FireGestures is a Firefox plug-in that really should be built-in as a feature on every browser. If you’re like me and you spend a lot of time browsing sites like Reddit or Digg, you’ll absolutely love this plug-in.
FireGestures lets you use simple mouse movements to perform various actions within your browser. This makes browsing ridiculously fast and easy because it removes the need to bounce back and forth between the mouse and the keyboard.
In this post, I’m going to go through a few basic gestures that’ll go over the basics of the plug-in. So, let’s get started.
First, let’s go through how to activate FireGestures:
- To activate the gesture controls, press and hold the right mouse button.
- Next, while still holding the right-mouse button, drag the mouse to perform the desired gesture. A green outline will appear on the screen as you are doing this.
- To finish the gesture, release the mouse button.
There, easy eh? Now that we know how to make mouse gestures, let’s go through some of the gestures.
New Tabs (LR)
You can open a new tab in Firefox by gesturing LEFT then RIGHT. If you’re not sure what gesture you are performing, you can see your current gestures in Firefox’s bottom left status bar.
Move Between Tabs (UR, UL)
When using multiple tabs, you can navigate between them by gesture UP then LEFT to move to the left tab, or UP then RIGHt to move to the right tab
Close Tab (DR)
Close the current tab by using the DOWN and RIGHT gesture
Undo Close Tab (RL)
You can reopen your most recently closed tab by gesturing RIGHT and then LEFT
Open Link in New Background Tab (Down on Link)
You can directly open a link in a new background tab( the tab focus will remain on your current tab) by right-clicking on the link and gesturing DOWN.
You can open multiple links in the same way by dragging over the links while holding down on the Ctrl key.
Close Window (URD)
Close the current window by performing the UP, RIGHT, then DOWN gesture
More Gestures
Those are but a few of the awesome (and useful) mouse gestures found in FireGestures. You can find more by going to Tools -> Add-ons, select FireGestures, click Options, and go to the Mappings tab. From there, you can find more gestures, edit current gestures, or even add your own custom gestures.