Control the web with mouse gestures

We’re going to explain how to get mouse gestures working in both the Firefox and Internet Explorer web browsers. We’ll start with Firefox. Internet Explorer-specific instructions are from Step 12 onwards, but we recommend reading the entire Workshop because the preceding steps have lots of general advice on gesture use. Alternatively, if you’re an Internet Explorer user who is curious about using Firefox, then download it now from www.firefox.com. Click on the large green Free Download button and follow the prompts.

Firefox requires an add-on to be controlled by mouse gestures. If you’ve not installed a Firefox add-on before, don’t be alarmed: the job is simple and takes seconds. First, pay a visit to http://addons.mozilla.org. This is the official gathering place for all Firefox add-ons, of which there are thousands. We specifically want one for mouse gesture controls but even so, as you can see from the results of our search, there are still several to choose from. However, from experience we know that Mouse Gestures Redox is a good one, so we’ll click on that.

Now click the Add to Firefox button. Firefox pops up a Software Installation dialogue box with a warning to install only add-ons known to be safe. As we said, Mouse Gestures Redox is a trusted add-on so it’s safe to install. Click the Install Now button. The add-on will be installed in moments. When done, click the Restart Firefox button to finish the job.

Mouse Gestures Redox is now installed and working. If you want to try it out right away make sure that Firefox is the active window (by left-clicking anywhere) and then, with the mouse pointer somewhere within the browser window, hold down the right mouse button, move the mouse directly up a short way and then release the mouse button. That was the gesture for opening a new tab. If you got it right, Firefox will dutifully open a new tab. But that’s just one of dozens of preset gestures. To view some of the most useful, open the View menu, point to Sidebar and then click to tick Mouse Gestures.

This will open a sidebar in the Firefox window showing drawings of the most useful gestures. Use the scrollbar to the right to browse the list. The functions are named on the left, with the little drawings alongside indicating the required gesture. The dot in these pictures shows the notional starting point for the gesture, while the thin line represents the movements that need to be made with the mouse. So, for example, to issue the Back command via a mouse gesture simply hold down the right mouse button and drag the mouse pointer left a short way before releasing the button. The right mouse button, incidentally, is the default ‘trigger’ that prompts Mouse Gestures Redox to recognise a subsequent mouse movement. However, the add-on is highly customisable. In fact it’s possible to define your own gestures.

To tweak the way Mouse Gestures Redox works, first open the Tools menu and then select Add-ons. Now, in the Add-ons dialogue box, find the entry for Mouse Gestures Redox and click the Options button directly beneath. This opens the Mouse Gestures Redox control panel. As noted, the right mouse button is set as the trigger for gestures. This can be changed to the left or middle button, or otherwise modified to require a key to be held down before Firefox will recognise a gesture. However, unless you have a specific reason for doing so, we recommend leaving things just as they are.

Use the tabs across the top of the Mouse Gestures control panel to explore the options. The Visual tab, for instance, has an option labelled ‘Enable mouse trails’. Click to place a tick in this and all future mouse gestures will result in a line drawing appearing as you make the action: these can serve as useful visual references when making more complicated gestures. The colour and thickness of the trails can be set here, too.

Mouse Gestures recognises three different types of gesture: strokes (a couple of which we’ve explored), clicks and scroll wheel actions. For example, instead of performing a back stroke to issue the Back command to Firefox, pressing the right mouse button then the centre button (or scroll wheel button) will have the same effect. Configure which of these are recognised in the Additional tab of the Mouse Gestures control panel. Also here, it’s possible to define some tolerances for recognition. By default, for example, Mouse Gestures will ignore any movement below 15 pixels (about half a centimetre on most monitors). Similarly, gestures begun but paused will be cancelled after one second (that’s the 1,000 milliseconds figure here).

To see a list of existing gestures, click the Edit Gestures button on the General tab. Use the tabs across the top to explore the options. The Browser tab, for instance, lists all active gestures, with the movements in mnemonic form (for example, the DRDLU beside the ‘Add Bookmark’ command means the mouse gesture is down, right, down, left then up). Gesture abbreviations with numbers refer to either mouse buttons (0, 1 or 2) or a diagonal mouse direction (respectively 1, 3, 7, 9 for south-west, south-east, north-west and north-east). Click Edit to change how an existing gesture works. To create a gesture click the New button.

It is possible to build a new gesture by typing in letters and numbers representing movements and button clicks. Alternatively, you can just draw the gesture and Mouse Gestures will record it automatically. Begin by clicking the little orange mouse icon alongside the Gesture code field. This displays a Recognize Gesture drawing window. We’re going to create a gesture that will have Firefox automatically open the Computeractive website from an existing bookmark. To make it easy to remember, the gesture we want to use is the letter ‘C’. So, in the Recognize Gesture window, hold down the right mouse button, draw a letter ‘C’ and release the mouse button. If you mess it up, just click the orange mouse icon and try again.

Now to link our new gesture with the Computeractive bookmark. In the New Gesture dialogue, click the Bookmark tab. Type in a suitable name for the gesture then scroll down the list of bookmarks to find and click the appropriate entry. Use the dropdown menu under the Open in label to define how the bookmark should be opened (in a new tab, say) and then click OK. Also click OK on the Edit Gestures and Mouse Gestures dialogues to close them and then try out the new gesture. In the browser window, hold down the right mouse, draw a ‘C’, release the button and the Computeractive website should appear.

Enabling mouse gestures in Internet Explorer also involves the installation of an add-on, and you’ll need Internet Explorer 8 (if you don’t have it, upgrade, download and install it from www.microsoft.com/ie). Now visit www.snipca.com/x388 and click the Add to Internet Explorer button. When the File Download dialogue box appears, click Run (and click Run again should a Security Warning dialogue box pop up). Work through the setup wizard, click I Agree followed by Install. When finished, restart Internet Explorer.

The Mouse Gestures add-on for Internet Explorer works in a very similar way to the one for Firefox, as we mentioned in Step 1. To view existing gestures, open the Tools menu and choose Mouse Gestures. In the General tab, use the dropdown selections in the Action column to change the action associated with a gesture. New actions can be defined on the Actions tab. Switch on mouse trails (as in Step 7) in the Motion tab.

It’s possible to define new gestures. Click the Gestures tab and draw a gesture in the canvas area on the right-hand side. If the gesture already exists, it will be highlighted in the left-hand gesture list; otherwise, click the ‘+’ symbol to add it as a new one. Move back to the General tab, select the new gesture and then apply an action to it. Click OK and try out the new gesture in the Internet Explorer window.