Okay, let me step this out:
Compaq Evo N1020v
Mandrake Linux 10.1
Firefox 1.5.0.1
Konquerer 3.2.3
KDE 3.2.3
Touchpad, can't find make on it.

Here is what it is doing:
Firefox: Sliding the pointer from right to left with the touch pad (which is the only option, no external mouse) causes the browser to go to the previous page. So if I scroll down a page and then slide the pointer out to click on something, I end up one or two pages back. I think this is because of the mouse shortcut in firefox where shift+scroll down is supposed to do this, but I'm not holding the shift key down.

Konquerer: Sliding the pointer causes the window to scroll around depending on what scroll bars are available, but it at least makes sense... up and down scrolls up and down, left and right - left and right.

I'm thinking this is a malfunction with the touchpad because I cannot find a setting that controls this. Perhaps if I could shut off the mouse shortcuts in firefox, that browser would be usable.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Sounds like your touchpad is configured to have horizontal scroll "wheel". You probably need to edit X server settings and/or install Synaptics Touchpad driver.

Type man synaptics in command prompt to see more information about the settings.