Post Archive

› November 8, 2001

Gestures

  • Reported by Nate

Do you use mozilla to surf the web? If not, go and download it - it isn't clunky and weird anymore, it's turned into a great browser for everyday use. And while you're at it - add on "Gestures", an Optimoz product which makes reaching to the top left corner of your screen for the back button irrelevant. With gestures you can set a few options to your liking and then have the following features available by simply dragging your mouse in certain patterns:

Forward in History = Right
Backward in History = Left
Reload = Up-Down
Reload (bypass cache) = Up-Down-Up
Go To Homepage = Down-Up-Right-Down (draw a squarish lowercase h)
New Document = Down
Duplicate Window = Down-Up
Up a directory in the URL = Up-Left-Up
Close Document (window or tab) = Right-Left-Right or Down-Right

and there are more.

Comments

1. November 8, 2001 06:47 AM

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Nate Posted…

I forgot to mention that, like almost any product I'll pitch here "gestures" is completely free.

2. November 8, 2001 10:03 AM

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francois Posted…

I first saw this in Opera 5.12 (among other notes on faster surfing on my site. I'm glad the idea is catching on. I wonder who did it first?

3. November 8, 2001 10:28 AM

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Andy Edmonds Posted…

Opera did it first in a web browser. Check the Optimoz page for a historical breakdown, but I believe the answer is Dan Hopkiins @1974 with pie menus, which are just gestures with visual feedback.

4. November 8, 2001 11:48 AM

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francois Posted…

In case anyone's interested, I'm familiar with one application that uses pie menus -- the unique DENIM prototyping tool, recently featured on sweetcode.

5. November 8, 2001 11:50 AM

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francois Posted…

...recently featured on sweetcode. (Don't know what happened to the last post there.)

6. November 8, 2001 11:59 AM

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Nate Posted…

A missing quote mark seems to be the culprit of the last comment - I wonder if using an "autolink" feature is a better idea? I don't like dis-abling optional methods for using an interface in general tho.