Talkings of a Tyrant

All-In-One Gestures is a powerful and flexible extension for Firefox. It enables mouse gestures, rocker navigation, and some other features.

For me, the most important feature of this extension is mouse gesturing. Mouse gestures are pretty self-explanatory. You right-click, and drag in a pattern of directions and you get a result. Seems pretty boring, when I put it like that.

However, mouse gestures are so much more than that. Mouse gestures are highly customizable. There are over 80 different actions you can do with mouse gestures, and you can easily set the mouse gesture you want to each action. You don’t have to, though. Only about 35 of the actions are set to a gesture for me, and I use an even smaller number of gestures than that.

Another useful feature is rocker navigation. This is where you press the right mouse button, then the left mouse button to go back, and vice-versa to go forward. Simple, easy to remember, and quick.

There are several other features in All-In-One Gestures, but I don’t really use them. I don’t like autoscroll, so nearly all of them are pointless. They would be useful if you liked autoscoll though, so don’t let me hold you back.

However, there is one more feature I like. That is grab-and-drag.

I’ve previously reviewed Grab and Drag, but it has some bugs. For some reason (I can’t find out why) it doesn’t work on certain sites (like mine). It isn’t a extension incompatibility (I’m pretty sure) because disabling all but the Grab and Drag extension doesn’t help, and the bug is still there on a new profile.

So I’m discontinuing my recommendation of the Grab and Drag extension, and instead recommending that you enable a similar feature in All-In-One Gestures.

Update: Grab and Drag 0.9.6 fixed this bug. I hereby recontinue my recommendation.

To do so, go to: Extensions > All-In-One-Gestures > Options (or, if you took my advice to get All-In-One Sidebar, then Extension panel > AIOG > Options).

Go to these options, which are found near the bottom right of AIOG’s main options page. Set it up like so.

Under the “Advanced Prefs #2″ Tab, click the “Grab and Drag Acrobat Reader Mode” option (do what you want with the rest).

Now you’ve just set up the functionality of the Grab and Drag extension, without the bugs! However, instead of left-clicking, like Grab and Drag does, you have to use middle clicking. Just thought you should know.

Analysis

All-In-One gestures has many features, but the main one is mouse gestures. Technically, there is an extension called “Mouse Gestures” that is primarily mouse gestures, but it actually is a bigger installation. Why not choose All-In-One Gestures, and get more functionality for less bloat?

As All-In-One Gestures’ main feature, mouse gestures make navigating the web much easier and faster. I’ve almost completely gotten rid of Firefox’s interface. I don’t need any of the buttons anymore, as I can do them easier and quicker through simply gesturing. All I have left is a Compact Menu, a Location Bar and a search bar. I’ve also got the All-In-One Sidebar, and a status bar, but those are still useful. And I probably will never leave my precious tab bar.

The implementation of Acrobat Reader-style grab and drag is much better than the Grab and Drag extension. It is comparatively bug-free (so far). It is also slightly more useful having the feature use the middle mouse button rather than the left mouse button, as it frees up the left mouse button.

There are many, many features in All-In-One Gestures, and it would be infeasible to discuss all of them in one post. The features discussed here are the most important and useful, but there is no reason to discredit or ignore the others.

All-In-One Gestures is one of those unique extensions that I would recommend specifically to both minimalists and power users. While it has a slight learning curve (there is little documentation on what the mouse gesture actions can do), it is easy to become dependent on it after a few days of use. After you learn the basic commands (close tab, open tab, back, forward, reload, etc.), you can effectively get rid of much of the navigation bar.

However, it doesn’t matter who you are, All-In-One Gestures is a very useful extension that will streamline your browsing experience.

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All-In-One Gestures official site
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