Describes use of mouse in mouse.txt in the Excel section of my pages. and suggestions for Control Panels settings for the mouse.Mouse NVU
This page is also the only page on the site edited with a WYSIWG style editor (NVU). 

Mouse Usage in Firefox

Location: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/mouse.htm
Home page: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/firefox.htm
[View without Frames]

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.

Setting Global Mouse Button Assignments in Windows Mouse (#buttons)


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For outdated mouse drivers you may have to assign Back button to Alt+ArrowLeft, and Forward to Alt+ArrowRight  as an application exception for Firefox.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.

Additional comments on Wheel-click:  (#wheelcomments):

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).

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 location 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:

There is also  "Mouse Gestures"  but I'm not ready for that yet for myself.

Mouse Shortcuts   (#shortcuts)

NVUUse 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..

  1. It is changing  &#65;  to "A"  in the source (not good), but it is leaving  %41  alone and not converting to  "A". (which is good)
  2. Generating <Br><br>  instead of <p>    (not wanted)
  3. Generating empty  <div></div< instead of <p>  (not wanted)
  4. Did break one bookmarklet and did not damage the other.  (not wanted)
  5. Splits end tags from start tags even if fits on one line including <META> <Hn> <LI>  (not wanted)
  6. Puts an underscore styling on entire <LI> item if you pasted in a link. (not wanted)
  7. Did not generate or change <Meta> tags  (which is good)
  8. Did not in any manner generate excessive or bad coding  (both of which is good)
  9. Anchor tags (<a href=...>)  after <LI> tags split up immediately after the "a"  (unbearable code)
  10. Does not show id=  tags, since these are needed for links, it is surprising that they are not shown in a WYSIWYG editor.
  11. 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)


Bookmarklets;  There are a lot of links on this page.  The following BookMarklets (Favelets) will distinguish between internal or external links.  First click on highlight links,  and then on int/ext links.  Your browser's Reset button (F5) will reload the original unmodified web page. 
This page was introduced on January 5, 2006. 
[Go Back] [Return to TOP]

Main Firefox pages (on-site):  [Customizations, Extensions],  [Tabs],  [Bookmarks],  [Keyword shortcuts],  [Context and other menus

Please send your comments concerning this web page to: David McRitchie send email comments


Copyright © 2004 - 2009,  F. David McRitchie,  All Rights Reserved