Firefox Add-on of the Week: Yet Another Smooth Scrolling

Posted 10/13/2009 at 2:00pm | by Florence Ion

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Minuscule software patches may seem like they contribute the most insignificant changes, but we’re intrinsically aware that these frequent updates are recommended not just for stability and bug fixes, but also for new features. And with Firefox, add-ons have exactly the same effect—with each new add-on, your browser increases in vitality. The Yet Another Smooth Scrolling plug-in has that desired effect; it’s a small addition to your already cluttered library of plug-ins that can do wonders for your Internet browsing experience.

Yet Another Smooth Scrolling customizes your scrolling behavior so that keyboard cursor key scroll stride is no longer short and choppy, and the default scrolling behavior is less sensitive and doesn’t act as if it’s lagging between lines. We installed the add-on to see if it really changed our browsers scrolling behavior, and to our delight, browsing through a web page felt to have more fluidity than previously before. Additionally, we noticed that when we flicked the scroll wheel, the page scrolled further than the trace of the wheel length.  You can also specify three different scroll settings for any particular web environment, like a full .pdf document versus a weblog.  

We did notice that some of the comments mentioned CPU usage going up an extraordinary amount while scrolling. We opened up our Task Manager and noticed that while we were scrolling, CPU usage jumped from 4% to 24%. However, we’re unsure if that has to do with Yet Another Smooth Scrolling or the fact that we had quite a few processes running. Either way, this Firefox add-on is a surefire necessity, and though it may seem all but a little change to such a giant browser, you’ll notice it almost instantly.

Download Yet Another Smooth Scrolling here.

Every Tuesday, we pick a new Firefox Add-on as our favorite of the week. Have an Add-on that you can't live without? Send suggestions to fion [AT] futureus.com with "Firefox Add-On" in the subject line.