Describes
use of mouse in
mouse.txt
in the
Excel section of my pages. and suggestions for Control Panels settings
for the mouse.
This
page is also
the only page on the site edited with a WYSIWG style
editor (NVU).
Mouse Usage in Firefox
Outline
(#outline)
Things
to be found on or referenced from this page.
Mouse
Selection (#selection)
A selection is created from a starting point and extended by
dragging the cursor. with the left button depressed. An
existing
selection can be extended from the starting point using
Shift+click, but cannot be extended without restarting.
Double click from within a word will select the entire word,
triple click will select the entire line or with the "TripleSelect"
extension will
select the entire paragraph.
The normal use for a selection
is with Copy
(Ctrl+C), and Paste (Ctrl+V), which are also available in the
Edit and Context menus, and since Firefox is customizable those menus
items can be removed., particularly from a bloated context menu.
If you are interested in
mouse-only browsing, and reduced
keyboard usage, it is imperative
that the mouse wheel be set globally to Enter.
It is best
if know how to do things both as keyboard only and are also able to
do most non-entry things with the mouse alone.
Global settings for Mouse buttons
in Windows (START, Settings, Control
Panel --> Mouse)
Left Button: Left-click
(global/default)
Right Button: Right-click (global/default)
Wheel Button: Enter
(global *override*)
Large Thumb Button: Back (global/default) -- Left hand aux button
Small Thumb Button: Forward (global/default) -- Right hand aux button
For outdated mouse drivers you may have to assign Back button to
Alt+ArrowLeft, and Forward to Alt+ArrowRight as an
application exception for Firefox.
Middle-click
or Wheel
Button (#wheel)
Enter
is by far the best setting
for wheel button, as a global setting,
it eliminates need to hit Enter key after entering data in the search
bar, location bar, forms, and allows you to invoke a dialog's default
button.
Setting the Middle wheel button to something dedicated to tabbed browsing
would not be a wise choice, there are other choices available for
working with Tabs as keyboard shortcuts, double-click shortcuts, and
right-click (context menu) usage. See your Firefox Help for
Tabbed Browsing, Keyboard Shortcuts, Mouse and Shortcuts.
My pet peeve with software designer's scarfing up the use
of middle click to fill a void like we have this new key what
are we going to do with it -- let's make it do something
fantastic. In Windows that a warp speed scroller
control that is annoying as heck. In Linux seems completely
wasted because you would use the keyboard, Ctrl+C, to effect
a copy then use the wheel to paste, you still have to hit
Enter. or perhaps it pastes the selection somewhere --but in Firefox
you drag a lot of things anyway.
Dialog boxes in every
application that I use when they highlight a button between
such things as [Ok] [Cancel] the one that
is highlighted would be invoked if you hit Enter
so if the wheel is set to Enter just click on itwith no need
to move the mouse at all.
In my opinion there is no
better setting for the wheel click than Enter and that is what I have
set mine to across all applications, since you frequently need to hit
Enter from dialogs, input areas, location bar, search bar and your hand
is already on the mouse nothing could be more logical.
If you are filling out some
form in a FF webpage Enter
will probably get you carriage-returnline-feed whatever is
generated, hitting Enter twice
would get you a blank line in between. Making it very easy to
some minor edit things using only the mouse.
For someone with
only one hand, the choice might be a lot more complicated.
Additional Settings for Mouse and Keyboard in Windows Vista Control Panel
Control Panel, Mouse:
Mouse Settings for Windows Mail
Wheel Button (Enter)
BACK (keystroke Ctrl+Shift+,), FORWARD (keystroke Ctrl+Shift+.)
— actually Ctrl+< and Ctrl+> otherwise problem during composing email
Pointer Options:
[x] Hide pointer while typing
[x] Show location of pointer when I press the Ctrl key
Control Panel, Ease of Access Center:
Make the keyboard easier to use: [x] Turn on Toggle keys (sound for Caps/Num/Scroll lock)
caret find:
A lot of problems with Find and with Scrolling in Firefox
involve
the
caret
find option and is
convered
on my
home page.
The Firefox implementation has been bad and the option is too easily
changed with F7, it is best set in Tools, Options,
The best place to check is the setting for
accessibility.browsewithcaret
in about:config which should be set to False (default value).
- True, A blinking
cursor (the caret) is visible on all
displayed webpages, allowing the user to navigate through the page as
they might a word processor document.
- False,
The system
caret is hidden. (Default), so if you click at a point on the screen it
will not visibly mark the position of the cursor. So if you
see
the dialog "Pressing F7 turns Caret Browing on or off. This
feature places a moveable curso in web pages, allowing you to select
text with the keyboard. Do you want to turn Caret Browing
on?"
Always reply with No.
In order to warn you of any change
accessibility.warn_on_browsewithcaret
should be set to True.
The following additions to
user.js should alleviate problem
caused by inadvertently hitting F7 which changes the setting.
This
will reset when Firefox is restarted.
// Get SpaceBar, PageUp, PageDown to work properly if F7 hit accidentally
// see http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/firefox.htm#find
user_pref("accessibility.browsewithcaret", false);
user_pref("accessibility.warn_on_browsewithcaret", true);
Drag
Links and Bookmarks (#drag)
The following also applies to Internet Explorer where bookmarks are
called Favorites, and is references to Desktop and Quick
Launch
apply to Windows..
In browsers including Firefox (Bookmarks) and IE (Favorites), you can
drag
the
favicon found at the left of the
url on the location bar, or a tab, or a Link, or a bookmark,
or a plain text link selection
to
to
a
tab,
to the l
ocation
bar, to
your
bookmarks,
to a folder within your bookmarks (which is
really in bookmarks.html -- a
file), to your personal
bookmarks
toolbar (which is part of your
bookmarks), to a system
folder, or even to the Desktop, or to the
Quick Launch,
.
Any bookmark or bookmarklet that you create can also be
a keyword
shortcut.
UserStyles involving Mouse; (#userstyles)
Some related styles
that anyone can install in userChrome.css or with Stylish extension. With the
extension changes are normally immediate as opposed to restarting Firefox.
Involve installing the "Stylish" extension https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/2108
then doing a search at http://www.userstyles.org for cursor
or the direct link for search is http://userstyles.org/styles/search/cursor
you might also try a search for mouse as well.
Zoom and Full
Screen
Viewing (#zoom)
Firefox has builtin keyboard text zoom in with Ctrl++, and zoom out
with Ctrl+-,
and return to normal with Ctrl+0 (zero), and also combination use of
Ctrl+wheel for zoom in/out.
Almost mouse
only operations
when browsing (no ctrl key for zoom), can be achieved with the
following:
- Auto
Hide
extension, toggle full screen usage on/off (context menu). "Full
Screen" option available on the main context menu or
using F11, and still have access to
toolbars hidden in full screen mode, and the Windows Status Bar
by moving cursor to extreme top or bottom. Advise use of "Menu Editor"
extension to move the "Full Screen" item to the top of the
Context Menu.
- ImageZoom,
independently zoom a single image. Extension does not
interfere
with Mouse Zoom
- MouseZoom,
zoom both text and
images together with mouse only (like in Opera)
There is also "Mouse
Gestures" but I'm not
ready for that yet for myself.
- With the Mouse
Button set to Enter
you can
work with many dialog boxes simply by clicking Enter on the mouse
without even moving the mouse. How
neat is that?
Mouse
Shortcuts (#shortcuts)
Use
of the NVU editor (#nvu)
This page was edited and updated using NVU after the
iinitial page had been created from basic skeletal coding.
This was my first
and only Firefox page edited with a WYSIWYG editor.
This was a test to see if NVU would mess up bookmarklets,
email
or other things within this page, which it did, of
course.
All WYSIWYG editors mess up existing code. Much of the
initial
content of this page came from a text file (mouse.txt)
that has my mouse button assignments for
several applications, though it was the initial material for the page
it is only a part of the page..
- It is changing
A to "A" in the source (not good), but
it is leaving %41 alone and not converting
to "A". (which is good)
- Generating
<Br><br> instead of
<p> (not wanted)
- Generating empty
<div></div< instead of
<p> (not wanted)
- Did break one bookmarklet
and did not damage the other. (not
wanted)
- Splits end tags from start
tags even if fits on one line including <META>
<Hn> <LI> (not wanted)
- Puts an underscore styling on entire <LI> item if you
pasted in a link. (not wanted)
- Did not generate or change
<Meta> tags (which is good)
- Did not in any manner
generate excessive or bad coding (both of which is good)
- Anchor tags (<a
href=...>) after <LI> tags split up
immediately after the "a" (unbearable
code)
- Does not show id=
tags, since these are needed for links, it is surprising that
they are not shown in a WYSIWYG editor.
- Did generate some minor
errors in code that was easily rectified with use of Tidy in
HTML-Kit.
Summary: For those that don't care what the code looks like
(or might never look at it), NVU is fairly decent.
Most of my pages are
created/edited with Notepad. (Exceptions:
this page, tabs_config
with Nvu). This page is no longer edited with NVU and is being edited with Notepad like my other pages.
My Choice of a Mouse (#mousechoice)