Mouse Gestures in Opera Browser

I have mentioned before how much I like the Opera browser. I like it even more now. Lots more.

I have been doing something that requires a lot of repetitive moving up and down through a group of web pages. The computer I am doing it on happens to have my much-beloved old Logitech V500 cordless mouse on it right now. Unfortunately, that mouse doesn't have extra buttons for forward/back pages or whatever. So, I decided this would be a very good time to give the Opera Mouse Gestures" a try.

WOW!

If you're familiar with mouse gestures, from using the iPhone or whatever, this may seem very routine to you. I'm not, so it doesn't, and it has just saved me a lot of time and trouble.

Basically, there are a dozen or so browser commands that you can execute by holding down the right mouse button and then moving the mouse. The simplest example is going back a page, by holding the right mouse button and moving the mouse to the left (or holding the right button and clicking the left button). Little things like this really please me (yeah, I know, I'm easy...). My new Kensington SlimBlade Trackball Mouse also has no extra buttons, so this will be a win on that one too. In fact, on my Logitech VX Nano mouse, doing this is easier than using the "back" button, so I am going to be using it there too.

The real payoff, though, will come as I adjust to using gestures to do things that there are no mouse buttons for anyway, so they will be useful with all of my mice and trackballs.

jw 11/3/2009