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Version: 3.3
Author: snuz2
Date: April 2018

It seems that there used to be a handful of Mouse Gesture extensions for Mozilla products, but lately they have dwindled down to about one. While FireGestures can be configured to do almost anything, I don't like its philosophy at all, so I wrote microGesture.

I believe that mouse gestures are only really useful for the most common tasks of the browser. Especially, forward and backward navigation for those who don't have a 5 button mouse, or like me, never got used to it. I also added top and bottom of page since they are intuitive and handy gestures. About the only other common task I perform when browsing is following links, so I added gestures that intelligently respond to links and allow you to take control of where they open: in a new tab, or in a background tab. Many users asked for open and close tab as well, so these have been added as big gestures. Although more complicated gestures to do even more things are possible, most of those things are available on the right-click context menu. If I need to make 2 or more strokes to make the gesture, that is no easier than clicking the context menu. Also, the context menu doesn't require me to remember anything, while too many gestures will just result in most of them being forgotten.

The result of this is a small extension that is Quick, Easy to learn, Intuitive and has No Configuration. While the "Everything to Everyone" extension is ~400KB, microGesture is just about 2KB. That's because it is custom written using the ultralight philosophy. That's like 0.5% of the resources to perform the only part of the job most users will ever really need.

It is tiny and downloads fast, takes up minimum disk space, loads fast and runs fast. It maximizes usefulness by minimizing the user interface. Most of the space in FireGestures is devoted to its configuration panels and requirement to be able to intervene in almost anything your browser does. With no configuration and a sensibly limited scope, microGesture keeps out of your browser's business.

• Big Up - Open a New Tab.
• Up - Goto Top of page. For links, Force to open in a New Tab.
• Down - Goto Bottom of page. For links, Force to open in a Background Tab.
• Big Down - Close this Tab.
• Left - Navigate Back.
• Right - Navigate Forward.

Big Gestures bring the Tab Edition gestures to microGesture, this offsets some of the annoyance since Mozilla removed the ability to automatically open and close tabs. To make a big gesture, just go farther than your normal gesture size, microgesture should adapt to your usual gesture size and recognize that you're making a big gesture. Big gestures work best if you keep your normal gestures short, that way, you won't have to gesture off of the page to make it big enough.

Tab Edition & Regular Edition & Big Gestures

Tab Edition was made due to user requests for a more powerful extension that could open and close tabs rather than just go up and down the page. Since regular edition now does this with big gestures, it's mostly kept for older users.

Controlling the Opening of Links

Not all links are really links! Sometimes links are disguised to look like something else, say a button or an image. And sometimes, what looks like a link really just runs a script on a page. The control of where a link opens only works if it is a real link, no extension can control where a script on another page places its output.
How can you tell if it's a real link? It has an address when you hover over it, like "http://www.somewhere.com/somepage/"; how can you tell if it is a script on the page? It has an address like "javascript(void)". Do not email with a complaint that it didn't work for you unless you are sure it is a valid page load from a web address.

Preferences in microgesture Options Page

• Enable Link Gestures - If checked, recognize links and perform the link gestures on them. If you don't like this link detecting behavior, uncheck this setting and only top/bottom/forward/back gestures will be performed.
• Enable Auto Open/Close Tabs - If checked, close the tab if there is no tab to go back to and reopen the last closed tab if there is no tab to go forward to. This option is disabled because Firefox removed the ability to detect if back/forward navigation is possible, making this feature also impossible. If they ever restore it, I will put it back in.
• Enable Big Gestures - If unchecked, microGesture will not recognize Big Gestures. Useful if you can't get big gestures to work with your mousing style.