the scrollbar, but rather with with the web page itself. Regardless, I was hoping that you might be able to change the min size of the scroll bar by using a custom userChrome.css file, but apparently not. After some reading, it appears that the only way to deal with the problem might be to use a different theme.

Source:
http://www-archive.mozilla.org/unix/customizing.html#userContent
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1337875
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1405635

Answer 3

I use ubuntu 11.10 in a tablet and I had the same problem with the scrollbar. I don't have a perfect solution, because it depends on the theme (If you're not sure what theme are you usnig install ubuntu tweak to serch it; mine is Ambiance) and the programs that you're using, but I follow those steps and it's OK for me now:

1- Remove overlay-scrollbars (for unity)

2- Edit /usr/share/themes/Ambiance/gtk-2.0/gtkrc and increase those values

GtkScrollbar::slider-width
GtkScrollbar::min-slider-length

3- Edit /usr/share/themes/Ambiance/gtk-3.0/gtk-widgets and increase

GtkScrollbar-min-slider-length 
GtkRange-slider-width (there are several items, look for the one inside .scrollbar)

I've increase length to 51 and width to 23 and I'm happy with those values in my tablet (11.6" - 1366x768 pixels). You need to modify both files because gtk2.0 controls for example firefox and thunderbird, and gtk-3.0 controls for example nautilus and gedit. There are lots of tweaks that you can make in both files, I've added

GtkScrollbar::has-backward-stepper = 0 GtkScrollbar::has-forward-stepper = 0

to /usr/share/themes/Ambiance/gtk-2.0/gtkrc to remove the ugly arrows in firefox and thunderbird.

You can see some pictures, all of them with my minimum scrollbar width and length:

Good luck!