Comments on: Deal-breakers: Gestures and keybindings in Firefox OS X

Question: Deal-breakers: Gestures and keybindings in Firefox OS X

Mo Nickels — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 12:16:49 -0800

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.

By: Moondoggie

Moondoggie — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 12:30:56 -0800

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.

By: Mo Nickels

Mo Nickels — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 12:39:01 -0800

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.

By: mbrubeck

mbrubeck — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 12:39:45 -0800

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

By: Zed_Lopez

Zed_Lopez — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 12:42:54 -0800

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.

By: mbrubeck

mbrubeck — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 12:53:04 -0800

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.

By: Alex Handcoding

Alex Handcoding — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 12:57:57 -0800

Zed_Lopez: It would appear that Tab Mix only works on Windows & Linux ("Compatibility with Windows and Linux and Mozilla Firefox").

By: Mo Nickels

Mo Nickels — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:03:05 -0800

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.

By: Mo Nickels

Mo Nickels — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:04:41 -0800

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.

By: Mo Nickels

Mo Nickels — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:14:48 -0800

A new user profile, with no extensions and no customizations, using only the default prefs, has exactly the same problem. Going slowly insane.

By: Mo Nickels

Mo Nickels — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:16:07 -0800

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.

By: geeky

geeky — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:17:23 -0800

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

By: Zed_Lopez

Zed_Lopez — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:32:49 -0800

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.

By: cyrusdogstar

cyrusdogstar — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:37:23 -0800

By: Mo Nickels

Mo Nickels — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:45:36 -0800

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!

By: geeky

geeky — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 20:19:45 -0800

No problem - thanks to you, I finally ditched SideTrack which I wasn't too happy with. iScroll seems to be working much better!