Enable Multi-Touch Tab Switching In Firefox 3.5

@rychdom: My mistake.

Photo in LH article is misleading. I was about to do this on my white MacBook until someone pointed out it only works with multi touch trackpads, which was disappointing :(

UbaidJobo

If you get an .prefpane called multi-clutch your can basically configure it to do use multitouch for anything you want. I'm sure I've seen it on lifehacker before. Best thing about it is that you can use for anything; Not just Firefox.

[osx.iusethis.com]

Dónal Connolly

@undefined: Try it, since air mouse supports two finger scrolling on Windows, I don't see what the software limitations would be assuming firefox is the same across all platforms

Jay Beezy

Awesome, thanks! I wondered what happen to this feature. Oh, it was first available in Safari. I remember using this feature early on in the game. Thanks again,

-Mig

@jupigare: I haven't tried tweaking it in Firefox but if you're using the 1000HE's multitouch driver it might over ride the Firefox settings. The three finger swipe and twist gestures can be made to work in all applications through the driver so Firefox may not work correctly.

driggity

Works great. I use swipe left and right for prev and next Tab, though. This twist is just too much of an effort.

ddos

@GumbyX: Correction: Any Cocoa application.

I use a MT laptop. The tab "Twist" is a great feature.
As a UI Designer, I don't like the size of many of the menus and buttons in Firefox. Is there a way to make the menu's, tabs and buttons larger for MT finger usage?

Jon West

also, prior to this, multiclutch is a great freeware app for osx leopard that does the same thing.

[wcrawford.org]

it even lets you assign specific commands for the gestures for any app and the os :)

and its free too!

@Gyroscope352: Air Mouse

You're not. I'm running XP Home on my 1000HE and the twist-gestures didn't work. I probably wouldn't have used them anyway, though.
I didn't try changing the three-finger gestures, though. But consider that if you're right handed, you've probably got your right hand by the touch pad, allowing your left hand to be on the keyboard. The keyboard shortcuts for tab-changing are right there, Ctrl + (Shift) + Tab. As far as I know, to go back and forward, you need to use alt + left/right (or backspace to go back under Windows, and I'm sure there are others).
Don't know why I typed all that, just saying.

Karakawe

Anyone else having trouble with this? I have updated the scripts exactly as shown and have lowered the threshold to 10.

Is it possible that the double-touch scroll may interfere? (As in, using two fingers to scroll up/down a single page) Firefox seems to want to scroll up and down a page instead of switch tabs. I have tried a few different ways of 'twisting', but none of them seem to work. I'm not sure if it's due to an interference from the double-touch scroll or if FF isnt recognizing the scripts somehow.

Running FF 3.5 on a Macbook OS X 10.5.7.

Brooke Warnaar

The default Firefox gestures work great on my EeePC 1000HE, but nothing I do to the about:config lets me enable the twist gestures. I type them in and they show up in the config page, but they don't actually work.

Even if I change the other gestures (e.g., set the three-finger swipe to change tab, or make its value blank), nothing happens. The about:config shows my changes, but the default behaviors persist.

Am I the only EeePC user having these problems? (I'm using Windows 7 RC, by the way.)

Quick note, though.. "double-click browser.gesture.twist.left and its .right counterpart. Set them to Browser:NextTab and Browser:PrevTab, respectively" implies that left is going to next tab and right is going back.. which might work for all those invert-y-loving gamers, but seems pretty wonky to me.

cutcopypaste

you can do this in any app (i.e. my browsers, safari and opera) with MultiClutch.

Kevin Hoagland

This is great! I changed the threshold to 10.. found that gave it a good responsiveness (at the default 25 I feel like my wrist would get pretty tired after going through a bunch of tabs).
I'm more excited by the wipe back/forward as well... rather surprised I didn't see it mentioned anywhere before.

cutcopypaste

@Eruanno:
There, there. It'll be OK.

Oscar Feliciano

oh man, I'm loving this! Nice find.

@akifbayram: Uhhh WHAT? How do you do this? This would make my life so convenient...

Already have (half) a FingerWorks TouchStream LS, packed with programmable gestures.

I'd have a whole one, but static zapped the left side, and Apple bought and scuttled the FingerWorks company, so those products are dead now. FU Apple!

brianary

Cool, thanks LH. But you might want to mention the other newly enabled gestures in Firefox 3.5. I'm more excited about 3-finger swipe to go forward and back (enabled by default). And pinch zoom is enabled too.

person_x

Looks good. I'll check out that Multi-clutch too, that looks just the ticket.

Bah, I have the older MacBook. Waaahhh, now I want a new one. *Pouts*

While this is nice, I will stick with Multi-Clutch. A bit easier to set up and allows multi-touch controls for any application.

@lifeCoder: There is: you need to also change the latching by changing this key: browser.gesture.twist.latched = true (boolean) My problem, and I submitted a question to Tab Mix Plus about this, is that the Browser:NextTab/PrevTab command follows the traditional Tab-to-the-left/Tab-to-the-right functionality, and I wish it would use my settings for TMP that force the most recently used tab to be the "Next" tab. Does anyone know of a list of these commands?

EileenQualakon

I got the fix for a while now since the RC nixed these features. I initially had to reinstall the beta every time it updated to re-enable. FINALLY support.mozilla posted a fix. When you are lucky enough to have these functions, you become very saddened when they are taken away. Great feature for mac.

Eddie Jimenez

Can we use this with our iPhones that are touchpads to our PCs?

Fan-freakin-tastic. Good thing there's other gesture's in the about:config that you can use instead of the twist.

D0rk

AH! Awesome! I wish however there was a way to prevent the wrap-around. ie. when you twist all the way to the right, it stops at the very last tab...