Deal-breakers: Gestures and keybindings in Firefox OS X

July 28, 2005 12:16 PM

Firefox deal-breakers. 1. Instead of scrolling the page, panning use the trackpad on OS X goes back one page in the cache. 2. I want to change the keybinding to so that control-click on a link opens in a new background tab, instead of in a new foreground tab.

Scrolling using the trackpad is made available in the latest Powerbooks and iBooks, but I also had the problem when using uControl on previous generation iBooks and and now using iScroll, which enables the feature on iBooks in which the feature is crippled by Apple. By holding two fingers on the trackpad instead of one, I can scroll up and down or back and forth on a page, same as if I had a scroll wheel. Instead, in Firefox, it takes this is a backward and forward command, same as hitting the back and forward buttons on the browser. This has been an issue for over a year and is the number one reason I rarely use Firefox. There are at least four other people who have mentioned this problem elsewhere on the Internet, but none have posted a solution. I have installed every applicable extension there is in an attempt to disable--and later, when that didn't work, delete--all mouse gestures, rocker gestures, scrollwheel navigation, and middle button scrolling, to no avail. I have fiddled with settings in about:config, especiall those that include "mouse," "gest," or "scroll," to no avail, but that was mostly guesswork.

The second problem is much less a deal-breaker but still an annoyance. Firefox uses shift-command-click to open a link in a background tab; I want it to behave like Safari and use command-click to open a link in a background tab. Right-click (or control-click) and then choosing "open in new tab" is an annoyance when you've got years invested of reinforced behavior doing it a quicker way.

posted by Mo Nickels to computers & internet (15 comments total)

Don't know about #1, but check through all of your prefs for #2. I think there's one for "Open new tab behind current" or somesuch. I'm on a PC here at work and can't check. My Mac at home always opens a command-click as a background tab.
posted by Moondoggie at 12:30 PM on July 28, 2005

I think there's one for "Open new tab behind current" or somesuch.

Of course there is. But that doesn't have anything to do with the keyboard command, which is what I want to change.
posted by Mo Nickels at 12:39 PM on July 28, 2005

For #2, in the Advanced preferences, under "Tabbed Browsing," turn OFF the option to "Select new tabs opened from links."
posted by mbrubeck at 12:39 PM on July 28, 2005

2. Install Tab Mix.

Tools -> Extensions -> Tab Mix -> Mouse

Check Ctrl-Click functions as middle click

Tax Mix offers a host of other things to make tabbed browsing much more useful, too.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 12:42 PM on July 28, 2005

For #1, the default settings are mousewheel.withnokey.action=0 (scroll) and mousewheel.withshiftkey.action=2 (go backward and forward). Is this what you see in about:config?

By the way, both #1 and #2 should be set up correctly by default. Have you tried deleting your profile folder and starting with a clean profile?

If this doesn't work for you even with the default settings, it sounds like Firefox thinks your shift key is down for some reason. Is the key on the keyboard stuck? Have you enabled sticky keys by accident? Then press shift 5 times to disable it.
posted by mbrubeck at 12:53 PM on July 28, 2005

Zed_Lopez: It would appear that Tab Mix only works on Windows & Linux ("Compatibility with Windows and Linux and Mozilla Firefox").
posted by Alex Handcoding at 12:57 PM on July 28, 2005

For #1, the default settings are mousewheel.withnokey.action=0 (scroll) and mousewheel.withshiftkey.action=2 (go backward and forward). Is this what you see in about:config?

Yes, this is what my settings show. My shift key is not stuck and sticky keys are not enabled.

I installed Tab Mix, but it has effectively killed my browser. No bookmarks appear and no web sites will load. Removing it resolves the issue. Besides, I need "ctrl-click" is not what I'm after; only "command-click" will do. Ctrl-click would also invoke the contextual menu, which would be an annoyance.
posted by Mo Nickels at 1:03 PM on July 28, 2005

For #2, in the Advanced preferences, under "Tabbed Browsing," turn OFF the option to "Select new tabs opened from links."

This was already unchecked and it does nothing. The problem still persists.

I'll try a new user profile and see if that helps.
posted by Mo Nickels at 1:04 PM on July 28, 2005

A new user profile, with no extensions and no customizations, using only the default prefs, has exactly the same problem. Going slowly insane.
posted by Mo Nickels at 1:14 PM on July 28, 2005

I take that back: command-click behaves like it's supposed to! But the scrolling left to right is still treated as a "back in browser cache" instruction.
posted by Mo Nickels at 1:16 PM on July 28, 2005

according to iScroll 2 page:

Finally, FireFox users should note that FireFox by default is set to interpret any horizontal scrolling as forward/back. In conjunction with iScroll2 (or other means of allowing horizontal scrolling), this can lead to unintentional jumping between pages. Fortunately, FireFox' default behavior can be changed as follows:

* go to about:config (i.e. type it in FireFox' address field)
* set mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action to 0
* set mousewheel.withnokey.sysnumlines to false
* play around with the mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.numlines and mousewheel.withnokey.numlines values until you're satisfied with the scrolling speed

posted by geeky at 1:17 PM on July 28, 2005

Alex Handcoding: It would appear that Tab Mix only works on Windows & Linux

Mo Nickels: I installed Tab Mix, but it has effectively killed my browser.

Oops. Sorry, not a Mac guy; I didn't think it mightn't work on Macs.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 1:32 PM on July 28, 2005

See also =)
posted by cyrusdogstar at 1:37 PM on July 28, 2005

Damn, geeky, thanks. That was not there the last time I checked. I should have checked again just for coverage before posting here.

Also thanks to mrbrubeck for the rebuild profile suggestion. I hated to do it because it meant resetting a bunch of prefs and things, but his push was enough to convince me that it needed to be done. It did indeed resolve the command-click issue.

Another successful Ask Mefi!
posted by Mo Nickels at 1:45 PM on July 28, 2005

No problem - thanks to you, I finally ditched SideTrack which I wasn't too happy with. iScroll seems to be working much better!
posted by geeky at 8:19 PM on July 28, 2005