Thursday 25 November 2004

Moose Gestures

For a long time (since I started using Opera, then migrated to Mozilla Firefox) I lamented the lack of mouse gestures in Internet Explorer. Not too long ago I set out to locate and install an IE plugin to enable them, because I cannot avoid using IE sometimes. My life is, once again, relatively complete.

For those of you who've never experienced mouse gestures, I'll explain. The civilised people among you can skip ahead. If I want to close a browser window, I don't have to hit any keys or hunt for the X button in the title bar. All I have to do is right-click on the mouse and drag it down then right. Down then left will minimise the window instead. Go left for "back" and right for "forward". Circle a group of links in an anti-clockwise direction and they all open in new browser tabs. It's really amazing how useful they can be.

Mouse gestures are not included in Firefox by default, which is one of the reasons I was initially a little disappointed with the browser. However, an extension is readily available to add gesture support. I also use an ad blocker extension to avoid seeing any annoying ads online.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Seriously, if you've only ever used Explorer, give Firefox a go.
PPS - It's better in so many ways.

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