Mouse Gestures!

OH! MY! ZOD!

Mouse gestures rock!

By way of explanation, remember that Mozilla Firefox I've been talking about? Well, one can download a whole mess of so-called 'extensions' that add functionality. Or, in some cases, just make the title bar say random things instead of 'Firefox' (right now, I'm evidently using Mozilla Superlemur). I also got some stuff to emulate the Google toolbar, and most importantly, mouse gestures! You know, you move the mouse in a certain way and the browser responds? If you've ever played 'Black & White' you should know what I'm talking about right away, except inasmuch as I haven't figured out how to use gestures to create food and/or kill people. I can use it to do all the basic browser stuff: back, forward, reload, open in a new window or tab, go home, bookmark; as well as more unusual: increase or decrease font and image size, hide images, view source; all the way to the damnright esoteric: view <META> tags, validate a page as HTML 4.01 compliant. So awesome! And, if I had any skill whatsoever with JavaScript, I could use the program to input my own functions! Oh yes! Like, if one made a big 'E' shape, it could make the browser crash and the computer explode, or something. I don't know.

So, with gestures enabled, if I want to go back to the last page, I just have to hold the right mouse button down and slide the mouse directly to the left, without going diagonally at all. And if I want to minimize the browser, I just have to hold the right button down, go down, then left, making sure I don't accidentally go right, which would close the browser. And going to my homepage is as simple as Click, Hold, Down, Up, Right, Down! Who needs those clearly labeled buttons up there at the top?

All sarcasm aside, it really is a lot quicker to navigate with gestures, and surprisingly easy to memorize the motions. What this does that I especially like is that it is sort of a counterpart to Firefox's extensive list of keyboard shortcuts, such that whichever input device you happen to be using at the moment will suffice for virtually any task you need, so you don't have to go switching between the keyboard and the mouse very often-- you actually don't need the mouse for selecting links in Firefox, which is a feature I doubt I'll ever use, but is neat nonetheless-- even though switching between the keyboard and mouse isn't a huge hassle, it's nice that it's unnecessary. Mouse gestures are also invaluable for folks with a trackpad, those tiny, useless devices on your laptop. It can be hellish getting the cursor just where you want it, suddenly you don't have to. Oh, and the most important thing, it's just plain cool. It really, really is.