Firefox Add-on: easyGestures
July 28th, 2007
easyGestures is a great extension for the Firefox browser. What this ingenious add-on does is pop a a well thought out pie menu when you click the mouse. Through this pie menu, you can perform a multitude of actions with hardly any mouse movement at all. While all actions are customizable, the default actions can save you from having to go all the way up to your menus and toolbars, which in turn, saves you time.
After easyGestures is installed, clicking the middle button on your mouse will provide you with this:
By clicking on one of the icons on the menu, it will perform the designated task. However, it doesn’t stop there. Right-clicking the center of the menu will produce this:
While clicking the More… icon on the original menu will produce this:
And right-clicking the center of that menu will produce this:
easyGestures is definitely worth a look. I haven’t been using it very long, yet I am already hooked.
July 28th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
This is a “must have” extension. However, I have found after several attempts that the add-on is not functional for any version later than 4.0.1. For some reason, any of the 4.1 versions don’t seem to work. As a result I have had to turn off the automatic updates. Hopefully this bug will be attended to shortly.
July 29th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
This extension is useless fluff. Middle mouse button is already needed for scrolling. It just looks like so much cheap eye candy. Unforunately, it’s not the only one. The majority of FF extensions are time wasters.
July 29th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
This extension is useless fluff. Middle mouse button is already needed for scrolling. It just looks like so much cheap eye candy. Unfortunately, it’s not the only one. The majority of FF extensions are time wasters.
January 23rd, 2008 at 7:03 pm
I would respectfully disagree with Gord. I use my middle mouse button for scrolling AND for easyGestures — they don’t conflict. This is the most amazing FF add-on I’ve ever seen. It not only allowed me to replace about 5 other add-ons (which the customizable functions reproduced), but I can do things like highlight a word, Google image search it, copy my favorite image from the choices, and open my favorite graphics program, all with only 3 clicks within a few centimeters of mouse movement (and no keyboard). I was able to replace Hyperwords (a feat in and of itself!), Duplicate Tab, 3 add-ons that put extra options in my context menu. I’m positive that it’s capable of replacing many more add-ons while being more convenient to use than the ones being replaced, I just have so few add-ons that I can’t list the others.
The customization capacity of easyGestures is hard to wrap your mind around until you’ve installed it and looked at it.
I think that Iain McLeod’s bug issues have been fixed. The only 2 bugs I’ve found have to do with putting custom or application-specific icons in the pie menu. As nice as it would be to have that fixed, the add-on is a marvel of functionality without it.