Firefox mouse gestures

One of the guys at work inspired me to try a mouse gestures plugins for Firefox today.

For the uninitiated, mouse gestures are like keyboard shortcuts for the mouse. Instead of holding ctrl+c, you do a little drawing on the screen while holding down the right mouse button to make something happen. For example when you draw a line from right to left, it triggers the browser’s back function and when you draw a line from left to right it triggers the forward function. You can do the action wherever you mouse is currently pointing on the screen rather than having to find the part of the interface to do whatever you want.

Here’s a picture of the action I’d need to do to maximize the window:

It’s definitely a novel idea. I think it’s great for the browser because browsing the internet is a mostly mouse driven activity. It probably wouldn’t be as useful in a more keyboard driven program like visual studio. I’m getting quite used to the shortcuts for new tabs, new windows and opening links but I think I’ll need to learn the rest one by one. Not so different from learning resharper keyboard shortcuts really.