StrokesPlus is a lightweight mouse recognition software for Windows that is offering an incredible amount of options. the portable software minimizes itself automatically on program start.

A right-click on the system tray icon displays some of the most important program options. This includes enabling or disabling mouse gestures, running a test mode to draw gestures on the screen without executing the command, changing the button that initiates the command, and links to program preferences, configured actions and the program’s ignore list.

The actions window displays a list of twenty or so actions that ship with the program. Actions range from opening Notepad or the Task Manager to decreasing the sound volume or minimizing a window.

Each action consists of the initial action button, the gesture itself and optional mouse or keyboard modifiers. New actions can be created globally or for a specific application. The software uses Lua scripts to run commands. A good starting point are existing actions which demonstrate for instance how programs are opened or keys send.

The project forum offers additional information, the program itself unfortunately not.

The ignore list prevents commands from being run when specific windows are active. This can be used to block incompatible programs or situations where gestures interfere with program functionality.

StrokesPlus uses a small amount of RAM while it is running on the system. Windows users who’d like a flexible lightweight mouse recognition software should give it a try. The latest version of the program, compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the operating system can be downloaded from the official program website.

The extension adds default gestures to the browser that work right after installation. It also offers controls to create custom gestures.

A help page is displayed to the user after installation. This page display the available mouse gestures that ship with the extension.

All mouse gestures work by holding down the right mouse button and moving the mouse to draw on the screen. Basic examples are drawing to the left or right to go back and forth in the tab’s history, up for open a new tab or down and right to close the current tab.

Other available actions that are not linked to a gesture are also displayed on the same page. A click on the plus icon next to them opens an overlay where a gesture can be drawn and set.

It is furthermore possible to disable existing gestures with a click on the x icon next to the gesture’s listing on that page.

Additional settings are available at the bottom of the page. Here it is possible to backup and reset all settings, change or disable the mouse button that enables the drawing or to hide settings or the extension’s icon.

The configuration, especially the creation of new mouse gestures, is excellent and a straightforward process. The recognition rate of a user’s mouse gestures is excellent as well.

Users may want to consider removing existing mouse gestures that they will never use, to further decrease the chance of executing an action that they do not want to execute. It also frees up some of the easier gestures for other actions.

Chrome users who would like to add mouse gesture support to their browser can install Smooth Gestures directly from the Chrome Web Store.

Gest is a specialized portable program for the Windows operating system that adds mouse gesture support to Windows Explorer. The program uses the four directions up, down, left and right to define commands. Several default commands are already configured and ready for use. It is for instance possible to create a new window, close a window or go up one level with some easy mouse gestures.

You draw the gesture by holding down the right mouse button and moving the mouse in the directions that the command is associated with. If you wanted to go up on level in the directory structure, you would right-click and move the mouse up. Alternatively, if you wanted to minimize the window you would right-click and then draw down, right and down again to do so.

The commands can be customized in the program’s settings. You can change the gestures there and for some commands, like the new window command additional parameters.

Some commands have two or even more gestures associated with them, so that it is possible to execute the command with one of the available gestures. A small box appears on screen once you start using your mouse in Windows Explorer to draw gestures on the screen. The box displays the directions and acts as a visual aid. It will automatically go away if a gesture has been drawn that is already associated with a command. The program suggests to create a new gesture if it is not know yet. Only the default commands are available for selection for this new gesture. It would have been nice if additional commands would be available, for instance to copy, move or send selected files or to create a new folder. The option to add a new gesture to an existing command can be disabled right in that box.

A few other options are available in the program settings. You can change the mouse sensitivity or mouse trail options here, or configure the program to start with the Windows operating system.

The recognition rate of the mouse gestures is excellent. Windows users who would like to control some Windows Explorer commands with their mouse can download the latest version of Gest from the developer website. It is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows 7 and Vista. It has limited support under Windows XP.

The developer has published a tutorial on the website that new users can use to learn the program’s functionality.

Depending on the website, it will displays visual connection indicators. That’s different from before, when protocols were only displayed when the user focused on the address field. A click on the badge displays additional information about the connection to the website. Opera displays whether the connection is secure or unencrypted, and if the website has a clean security record.

A click on details opens a fraud and malware page with options to report the site as fraud or malware.

A secure connection looks slightly different, and a click on the badge reveals additional information.

Opera users with Opera Turbo enabled will now see an indication in the address field that Opera Turbo is enabled. Opera Turbo acts as a proxy for Opera users that compresses the traffic. This is done by routing it through Opera servers. The service is especially helpful for users with slow Internet connections.

A click on the box shows how much was saved connecting to the current site and during the whole session.

Mouse Gestures, which were available in Opera for a very long time have received a facelift in the latest Opera 11 snapshot. Opera users now have to hold down the right mouse button for a while to activate the mouse gestures menu.

The default right-click menu displays Back, Stop, Forward and Open in new tab options. Those lead to further options when the mouse is moved into one of the available directions.

Stop for instance can be used to stop the loading of the current website, or to go to the parent directory, maximize or reload the active tab. The additional options do not always make sense, one of the options beneath open new tab is for instance close tab.

Probably the most important changes have been made to Opera’s extensions engine. Extensions will now run on secure sites by default, with options to allow or disallow extensions to “run on secure connections or in privacy mode”.

Extensions are configured to run on secure connections but not in private mode by default. This setting can be changed for each extension individually.

Extensions can now have a preferences page in the browser. That’s a major step considering that a lot of extensions need configuration options.

Users who want to try the latest Opera 11 snapshot can download it from the Opera desktop team blog post announcing the release.

This could change with Gmote, a free portable software for Windows that adds mouse gesture support to the operating system. Gmote enables a set of gestures that can be drawn with the right mouse button on the desktop.

mouse gestures

The program visualizes the gestures on the screen and will execute the configured action after the user has finished the drawing. It is possible to draw on open windows and programs as well making the mouse gesture software universally applicable.

Gestures can be configured in the application interface. All it takes is to click the Create gesture button, record the gesture on the right screen and select an action on the left. The program offers a lot of different actions from starting applications, opening websites or simulating keystrokes to Windows specific commands like maximizing windows, managing the media player and copy / paste operations.

custom gestures

Sets can be saved and loaded which could be interesting for multi-computer environments. The standard way of drawing gestures on the screen can be changed in the options. It is for instance possible to use the middle mouse button instead or a combination of keys and mouse.

It is also recommended to enable faster trails in the options to reduce the lag when drawing on the screen.

Programs can be excluded as well which can be used to prevent conflicts. Gmote is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows. The program can be downloaded directly from the developer’s website.

Easystroke is a very simple application to install and setup that will allow you to create mouse gestures for various actions. One of the most useful of these actions is starting applications. In this tutorial you will learn how to install Easystroke and configure it to start applications with a simple gesture.

Features

Easystroke is filled with useful features:

• Simple to use GUI.
• Gesture button can be configured.
• Left-handed optimizations.
• Compiz support.
• Command, key, text, scroll, ignore, button, misc actions can be set up.
• Touch pad support.

And much more.

Installing Easystroke

Easystoke can be found in most default repositories. So to install all you need to do is follow these steps:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software tool.
2. Search for “easystroke” (no quotes).
3. Select the results from the search.
4. Click Apply to install.

Once installed you will find the Easystroke executable in the Universal Access sub-menu of the Applications menu in GNOME.

Using Easystroke

Figure 1

After you have fired up the Easystroke tool you will see the Main window (see Figure 1). The first thing you will want to do is to configure your gesture button. The gesture button is the button you hold while making the mouse gesture. You will want to configure a button that makes it easy to hold and make the gesture at the same time. To do this click on the Gesture Button button which will bring up a new window (see Figure 2). In this new window what you must do is place your cursor inside of the grey box and then click the button you want to use for the guesture button. When you finish this the new window will disappear and you will see your new button configured.

In the Preferences window you will also want to check the Autostart easystroke option so that Easystroke starts up upon login. When it does you will see the Easystroke icon in your notification area.

Figure 2

Now it’s time to create a gesture. For our example we will create a gesture that will open up the Firefox web browser. To do this click on the the Action tab of the Easystroke window. In this window you will want to click the Add Action button. When you do this a new action will be listed in the window (see Figure 3). What you have to do is click on each section and add the information necessary.

Figure 3

The first thing to configure is the Name. Click the cell in the new entry under the Name column and type the name Firefox.

Now click on the Type cell and make sure Command is selected.

Now, under the details column, enter /usr/bin/firefox.

Once you have all of that set up, it is time to record a gesture. To do this follow these steps:

1. Make sure the new entry for Firefox is selected.
2. Click the Record Stroke button.
3. Click and hold the gesture button.
4. Make your gesture with your mouse (for our example we will make an “F” without the lower horizontal line).

When you have completed the gesture it will appear in the Actions window listing for Firefox.

Test your new gesture by holding down the gesture button and making an F on the desktop. Firefox should start up.

Final thoughts

Easy stroke is an accessibility tool that makes life a lot easy for a lot of people. No more having to search through menus to start up applications and other handy actions. It’s simple to set up and supports quite a bit of hardware.

The software program comes with a set of pre-configured mouse gestures that allow a user to close windows, copy and paste, create new documents globally and to control various actions in Firefox and Internet Explorer such as reloading a website, opening a new tab or bookmarking a page.

One of the best aspects of High Sign is the ability to create new mouse gestures easily. All the user needs to do is to draw a new gesture on the computer screen using the right-mouse button similar to drawing lines in an image editor. Once the figure has been drawn the application will display it in a new window asking the user to identify or name it.

An application (or all applications) can then be controlled by the new mouse gesture. The user can select an application (or all) from the list and select one of the available actions. Probably the most interesting actions are to send hotkeys to a program. This could for instance mean to send a CTRL F4 command to close the application window or any other shortcut that is accepted by an application or globally.

The software program uses between 30 to 40 Megabytes of computer memory while running which should not be a huge problem for computer systems with enough RAM installed. High Sign is currently available as an alpha 2 preview version that works surprisingly stable.

It is for instance possible to define the mouse button that opens the primary and secondary menu, the amount of actions that are shown (8 or 10), the opacity of the menu and of course the type of actions that are performed. Instead of using the default actions that are shown in the screenshot below you could edit the actions to make them suit your needs.

You can basically add any action that can also be added to a Firefox toolbar: Save Pages or Images, Open Urls, load scripts, use queries, zoom in and out and much more. Another important feature are the contextual menus that change the gestures when hovering above a link or image for example.

Everything can be customized which is really incredible. You can even start external programs with the extension !