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I'm trying to make Gmail's new look usable on my small 1024x768 screen - the default layout leaves only a small window for the messages, surrounded by unmoving elements. Scrolling that small window around is massively annoying.

I've managed to make the entire page scrollable using a Stylish user style (a modified version of this one):

@-moz-document domain('mail.google.com'), 
 url-prefix('https://mail.google.com/mail') {

.akc.lKgBkb,
.oLaOvc.aeJ,
.lKgBkb.nH.oy8Mbf,
.lKgBkb.ajl.aib
{
  height: auto !important;
  overflow: hidden !important;
}

#canvas_frame { overflow-y: scroll; }

.l2 { padding-bottom: 20px !important; }

}

The elements that were supposed to have scrollbars now have height: auto, and what is scrolled is the whole outer page (in #canvas-frame) that was supposed to remain static.

I'm mostly satisfied with the effect -- it works almost like the old Gmail did. There is, however, a problem - scrolling with keyboard (arrow keys, PgUp/PgDn, Home/End) stopped working. Any ideas on how to fix that?

Nightfirecat
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hmp
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    I've spent an hour trying to make it work. It seems to be impossible. Gmail catch all keyboard events and use it in its encrypted JavaScript code. It's very complicated to add some other JavaScript to provide this functionality. And without scrollbar it just doesn't work because Gmail're trying to scroll iframe, not entire page. – Pavel Strakhov May 03 '12 at 17:22
  • How much of the screen are you wanting to use for messages? On my system (Firefox 12 / Windows) at 1024x768, I get a message view of roughly 830x519 pixels (excluding scrollbars), or 81% of the width and 68% of the height. Pressing F11 to get full-screen changes the message area height to 653 pixels, or roughly 85% of the screen; this is pretty usable at my end – Geoff May 03 '12 at 20:12
  • Riateche: Thank you very much, now I know I probably shouldn't bother trying. – hmp May 04 '12 at 07:25
  • Geoff: 830x450 pixels for me. I could change my browsing habits -- reorganize the browser look, use fullscreen -- but it would still be a huge inconvenience. In my case, Gmail's layout change is unambiguously for the worse, so I'm doing what I can to undo it. – hmp May 04 '12 at 07:33

2 Answers2

1

Have you tried looking for a ready solution? While a DIY approach is admirable, chances are someone already made the change in-depth, especially given some users' dissatisfaction with the new look options.

The file linked here (no affiliation) under "Greasemonkey users can also install this style as user script" could be a good starting point; although I'd go through it in greater detail and remove any odd 3rd party url references etc.

Oleg
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    Yes, I've seen this script. It does fix scrolling, but also tries to restyle everything, breaking it in some places (like the titles in conversation view). I would try to reverse-engineer it, but it *doesn't do what I want* anyway - keyboard scrolling still doesn't work, and this is the one problem I'm trying to solve. – hmp May 02 '12 at 09:39
0

I'm using Firefox 12 on Ubuntu and I don't see internal scrollbars. The messages pane scrolls via the main scrollbar. Either they fixed this for you already or more information is needed. What browser are you using?

SubOne
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  • I'm using Firefox 12 on Windows 7. Gmail defaults to the "compact" view (and in fact refuses to display anything else). Without the modification it looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/kANmo.png – hmp May 02 '12 at 20:57