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Mouse Gestures in Mozilla
Jedbro writes: "I have really enjoyed the mouse gestures in Opera since its release, since then I have come across an awesome new project at Mozdev, called OptiMoz. OptiMoz (a.k.a. MozGest) is a XPI for Mozilla allowing Mouse Gestures to be available. It works great with Mozilla 0.9.4 and nightly builds.
It currently has Gestures for: *New Tab Window (Moz Tabs!!) *Forward in History *Backward in History *Reload *New Document *Up a directory in the URL *View Source *View Cookies for Current Domain *View Meta Data for Domain and *Access Homepage."
I just read this headline and all I could think of was a prostitute mouse hawking an AOL CD with Netscape on it. *shudders* I blame the poor quality of coffee in this facility.
Trapped in Time... Surrounded by Evil... Low on Gas.
A completely disposable gimic.
Use keyboard shortcuts. They're quicker, and as an added benefit don't give you RSI.
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
Worst question ever!!! (in the voice of Comic Book Guy).
This story is a bit unclear.. please don't just post user menus as exposition, thanks.
Goat sex free since 2001
Sensiva is a nice tool for mouse gesturing, prety efficient too.
Esp. useful for keyboard-repellant people =)
I don't think a mouse is the best tool to use for gestures, they don't have the finest movement. Maybe a laptop trackpad...
Now, if you could use a Wacom tablet, it'd be more like Palm Graffitti. Pen to the left for forward, back for backward, tap the link...I oughta try it out.
>OptiMoz (a.k.a. MozGest) is a XPI for Mozilla allowing Mouse Gestures to be available
:).
Now I can see IE6.5 having this integrated and calling it XP-Innovation (or Immitation, you choose).
Still, it's nice, but normally when you surf the web you input data as well, so aren't keyboard shortcuts a more "productive" solution?
One extra thing I use often on the mouse are the 2 side buttons linked to "back" and "foward", these 2 are great, if your mouse isn't a dexxa and you always accidently press on them while moving the mouse
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
When I read this post, I immediately ran to mozdev and installed it. This is really cool! Now you can browse in complete full-screen without having to rely on context menus. Using the keyboard shortcuts (as has been suggested) is not as easy because I usually surf using only the mouse and switching my attention back and forth between keyboard and screen is quite cumbersome. In short: this completely ROCKS!!!
I remember them working really well in Black and White...
What's the gesture to set fire to a web-page?
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
There used to be software called Pointix (for windows) that allowed you to navigate easily by making more unique gestures. With mozilla you have to click and drag, but with pointix you could make a counter-clockwise circle-motion with the mouse, and it would interpret that as "back." As long as you don't make idle circular motions with the mouse it worked wonderfully. I'd like to see those gestures incoporated into this project.
(the full list of gestures: clockwise circle, counterclockwise circle, quick side-to-side motion, quick forward-back motion)
They are a slower method of performing simple tasks, compared to the more common methods. They are utterly useless unless all other methods of input are denied, which is unlikely considering that gestures use the mouse. Despite their utterly pointless nature, they have a certain 'cool factor'.
Gesturing:
1. Hold mouse button.
2. Perform gesture (draw shape with mouse).
3. Release button.
Normal:
1. Press key/button. Sometimes, multiple clicks/keypresses will be required due to the design to the program.
Generally, the old methods remain the best. I've even been charitable and assumed that the gesture was correctly performed first time.
I tried to install it, the installation seemed to work fine on both mozilla 0.9.4 and a nightly build that I downloaded yesterday. Yet on both of the mozilla versions when I restarted mozilla (as I was told to do when the installation finished) I came back to see nothing different. I think there was suppose to be a new toolbar. I didn't see one and there was no option to show/hide one in the preferences or the view menu.
Anyone else have this problem and figure out how to get it working? I really wanted to give this a try.
FiGZ.COM - A waste of perfectly good web space
Installed it under Mozilla 0.9.4. The toolbar shows up, but the gestures don't seem to be working no matter what I do. Hmn. Am I doing the gestures wrong? Anyone else having the problem?
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Will plugins like this work with Galeon / K-Mealon?
There have been lots of attempts at gesture recognition in the past, but they never seem to have taken off in a big way. This is a shame, since when they work they tend to work really well.
I love the way gestures are implemented in Opera - the actions become completely natural and I tend to find myself trying to use them in other browsers - to little effect. Now at least I'll be able to use them in Mozilla... Only Konquerer and IE left to go, and they'll be in *all* the browsers I regularly use 8)
Can anyone remember what the company was called that did the "glicks" software? I used to use it years ago but stopped after the later versions got worse rather than better... That software recognised 4 additional gestures - clockwise, anti-clockwise, jiggle left-right and jiggle up-down. I remember mapping 3 of them to cut, copy and paste... those were the days. 8)
Read my online journal: http://chris.carline.org
Come on, 256MB is cheap, cheap, cheap. You can get a single chip 256MB SDRAM module from retail outlets like Circuit City for only $80 (and that's in Manhattan!). If you go to Mom 'N Pop Computers, you'll probably get it for even less. There's no excuse not to upgrade your memory.
In a way, Slashdot is to thank for this. Back when Mozilla 0.9.2 was released, there was a +5 comment on the possibility of Opera-like gestures. That led people to read about gestures in bug 76537 and, from there, the community stepped up to the plate (specifically, Andy Edmonds). Nice.
:).
Now, if only we could work together and get some working spellchecking for Mozilla
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
They were my least favorite part of that Black & White game.. If they work anything like that in Mozilla then why bother? With your other hand on the keyboard you can just use keyboard shortcuts which take one press instead of opposing movements. The only thing I ever use the mouse for is clicking on a link anyway. Everything else involoving the mouse is so unnatural to do with your hands. If it weren't for graphical web browsers and quake, I would never use my mouse at all. It may just be that I have really big hands, but I just find resting my hand on a mouse (they're all too small) makes my hand curl unnaturally. I don't even want to get in to the scroll wheel...
I got an M$ Intellimouse with 5 buttons + wheel
.. this is WAY more convinient than every possible guesture, just press ur thumb , and page back.
... Any ideas ? Do i need to fill out a mozilla bug ? :)
(if u count the wheel as buttonts, then it has 7)
In IE the 4th button is the Page back feature
Any way to configure Mozilla to have the same behavior ? The best i found is using key for page pack, but as written below u need 2 hands for that
For those not aware, "still-pumped-from-using-the-mouse" is an allusion to Scott Adams' Dilbert book "Still Pumped From Using The Mouse". It's a compilation of the strips from 12/14/92 - 9/27/93, and you can actually get it used for about $0.75 + s/h.
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
This is a fun feature, and I'm sure people will get a kick out of it. But gestures don't seem like a good "expert" way to browse -- the keyboard offers faster, more accurate input. And you are absolutely right about the RSI: since I started using my keyboard for almost everything (except web browsing, ah..) my wrist problems have gotten much better.
What I'd really like to see is more ways to browse with the keyboard. I don't have any ideas in particular (being able to use the arrows to move around in a spatial way instead of tabbing through links in order would be a plus), but I would definitely learn and use any system that's better than what I've got now.
Something useful for all those hacked Nintendo Power Glove / mouse conversions..
"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness."- Friedrich Nietzsche
'Switch to Torture leash'
'Tie Cow to web site'
'Back'
'View Document Source'
'Cast fireball on source'
Hah! your website has come to believe in my browser! I now have control over your animated monkey gif.
If you can't see this, click here to enable sigs.
Funny. I use Mozilla all day and every day and it rarely crashes. Better yet is NS 6.1 which has to be one of the most stable pieces of software I've ever used.
or you can use opera. there ARE alternatives. i like moz, but it's a fat duck!
What's more, if there is something that doesn't have a shortcut you can go into the chrome and add one easily enough.
Now, think about the implication of this for a moment. Picture a user who has a mouse with only two buttons. And who has Emulate3Buttons switched on. For those who don't know, this allows the user to simulate a press on the (non-existant) middle button by pressing left and right simultaneously. However, we humans are not very precise as far as timing goes, and we're bound to press one of those two buttons slightly ahead of the other. End result: the browser appears to have "a mind of its own" because it keeps jumping back and forth as soon as you try to select a block of text...
Browser developers: if you feel the strong urge to implement such a feature, please make it optional, and off by default. Such a feature could be especially annoying when accidentally triggered on a page where the user has spent half an hour filling out a lengthy survey form. One bad click, and you have to restart from scratch.
I have a 450Mhz machine and it runs great. Certainly the UI needs speeding up somewhat but for page rendering and general responsiveness it is well up to scratch. I have even run it on a P133 running Linux over X and it's still pretty usable.
I installed the gesture software a couple a days ago, and boy does it rock! i'll never live without it again ;-)
And the development of Mozilla goes ever on, today they branched 0.9.5! And for all off you who doesnt know, Mozilla now features a tabbed interface! ATM there are some bugs related to it, but sure they'll be fixed for next milestone.
Maaaan is Mozilla becoming good =)
__ elacin
Thank god for Mouse Gestures in Mozilla too, when will the advanced features be available?
For example: To open a new mozilla window, login at slashdot as yourself and submit a really cool story.
To do this try the following easy steps:
Hold down left mouse button, move right-left-right, then hold down right button and move right-left-up-down-left-up-left-right. Release left button and move left-down-right-up, double-click left button, hold it down, release and double-click right button, move up-down-up-down, doucleclick both buttons (alternatively double-click middle button if you have 3 of them). Now finally move the mouse in a circle, anti-clockwise, four complete circles should be drawn. When done with the circles hold down both buttons and move up-down-right-down-up-left-right-left, double click both buttons. DONE!!!
2 reptiles beneath your current threshold.
I haven't seen an IE crash in almost six months, and I use it heavily every day. What are you doing wrong?
Don't get me wrong.. I think Mozilla is great, but our Intranet apps at work require IE, so I'm stuck with it.
It's not just that keyboard controls are good on general principles; it's also the ridiculous extent to which browsers neglect them. Do you realize that when the focus is in the page (> 90% of the time), almost every single keypress does absolutely nothing? What a waste!
I would give my left foot for a vim-like mode in mozilla. Flexible and powerful navigation, visual selection, one-key incremental regex searches, marks and jumps, macros. Some modifications would be necessary for a browser environment, but I think most of the endearing non-editing properties of vim could be carried over.
So, anyone want to write this?
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
atleast for me, as I keep wiggling the mouse, marking random text and pressing buttons while I read a page. Dunno why, compulsive disorder probably. ;)
:)
Atleast I learned pretty quick not to mark text text and press middle mousebutton in mozilla.
//Humming
I'm too stupid to preview.
I'm just about at the end of my wick over certain mozilla bugs, such as the myriad problems with cursor management in textareas. Over the last six months to a year, I swear Moz has moved backwards in getting rid of these kinds of piddling little problems - problems which, in my opinion, absolutely prevent its wider acceptance.
The usual reply is that you can't prevent people from working on what they want to work on. Well guess what, if the piddling little bugs aren't fixed, there won't BE an open source browser for you to add your favorite little quirks to.
I'm composing this in Moz and if I hit the right arrow button at the end of a line, the cursor will go to the top of the text area. If I hit the down arrow key, it will create a hidden EOL. Sometimes entire lines of text just disappear and then re-appear. Sometimes unhighlighted text remains highlighted. Once in a while it even crashes, which I like because then at least something has a chance of getting attention.
It's so bush, too, that's the problem with it. Looks like Moz can manage to claim compatibility with important WWW standards but CAN'T MANAGE STANDARD TEXT EDITING.
You can complain about me complaining, but my contribution is not coding, and all my words are out of frustration for seeing these stupid little bugs live on for month after month. To live to make it into milestone after milestone. And the worst part is, IT USED TO WORK PERFECTLY. At some point, probably last spring, text editing was BROKEN. WTF, people?
And I won't even mention how many times the window focus problems have changed but not improved in the last six months. And to think that, a year ago, I though Moz was three months away from "ready".
It's good that these projects are including gesture support but I wonder if time would have been better spent designing it into some layer underneath the application? Perhaps adding X extensions for gesuture messages/events would be better?
That way, any humble developer could add the posibility of using gesture input to their app (and it would seem popular enough that people may wat to do this), and we wouldn't have duplicated work in different apps.
OTOH, this might make a race as to who can provide the best gesture engine and give us some great benefits.
Just thoughts.
-- Mike
But in browsers there's another level of unpredictability that is a pain. You never know where the next tab is going to leave you. Could be any number of input forms, or a URL, or maybe you didn't realize it and your focus isn't on the page... it makes navigation with a keyboard near-impossible. Of course, this is largely true for any complicated GUI form. Browsers just happen to be the most common complicated GUI in use.
I suppose it's because keyboards are good for modal or serial interfaces, where mice are better for more random-access interfaces. OTOH, with you use the keyboard to its full potential (i.e., as more than just a bunch of shortcuts) the keyboard can be far more expressive (e.g., CLI). But I don't have any clever ideas on how to map that to a web page.
Always adds to your credibility when you know how to spell ...
....and now I'm replacing all my desktop buttons/menus with gestures....
I use a very small program, called "wayv" (URL: at sourceforge). It's definitely not friendly, but it gets the job done.
The reason I moved to gestures to control desktop is simpler: they work ALWAYS, independently of the current state of the screen. Buttons are nice, but they always end up being covered by something, and short of Mac-like "hide all", they quickly become a pain. Win-like bars/menus or right-click menus either are too slow or are position-sensitive. A gesture isn't, and when you have one hand of the keyboard and one on the mouse they are very fast (choose simple ones!).
I use L-Shift+Right button to trigger the recognition code, and while I get mistakes at times, I find that my desktop is much cleaner and opening applictions faster....
You can view the list here. This is for Windows version and I was using Opera v5.12. This is sweet! I can't wait to use this with Mozilla and Galeon. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I'm runnign windows 98 and it doesnt' work either (today's mozilla build - October 4th)
--- "Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view." ~ Ben Kenobi, 'Return of the Jedi'
Here are some ideas that might help:
- bug 66285 use a different shortcut to navigate tabs and to navigate links
- bug 67684 directional keyboard navigation: instead using Tab for "go to next focusable element", you could use Alt+Shift+right for "go to closest focusable element to the right".
- Web pages should use accesskeys more often. For example, on msn, you can press Alt+S to jump to the search field. Removing the search menu (bug 67414) from Mozilla would make it easier for page authors to use the Alt+S shortcut, giving accesskeys a much higher chance of becoming ubiquitous.
- bug 37638 the URL bar has initial focus too often (for example, when you start the browser). It's usually better for the page in the content area to have focus, so the user can scroll the page using the keyboard. Worse, accesskeys stop working (bug 64606) when the location bar has focus
- bug 66597 after searching the page, Tab should go to an element after the beginning of the selection rather than the first element on the page. Combined with inline search (find-as-you-type, with no dialog), this would make it easier to jump to links.
You should also check out the netscape.public.mozilla.accessibility newsgroup. Mozilla's accessibility team spends a lot of time making sure the browser works well with the keyboard, in part because blind users can't use pointing devices easily.The shareholder is always right.
Before you beat up on mozilla for feature creep, you should note that mouse gestures are NOT a feature IN mozilla, but an outside project of mozdev.org. If you want to use it, you have to install it. It's not in the trunk.
Granted, the extra features have been POURING in lately (venkman, tabs, link toolbar - all within the last week), so there is a great deal of feature creep but that's a symptom of the unqualified success of mozilla. They set out to develop a platform to be used for all kinds of projects, starting with a browser - and people are using it for all kinds of projects. The way things are going, it looks like the deluge is just starting.
I for one, couldn't be happier. It's got annoyances, but it's nightlies are stable (it hasn't crashed in so long I don't know why I bother with talkback anymore) and they've got features that I would miss dearly if I had to go back to I.E.
Textbooks and Open Educational Resources
Poorly chosen modes can be terrible, and modes in general tend to cause difficulty for beginners. But only a brainwashed UI weenie would say "modes are bad". Do you really think that all of the hackers who find unix and vi to be the most productive work environment are masochists?
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
Even in the limited scope of the gaming world, you're still wrong. Sacrifice used gestures before Black And White did.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
I disagree on the URL bar issue. I'm always annoyed in IE's tendency to start with the page getting focus. Personally, I rarely even look at the page that just opened with the browser window unless I used "open in new window", often opening new windows just for new browsing. In this case, the URL bar is what should have focus.
Its funny how a simple thing like gestures has polarised /. Its really an extension of the keyboard versus mouse debate. There are purists who decry the mouse, saying that everything can be done better and faster by keyboard. They prefer the command line and never having to lift their hands from the keyboard. It works best for text and numerical applications (Coding, Word Processing, Spreadsheets, etc). If you are in this category you probably wont like gestures much either. You have more than enough commands at your disposal.
Obviously there are proponents for the visual (WIMP) interface of the Mac, Windows and X. The mouse provides a limited set of options, but does not require learning a command set as its all on the screen. In highly visual settings this interface is more efficient than the keyboard. Few would argue the superiority of the mouse in playing 3D Games or for drawing images - Although better devices exist for these than either keyboard or mouse. If this is the style of work that you do, you are going to have a hand on the mouse at all times. To not be slowed down by the keyboard you have a few options:
1. Use a one handed keyboard - a very productive combination with some training. (eg: http://halfkeyboard.com/)
2. Assign all functions to an area of the keyboard used by your non mouse hand - some gamers take this approach. (eg., DiabloII)
3. Add to the command set of the mouse (eg., with gestures and additional mouse buttons)
The aim of all these approaches is to prevent you moving your hand from mouse to keyboard.
Taken in this context, you can probably see why the responses have been so varied. Gestures are either useless candy or invaluable additions to how you interact with programs.
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
If it is so important to you, go to Bugzilla, find the appropriate bug, and vote for it!
All nice to whinge and moan, but how about you go out of your way and add your vote to encourage getting it fixed.
And yes, I use Mozilla TEXTAREAs a heck of a lot and they could be better. 0.9.4 was a big improvement over the ones in 0.9.2 anyway.
PS, IE5 also has the "press down at the bottom of the textarea to create a hidden EOL".
I have never really run into these problems you report. Have you filed a bug report? Given a build number, platform, steps to reproduce?
a l/demo.html), and although it has problems, I find it much more pleasant to use than IE (assuming I'm on a Sparc, or under Windows) or Opera, and it just has more to it than Konqueror.
Unfortunately I'm under Win2k at the moment so can't test (although I haven't noticed it under the Linux machine at work either) but:
hitting right arrow at the end of a line sends the cursor to the next line. If at the last line, just doesn't move
Down arrow goes to the next line, again does nothing on the last line.
I've never had entire lines of text disappear. Or any problems with highlighting.
And I have only had it crash on me once in a particularly unusual and fairly difficult to reproduce circumstance (although quite reproducible). The bug I reported on that has been faithfully tracked and appended to a dozen times or so.
And this is with me using the latest nightly builds.
Mozilla has better standards compliance then IE (try http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/complexspir
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
"particularly unusual and fairly difficult to reproduce circumstance (although quite reproducible)"
Erm. I meant that it is difficult to do accidently, but can be done each time once you know how.
Time to take a nap, I think...
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
I'd say it could be better if mouse gestures input is handled by X or the window manager, like wayV. I suppose you can match mouse gestures to keystrokes and therefore theoretically you could use gestures for any application under X.
:)
The downside will be you might need to alter the default keystrokes in different applications so that you can have a single mouse gestures generating a single keystroke to do different functions in different windows.
I'd say this problem can also be solved by a much more sophisticated window manager, which is able to generate different keystorkes on the same mouse gestures, based on the current focus of windows.
Anyway, I don't think mouse gestures will help myself much. Personally I have RSI for the mouse wheel already .
On the other hand, what will be interesting to see is if we can define some even more special move for the mouse to do different things, as if you're playing those action fighting games.
Hold down middle button -> move your mouse Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right -> Release middle button will send a SIGKILL to all applications?
If you have the source, you have the whole world...
Here's a list of a few new features that the Moz team have been debating, also inspired by the trend-setting video game, Black & White:
This follows after the B&W 'creature' concept. An animated "buddy" tries to watch how you browse the web, and learns what pages to prefetch or submit every morning for you. You can scratch/fondle/slap your MozCreature to reinforce its tendency to discover new free porn for you, or punish the MozCreature to ensure that you never again wake up to find many First Posts on slashdot in your name. Lizard, Gnome, Ximian or Shadowman character art choices are included, but many more risquee "skin" packs are hitting the popular theme sites already. Caution: while the MozCreature can eat ad banners, a steady diet of ad banners will send the MozCreature into an IIS-defacing frenzy.
The concept of bookmarks is antiquated in modern internet terms. Once your MozCreature is on the loose, you can use your MozLeash module to assist in the training of the creature; limit their browsing domain to any hostmask or subnet you like, or avoid the MozCreature's tendency to battle for supremacy on many popular websites. Leashing your MozCreature to other popular applications such as the GIMP, nmap or GPG is also possible, but it's up to you to observe the truly remarkable effects while you train your MozCreature to full proficiency.
Adding new JavaScript tags to your websites attracts your MozVillagers to point, click, play and explore your websites more than any real web visitor would. These MozVillager scripts will aid in your site's ad revenues by cavorting around GIF web-bugs as if in reverence, and occasionally clicking-thru to your sponsor sites to increase your marketing manna. The MozCreature, properly trained, can create and publish new MozVillager web scripts on your behalf, but remember, your MozCreature may end up teaching your competition some stupid web tricks as well.
All in all, Mozilla's ever-expanding suite of features, copied from every other application under the sun, shows the power and flexibility of the community development process. Netscape never had the temerity to battle it out, but armed with the MozCreature, MozLeash and MozVillager features, a new mythical landscape redefines the browser wars. Redmond's Clippy has never been in such peril.
[
I like mosuse gestures, especially being able to go back with a small effort.
Now, How good is mozillas mouse gesture support if I wait two seconds to go back in history and load the cached page. This applies to galeon too. using mouse gestures needs some responsiveness. Otherwise I can click "Back" button too.
Opera on the other hand is instantenous to browse "Back" and actually makes a perfect fit for mouse gestures.
Yup, I've been up and down Bugzilla making sure that all the complaints that I can verify are already noted accurately.
There are the bugs that I've been tracking:
83650: textarea control has problems with caret positioning at end
82151: Right arrow key at end of a TEXTAREA goes to the beginning
68331: Moving caret in TEXTAREA to start of line can cause page to scroll horizontally
75629: Need better support for setting selection in text inputs and textareas
88024: Down arrow key creates fake line break at the end of a TEXTAREA
74383: textarea input form crashed during complex edit session
During the composition of this reply, I encountered and had to work around several of these.
What GUI browsers need are numbered links and forms like Lynx has.
IMO this is the only way to have total control with your keyboard. Otherwise, users waste time tabbing around.
quixotal
Thank you for posting the bug numbers. I'm going to vote for some of these, because these are major bugs, and I'm experiencing them, too. Hopefully other readers will do the same.
The trouble with opera is that it's unstable on linux. I'm using debian and dynamic opera didn't show images at all (gifs, anyway), and when someone told me I should use static, I did so and images work but sometimes opera locks up X completely. As in, I have to go to console, kill opera and then X totally goes down. So, I'm stuck using netscape for image navigation/jscript and lynx for everything else (~95%). Actually, bad choice of wording here: I'm not stuck, this is very comfortable and useable.. oh, and moz doesn't stop gif animation with Esc. Nor does it have reasonable keyboard shortcuts like opera. Oh, and one more thing: opera don't have vi-like mode like lynx does, which is imho the best part about keyboard shortcuts. See, the whole thing is that I want ot be completely free from mouse - I do a lot of typing between browsing, I may switch to vim and work on a program or a website, and then go to links and browse here and there, so switching one hand to mouse is a major slow-down. IOW, opera went in the right direction but stopped short of reaching the nirvana of input interface: pure keyboard input. You get this quantum leap feeling when you absolutely don't have to use mouse. Lynx has 2 features that accomplish that leap: numbered links and vi-like navigation. If opera had that and didnt' crash X now and then, It'd be perfect and I'd pay for it, even. And when i get a job and don't worry about the money, I'd even pay some extra on top for any browser that did that. And to the "mouse is just as good" croud: I think the difference is that mouse gives ya instant gratification, 10 seconds and you're quick as a fox. But you don't get much faster as time goes by.. with keyboard navigation, it's awkward at first, useable after a few hours, and then it gets faster and faster as you use it, for years. At the end, it's faster and easier, and well worth it if you use computer for a few hours every day on average. Just imho of course.
Most people ignore the stuff on Mozilla.org that says they haven't even started optimizing. They want to make a virtially bug-free, standards compliant, stable base, then make it fast.
:-)
As a web designer I applaud this greatly. Go ahead and compare it against IE, because it's slower than lynx, but don't compare vs Konqueror, and act like Mozilla is behind. Mozilla beats the tar.gz out of Konqueror for stability
"I tried M18 and it was slow" isn't a very good excuse, M18 is a year old. 0.9.x is very usable on 300-500mhz machines with 64mb ram.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
And if you have ever used OS/2 Warp with Netscape (which was speech enabled on the OS/2 platform), you'd see how crummy your gestures are. Try surfing hands free. No mouse required. Speak a link that is on the page, it goes there. No pointy-clicky required.
mozilla features
faulty codepaths multiply
watch bugzilla feed
I clicked on your sig, and I must simply say: You are a moron.
My favorite part:
Chat Log [?]
jsm: yeh for fucking infrared mice, and for about a thousand makes of webcam it does. Get real here. For my fucking floppy disk drive, I am telling you through bitter experience it does not. Even if someone has written the drivers in the last week
It seems you are saying thousands of [usb] webcams are supported under linux, which would be a good thing, but it's not true.
You obviously know nothing about computers. First off, you never mentioned that EVERYWHERE, EVERYONE says to backup your HD before trying to mix Linux and Windows. It's common sense.
You lost data because you don't know what you are doing. Yes, you must defrag the drive before resizing a partition! Even windows apps such as PartitionMagic[tm] tells you to do this. But! Normally the windows' defrag will place the data at the start of the drive but it won't always do that. I would recommend putting down big bucks for a defrag program that you can customize like Norton.
[2] Linux broke your computer? How? Because of some crappy data loss. Since '95 came out I've formatted my HD 6-7 times because I had no choice. But! I could reinstall windows every time! Even though the Win98SE CD-ROM doesn't boot on it's own and I must drive miles to get a bootable floppy, with the right CD-ROM drivers... etc.
[3] LFT!?!? Read this:
linuxbabe: you shuold have defragmented. windows scatters data all over your hard drive so the installer cant just find a clean chunk to install into. it isn't linux fault {---- distinct signs of LFT being approached
linuxbabe: that windoze disk management blows
She's right! It does suck. So does it's memory management.. and so on.
[4]Soft modems.
jsm: So in other words, my fucking modem is never going to work with Linux at all?
While I don't agree with linuxbabe [but i still love and respect you 'babe] saying that it's an M$ plot to control the OS market. Soft modems are supposedly designed that way to save costs. The company who made your modem made it that way to use less chips and control the modem through software. It's a faulty design on any system. Your CPU is doing all the work while the modem should be. The costs are cut at your expense.
What the whole thing comes down to: Your dumb. You should'a done your homework before installing another OS. You could'a installed it inside your current partition. Try installing NT; I just installed debain [for fun] and I can't get past step 4 in the NT install. You bought Linux books? There is nothing in those books for a normal user that isn't on the web. You don't have common sense. And lastly: I hate you.
Thank you the flamer lamer has left the building.
Get your Unix fortune now!
On the newest version, there is a fireball gesture. right, left, down, up, right to form an "f".
Yeah, this is very annoying. The bug number is 25538 if you want to vote on it.
Hint of advice - adequacy.org is a great site to go to if you want to get your blood pressure up.
:-)
I haven't figured out yet whether or not it is "for real" or if it is just a place to go to insult people, troll and generally be a bastard. Still, I'm guessing on the latter
It nearly "surprised" me first time I saw, but when I change "thumb buttons job" to "internet back command" it sure works perfect on Mozilla/Netscape 6.x. (mouseman+, Mouseware 9.29)
I once asked them (on 9.20 or something, now it is 9.29) why they didn't support at least internet back command, their tech support got it wrong and talked about they couldn't find a way to make webwheel (another logitech thing) work in Mozilla... That time it surprised me since whole Mozilla source is open.
For whatever reason I do this as well. I don't press random buttons but there is much mouse wiggling and marking random text.
Vermifax
Logout
not only do somehow twist my statement into insult EVERY unix user
I'm sure there are unix users who avoid modal applications, but the common unix experience is highly modal. And this is not an insult.
but you also get that moronic leap of logic modded up
Uh, no. I got my other moronic leaps of logic modded up, so my score starts at 2.
And you even throw a couple insults my way also. Bravo!
-bows-
(You made a glib criticism, so I took the liberty of calling you a funny name. Welcome to slashdot.)
Modes are bad. Very bad. I'll even give you an example.
Your example had nothing to do with modes. You didn't show that modes are bad in general or that vi is bad in particular. Try this on: in every browser I've seen, the navigation keys behave differently if you're in a text box (they move in the text box, not the page). This is a mode. Is it bad?
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
I'm so addicted to the Opera ones that I'm doing gestures in all my other programs.... lol. I hope they are compatible with each other, and that all other programs follows... :)
Sure keyboard shortcuts are good too, but I've noticed thath mouse gestures are even more effective. And Opera has all the keyboard fancy too, of course... together it is awesome!
Hmmm.
...
... when it's finished, wouldn't that mean no more progress?
I can't say it's *perfect* (what is?), but I am very happy with recent Mozilla builds (grabbing binaries from their site), don't find them crashy at all on either Linux (running on Mandrake and sometimes other distros, no real difference I've noticed) as well as Mac OS (9).
The tabs rock, the bookmarks are more manageable, and even the IRC client chatzilla is now quite nice. (Huge improvements there! Incredible progress, from 'barely useable, funny novelty' to 'Uhh, why was I starting that other program to do IRC?'*)
I find it faster and more stable than Netscape on the same hardware (midrange athlons and durons for the Linux machine, one has 128, one has 586 MB of RAM, the Mac is an iBook which worked fine with 128MB and now has 384).
Anyhow, maybe you're just hitting things I have no need for, but I can't see any 4.XX netscape being better in normal use than current mozilla
And besides, (I hope that) Mozilla will never be "finished" no matter what numbers are attached to it
Tim
*Chatzilla is also not yet perfect, but it is a pretty good subset of perfect for my needs right now. Better DCC capabilities would be good, as would instant new channels for private msgs, like Xchat.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
You are right... it's a site that lets your inside bastard come out online.
I guess its also a site which thrives on lies, insults to whole groups of people, and dumb people who like to type.
Someone should'a bought that kid mavis beacon.
As someone on that site pointed out, he is probably getting paid directly by M$
Get your Unix fortune now!
up, click, left, click, right, click, down, click, left, click, up, click, xterm, kill -9 ..
:D
So what would be the appropriate gesture for killing popup windows?? Invaluable when browsing for pr.. Eh , exotic sites..
sigfault
There already is one gesture for "Page Back":
:-)
Hold down the right mouse button, move the mouse in lower right direction and release mouse button
Do you really think that all of the hackers who find unix and vi to be the most productive work environment are masochists?
People blame themselves for design mistakes. They don't know the difference between system problems and their own errors. In UNIX, the jock thing to do is to laugh at anyone who makes errors, so that doesn't contribute to a calm and sensible examination of errors caused by bad system design. "It works for me -- what are you, some kind of newbie?"
Tim
I don't understand why people are complaing!
First of all this is an "Optional" download for Mozilla, has nothing to do with mozilla.org.
Secondly, seems people are ranting without even trying it. I always thought mouse gestures were stupid.. But once I tried it.. I changed my mind.
Basically, when I'm browsing, I'm leaning far back in my chair (probably bad for my back), looking back-&-forth between my TV and laptop.. Since my hands are away from the Keyboard, Gestures make my life so much esier. Plus, so much faster.. instead of having to go up and click on the File Menu, (or reach over to the keyboard), I just hold my middle maouse button, and Draw a S or T (for tabs).. and Voila!! I'm ready...
Very easy, and very natural movments.. I really reommend peopl try it out. (just remember, this is version 0.1.4... has a long way to go.
Cheers
--JEDBRO