So I want to make one thing clear before I begin talking about the Chrome 32 Aura scrolling bug. I am an avid user of Chrome and continually encourage others to move to Chrome for Improved security and performance, this is why what I am going to tell you is so frustrating for me (and millions of others I imagine).

The most recent release of Chrome (32.0.1700.76 m) has seen the introduction of new features such as; tab indicators for sound, automatically blocking malware files, changes for stability and performance, and a “mac-ish” style scroll bar (part of the Aura changes).

The new Aura style scroll bar has introduced several bugs that make the internet unusable for Chrome users on Windows 7/8 (using any Aero theme). I imagine that is a lot of users.

The first set of bugs is associated with the ‘Select’ control. If a select box contains enough entries to require scrolling the scroll bar simply stops working. Another is that the last item in a select box is not highlighted in hover.

The second set of bugs is with any popup window (window created with window.open). The first symptom is that the scroll bar will not work, this will shortly (approximately 30 second) be followed by the popup page crashing completely.

When I first noticed these bugs on the 17 Jan I was obviously disappointed/surprised that such serious bugs made it into the “stable” release of Chrome, but what has frustrated me more than anything is the response users have had from Chromium. These bugs were reported on the 16 Jan under two main tickets in the Chromium site, #335248 and #334227. They immediately began to attract frustrated users that had automatic updates turned on:

“Everyone at my work and our clients using the latest Chrome are running into frequent Unresponsive Pages messages like this” “It’s a problem with the scrollbars in panels, and it’s now in STABLE already!!!” “I’m just adding this comment in the hope that, if enough people respond, Google will react more quickly.” “Is anybody listening? A very humble request, please give us a simple provision to stop automatic updates. Let the users decide if they want to update the browser or not.” “When is this issue going to be fixed? It makes Chrome useless for any application having large drop-down <select>s. This is a very SERIOUS matter.” “Right…so to properly digest this is it going to be fixed anytime soon, coz if not – I am going to have to move back to Firefox…”

So I can agree that many of these comments are not constructive or going to aid the developers in fixing this issue, but I would have expected at least a time-frame for such a serious issue. Instead the response has been very limited, only really stating that it’s fixed in the latest Canary release. This issue is affecting all Windows 7/8 users with the Aero theme (default theme) that have automatic updates turned on. Why is there no urgency or time frame for a fix?

If a stable release fix is going to be pushed out within a week then I imagine users will wait, but if it is going to take over a month (time between 31.0.1650.63 release and 32.0.1700.76) then I think users will have to implement one of the workarounds below (I have also published step by step details):

Change windows theme to Windows 7 Basic (may require a certain level of user permission)

Use the scroll wheel or up and down arrows (fix for select box only)

Upgrade to the Beta release / Canary (I would not recommend this)

Move to another browser