easyGestures N is a user-friendly, mouse gesture navigation extension for Firefox
Gesturefy and FoxyGestures are incredible add-ons which allow you to control your browser with the mouse. The gestures do take some time to get used to; if you want something simpler, you can't go wrong with easyGestures N.
It is fork of an old add-on called Easy Gestures, with a similar interface. But the features are quite different in the new extension.
EasyGestures N requires three permissions by default, and the official page on Mozilla's AMO explains why these are necessary.
Install the add-on and use the middle-mouse button to bring up easy Gestures N's interface. Mouse over one of the options in the pie menu and left-click on it, to execute the action.
The first option (clockwise) with an upwards arrow is called "Go to top", which takes you to the top of the page. The 2nd button jumps to the next tab, while the one below it switches to the previous tab. The refresh icon reloads the page, while the other three options allow you to close the tab, go back or open a new tab respectively.
The menu icon (12' O Clock) in easyGestures N brings up a secondary menu called the Extra menu, that has options to copy the URL to identifier, pin/unpin tabs, open a new private window, open the current page in a new private window, and copy the page's URL.
There is one more menu that you can access with a right-click, and this one lets you load page in a new tab, go forward, scroll to the bottom, bookmark the page, undo close tab. That's nearly 20 commands, none of which requires you to draw or even remember a gesture. And there's even more, easyGestures N has contextual menus for links, images, text selection and text boxes.
This allows you to search, copy or paste links, text, save images and more. To access this menu, hold down Alt when you click the middle mouse button.
To cancel an action, hit the escape key or move the mouse away from the menu. If the pie menu is blocking something, hold down the Shift key and move the mouse and the menu will follow the cursor.
Want to use the middle mouse button for scrolling? Hold down the Ctrl key while clicking the button and Firefox will display the scroll icon. It also works with the Shift key.
Let's head to the extension's options. EasyGestures N can execute many additional commands, most of which requires more permissions. You may choose to enable these from the Permissions tab. Some useful examples include executing JavaScript, take tab screenshots or access recently closed tabs.
The Activation tab lets you define the mouse button behavior. If you have a mouse with more buttons, you can assign it to trigger the easyGestures N pie menu. You can even use the right or left mouse button for the same, but I don't recommend doing so, as it could hinder your browsing experience.
The tooltips that appear next to the menu can be disabled, and it might be a good idea to do this once you get used to the icons. You can increase the icon display size, and or swap it out for a larger set.
Don't like the options in the pie menu? You can customize every item from the "Menus" tab, and there are a ton of shortcuts that you can choose from. easyGestures N can also be used as a speed-dial to load your favorite sites quickly, set it up from the customizations tab.
EasyGestures N for Firefox is an open source extension. The dark theme looks better than the standard one, but that's just a personal preference.
This extension conflicts with other gesture extensions (those that support real gestures). For example, if you configured its context menu to open by right click, you will definitely have issues with mouse drag gestures bound to the right button. Dragging mouse will trigger actions from the context menu as this extensions does not detect the fact that the button was not released.
This extension does not allow to use custom items (those from other extensions) available in the standard context menu.
This extension has confusing icons for some actions and does not provide a way to change them.
I like global hotkeys (shortcuts) that can be shared between apps, so I don’t like the browser-specific mouse gesture feature.
However, I was interested in Ashwin’s article, so I tried to try it, but this extension will display a warning “This add-on requires a newer version of Firefox (at least version 79.0). You are using Firefox 78.0.”, therefor it for “Firefox 78.6.1esr” have to select Version 6.4.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/easygestures-n/versions/
Certainly, it is easy to use. I’ll try that option for a while.
Thanks for the informative article, Ashwin!
Impressions using options etc:
A wide variety and completion of mouse gesture options (detailed in “Tips 22 – easyGestures N” below). A pie chart menu is displayed with the middle mouse button, and can take actions intuitively and easily with one click. Customization is also possible.
Really wonderful!
Tips 22 – easyGestures N
moz-extension://aa6f5bf4-a1b1-4d0b-8b41-a3e134ebe003/tips/tips.html
README.md (Official support site)
https://github.com/ngdeleito/easyGestures
Excerpt reprint:
This extension is a fork of version 4.3.2 of the easyGestures Firefox extension created by Ons Besbes, who maintained it until Firefox 4. Help is very much welcome, especially for updating and maintaining the formerly supported locales: cz-CZ, de-DE, hu-HU, it-IT, ja-JP, ko-KR, pl-PL, pt-BR, sk-SK, tr-TR, zh-CN and zh-TW. Their corresponding strings can be found under the v4.13 extension/chrome/locale folder.
https://github.com/ngdeleito/easyGestures/tree/v4.13/extension/chrome/locale
easyGestures N is a WebExtension (written for Firefox) that provides easy to learn gestures for browsing the Web through a highly customizable pie menu.
Click the middle mouse button (or the left mouse button and a ‘Shift’ key on a Mac) to open the pie menu, then click on the action to execute. Or even faster, hold down that button, drag the mouse pointer over the action to execute and release the button. Customize the actions available on the pie menu in the preferences dialog. Check out other features in the tips.
Make sure to run version 5.2 or greater (or uninstall any previous version)
Easy?
OK.
The “wheel” was the design of logitech mouseware N years ago.
I’ve used in the the Gesturefy and FoxyGestures extensions mentioned in the article until I realized that on a regular basis I called only a few of the gestures I had set. I opted then for an extension called ‘Mouse Gesture Events’ [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mouse-gestures/] which considers 8 mouse gestures and 2 scroll wheel actions, programmable of course.
Now I discover this ‘MouseGestures_N’ (‘MGN’) extension which comes in handy for anyone who needs more than a few mouse gestures and is confronted to memory issues (that of the user!). I’ve just tested it and I must say it is particularly well brought up, intuitive, requires no memory effort (its very concept). Nevertheless I’ll stick on to the ‘Mouse Gesture Events’ extension for the simple reason that I need no more, on a regular basis, then what it handles : 8 mouse gestures and 2 scroll wheel actions.
Otherwise, a very nice find, Ashwin, and for what I’ve discovered of it, recommended IMO to anyone aiming to conciliate many browser actions with a minimum memory effort.