Why does Scrollwheel stop working in some websites in Chrome?

While browsing random sites on stumbleupon, I've found a fair number of sites that I can't scroll with the mousewheel in Chrome. I keep wondering if it's something in the webpage, or an error, or some weird behavior resulting from a combination of plugins/extensions I have installed in Chrome.

Here is an example that came up today: (Link removed). In this particular page, scrolling works fine in FF/IE, so it must be something to do with my particular extensions.

These are the extensions I have active currently:

  • AdBlock
  • AdBlock Plus
  • Alert Control
  • Better Pop Up Blocker
  • imgur Extension
  • LastPass
  • middle button new tab
  • Quick JavaScript Switcher

I've noticed a couple of things:

  • If I disable JavaScript (e.g., with Quick JavaScript Switcher), scrolling works again
  • If I allow pop-ups on that page with Better Pop Up Blocker, scrolling works as well.

What is going on? Why would disallowing popups prevent the mousewheel from working on certain web pages?


Your extensions are modifying webpages to be different than the pages developer intended. Adblock and Adblock Plus remove elements and block scripts which are many times essential for webpages to work correctly. You see this a lot on video websites where disabling or allowing certain scripts allows videos to play correctly.

I would use one adblocker since running Adblock and Adblock Plus at the same time is redundant. Keep your trackers up to date to reduce issues due to website changes.

As for hardware, some mice have settings you can tweak within the operating system and even per application so middle click might open a new tab in Chrome but prompt a print dialogue in another browser. Something like that.

To understand the software side, if I make a website and the footer has an ad and your ad blocker removes the entire footer, my webpage could break because scripts rely on the footer to run, scripts are loaded in the footer, or something as simple as the webpage no longer displays correctly because there is no defined bottom of the page.