How to stop maps zooming in or out on paging up or down?

Question

How to stop maps zooming in or out on paging up or down?

On Macbooks, the trackpad causes certain webpage windows to zoom in (swiping up) or zoom out (swiping down). Mostly this happens with windows that show maps, but other windows, too. This causes me no end of irritation, since it happens many times every day. I swipe down a web page, completely unsuspecting and in doing so I swipe over a window that totally zooms out, making it impossible to see what was there. In the case of a map window, this moves the center point of the map to a default setting, far from where it was centered. It takes readjustment to recenter it where I needed it.

There is no need to have this trackpad function, since just about every map on the web comes with a built in zoom control that is sufficient. So I'd like to turn this particular trackpad function off. But I haven't found a way to do this.

Anyone know how? (Assuming it possible to turn it off. Otherwise I believe Apple should reprogram its trackpad. I do not want zoom function included.)

MacBook, OS X El Capitan (10.11.2)

Posted on Jan 10, 2016 9:35 AM

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Answer 1

Jan 11, 2016 1:35 PM in response to my ginger

So there are two track pad zoom functions that can be turned off: pinch with two fingers (which I always had turned off), and double-tap to zoom in and out, which is turned on. The problem I described does not arise with either of these trackpad functions that can be turned off.

This is how the problem arises:

Two fingers swiping up or down the track pad is the way I usually move up and down a page. I find it much more convenient than using the vertical scroll bar, so I always use the track pad to page up and down.

Unfortunately, this track pad function is DOUBLE programmed. Apple has given the track pad vertical swipe two different functions. (1) page up and down, and (2) zoom in and out. To my way of thinking, this should not be. The zoom function on the track pad is superfluous and causes a problem, i.e., the problem that I described, where windows become may uninterpretable because of accidentally being zoomed fully in or out. There is no way to turn off the track pad swipe-zoom function.

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Answer 2

Lanny

Level 6

13,225 points

Jan 11, 2016 1:38 PM in response to Richard Kapit

I repeat, "The main way is to just make sure that cursor isn't positioned on top of the map's area when you start moving your two fingers."

Just make sure the cursor is not over top of any maps when you use the 2 finger scrolling.

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Answer 3

Jan 11, 2016 1:41 PM in response to Lanny

As regards Lanny's advice: Yes of course, I try to remember to do this. But I often don't remember. Also, I don't always know that a web page I'm perusing has a zoomable window or where on the web page it is. I don't see why track pad is zoomable with the swipe, when there is the pinch to zoom with and the zoom control built into the window. It serves no useful purpose to have a second way - swiping up or down - of zooming with a trackpad, especially because this second method is ambiguous in controlling two different functions (page up and down, zoom in and out.)

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Answer 4

Lanny

Level 6

13,225 points

Jan 11, 2016 1:55 PM in response to Richard Kapit

The zooming feature is not standardized. For example, with Apple Maps, it is done by pinching, in Google Maps it's done by using 2 fingers up and down.

Because many web sites embed maps using Google, guess what, 2 fingers do the zooming. There wouldn't be any way that Apple could change the way a Google sourced map functions.

I like and use the 2 finger scrolling with my Magic Trackpad and my MacMini and with my MacBook's built-in trackpad. It's an annoyance, but I just make sure that I keep the cursor near one of the side margin areas to avoid the issue when scrolling.

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