Mouse Gestures in Firefox

Posted by Bruce Ganek on Feb 5, 2010 in Firefox Add-ons, Goodies, Tips and Tricks (Hacks), Web | 23 comments

If you find that using the mouse to go to certain menu options is a pain, or you find that you would rather keep your hand on your mouse and not have to put it on the keyboard to type, then you should look at using mouse gestures.

With mouse gestures, a certain pattern you make with the mouse translates to a command.  I have found an add-on for Firefox that does a good job of implementing mouse gestures, it is here and is called All-In-One Gestures Extension.

What does it do?

There are a lot of options within the add-on.  Once you install the add-on from the installation page, you can go to the main menu in Firefox and select the Tools/Add-ons menu.

Selecting the options button will show you the options.

One of the biggest things on this screen for me is the “Mouse Gestures:Prefs” section.  When you use the mouse to signal a command, the mouse movement will draw a line on the screen so you know that you are executing a mouse gesture.

This is a list of the default commands that you can use.  For example, when you hold down the right mouse button and move the mouse to the left, you will be performing the “History Back” command.

There are a bunch of options on this page, the one I am most interested in is the top one, which controls how the mouse gestures are initiated.

So let’s try it!

OK, let’s assume that you have installed the add-on and left all the default settings alone.  What can you do with it?

• Go to a web page, now go to another one.  OK, let’s go back to the previous page – to do so, just hold down the right mouse button and drag your mouse to the left, then release the right mouse button.
• Now, to go back to the forward page, hold down the right mouse button and drag your mouse to the right, then release the right mouse button.
• Want to open a new tab? – hold the right mouse button and move the mouse up, then release the right mouse button.

Creating new mouse gestures

To add a gesture to a command (I wanted to add the Print command for example), go to the Gestures Customization tab in the options window.  Highlight the command you want to add/edit the gesture for.  You can either manually enter the command (using the first letter of the direction as a command – for example – right-left-right would be rlr) or click the draw button.

Clicking the draw button will bring up a drawing screen.

Hold down the right button and draw the gesture you want.  When you let go of the right mouse button, the commands will be put in the new gesture box (RLRL in this case).  Click the OK button to the right of the gesture box and you are all set.

Rocker Navigation

This has to do with pressing the two buttons (on a two button mouse, left/right on a three button mouse).  The two operations you can do (note, this can be disabled) are:

• Hold down the right mouse button and then click the left button – you will go back in history one page.
• Hold down the left mouse button and then click the right button – you will go forward one page in history.

Other things

As you can see from the option screen snapshots, this add-on can do a lot of other things.  I’ve given you the main things that I use it for.  Since I don’t have a middle button mouse, there are some things that I can not do with it so I haven’t tried.  I’m looking forward to seeing what other people have discovered about it.

Reprinted from “My view of technology”