GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 320525
Option to switch gesture button
Last modified: 2013-05-27 16:11:49 UTC
This seems like something you would have thought of already, and perhaps it has been rejected for some well-thought-of reasons, but in any case, I'd like to file a request: There should be an option on which button that triggers mouse gestures. The middle button is used for autoscrolling in another extension, and it seems like something worth letting the user choose - I believe both Opera and the Firefox extensions have the right button as a default.
There's not much to choose from: left button is reserved to activate links; and right button is reserved for context menu. That just leaves middle button... or maybe right button with some modifier.
Well, the right button could be used with the context menu popping up on mouse release when there hasn't been any gesture. This is the default in both Opera and the Firefox extensions, so it is in deed possible. Middle button, equally is already used for autoscrolling, which has it's own bug in this bugzilla somewhere. The left button is trickier, but users could be able to use it whenever the cursor is the arrow (not above links or text). Of course this latter behaviour is sub-optimal and probably not used. But the switch between right and middle is rather important.
Using right click without any modifiers won't work, Epiphany treats it specially (not onclick/onmousedown/up, but oncontextmenu). Using right-click with modifier might work; but Ctrl-click is already used; that leaves only Alt-Click (swallowed by metacity by default), or Shift-click... and modifier-click isn't very easy to do, contravening the perceived advantage of gestures.
Yes, modofier-click is a bad idea, user could just as well do Alt+Arrow and such. But I still can't understand why Epiphany can't be made to trigger the context menu after the mouse is release, and not when it is clicked? Does it have to do with GNOME-wide handling of context menus? In any case - I understand that it may be a lot of work, but I think the feature is important enough to leave it hanging in bugzilla for the chance of someone in the future having the energy to implement it. Cause as it is right now - one extension interferes with another, and both are needed to make Firefox users feel comfortable in Epiphany...
If it's impossible to write an epiphany plugin that can use the right mouse button for gestures then this is an epiphany bug and it should be fixed. Saying "we can't do this right now because it's someone else's problem" is not a valid reason for a bug not being fixed. Should this bug be reassigned to epiphany?
It *is* possible to get events from right mouse click, *but* epiphany will always *also* open the context menu on these events, which conflicts with gestures.
Well, said extension could then also delay the opening of the context menu until the _release_ of the right mouse button... As has been mentioned, and as firefox does it...
Context menus should open on mouse*down*, not on mouse*up*. This allows for "single click" usage of menus: 1. press right button, 2. move mouse (trackball in my case) to menu, 3. release right button This is how all menus in Gnome work and I would really hate to see this changing. (In fact, this is one of my main annoyances when I'm stuck on a windows machine at my university).
(In reply to comment #8) > Context menus should open on mouse*down*, not on mouse*up*. This allows for > "single click" usage of menus: > > 1. press right button, > 2. move mouse (trackball in my case) to menu, > 3. release right button > > This is how all menus in Gnome work and I would really hate to see this > changing. (In fact, this is one of my main annoyances when I'm stuck on a > windows machine at my university). > This should be configurable. The default should be consistent with everything else in Gnome, but it should be possible to enable Firefox-like behavior. It is difficult to use Epiphany's mouse gestures on my Thinkpad as I have middle-button + trackpoint set to scroll. So to use epiphany gestures, I have to hit right-left to emulate the middle mouse click. Similarly, many laptops don't have a middle button. The whole point of mouse gestures is to make users more efficient. Forcing them to use an awkward configuration with no possibility of changing it is bad design.
Mark: which gestures do you use on your Thinkpad? Personally, on my laptop, mouse gestures are a moot point, since it's way harder for me to drag using my touchpad (no matter how much I practice) than it is to hit "Alt-Left", "Ctrl-N", etc, all of which are a couple of inches away. So, constructively: what actions would be faster using touchpad mouse gestures than using built-in Epiphany keybindings? Maybe there's a more efficient solution....
(In reply to comment #10) > Mark: which gestures do you use on your Thinkpad? > The vast majority of times I use getures is to open/close tabs. That and forward/backward navigation using the mouse "rocker" gestures where you hold down right-click then add left-click to move backwards and vice versa for forwards. If I need to move less than 2 tabs, I use the mouse gestures as well, otherwise I use the key shortcuts. > Personally, on my laptop, mouse gestures are a moot point, since it's way > harder for me to drag using my touchpad (no matter how much I practice) than it > is to hit "Alt-Left", "Ctrl-N", etc, all of which are a couple of inches away. > This is true. I don't use my touchpad at all, but rather my trackpoint which probably leads to a rather different usage scenario than most. I just tried doing mouse gestures using just my touchpad w/o hitting the buttons themselves and it seems exceedingly difficult =\. > So, constructively: what actions would be faster using touchpad mouse gestures > than using built-in Epiphany keybindings? Maybe there's a more efficient > solution.... > The one I list above are much faster for me on my trackpoint because my thumb is perpetually on all three buttons. In the case of a trackpoint, I don't know if people tend to keep their thumbs on the buttons, but it seems more awkward than with a trackpoint. If you have a finger on both buttons, then a mouse-rocker gesture as I outlined above is incredibly efficient. Otherwise, I'm not so sure.
The crappy mouse gestures in epiphany are the only thing why I still use firefox. They are what they should be: Usable. If no one sees the point in making these gestures actually usable (or at least configurable), we should better remove them in the next version. It seems that the inventors of this crazy middle click feature never used a laptop. Ever tried these crazy left-right-point actions? If people have to use 3 fingers to actually use a function which should make surfing the web easier, I really don't get the point ... If it is more important all applications behave the same than a application actually works ... ok ok, i think you got that.
Gestures with pointing devices other than mice or trackballs are not really useful, are they? Gestures are hand movements, not fingertip rolling... A note to "soc": please lower your voice. Yelling "crappy" and "crazy feature" is *not* going to help. "Threatening" to use another browser is also *not* going to help. kthxbye
(In reply to comment #6) > It *is* possible to get events from right mouse click, *but* epiphany will > always *also* open the context menu on these events, which conflicts with > gestures. > That is a bug in Epiphany, how do we fix it? Is it possible to do that from within the extension? Does it need changes to the core? How hard do you estimate it to be, and would it need touching Gecko, or only the Epiphany part? We need concrete information so something can be done, saying "this can't possibly work" is not useful. As it stands today, Epi gestures are completely useless (even if I tried to get used to the inconvenient middle button version, I still can't even access them because they conflict with autoscroll, which is another bug that was *not* present in either Galeon or Firefox: middle click-release is autoscroll, middle click-drag is gestures). That's one of the big reasons that make it impossible to switch to Epi for me, no matter how much I'd like to abandon Firefox.
Maciej, please feel free to start hacking on this if you want. However, I can't provide help with coding, and unfortunately there's no maintainer around currently who can assist. I'm just replying so your comment doesn't go ignored.
According to its developer, epiphany-extensions is not under active development anymore. (For reference: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-i18n/2013-May/msg00035.html and bug 700924.) It is unlikely that there will be any further active development. Closing this report as WONTFIX as part of Bugzilla Housekeeping - Please feel free to reopen this bug report in the future if anyone takes the responsibility for active development again.