Mouse Gestures is a concept that was first developed and used in Firefox and now with the Smooth Gestures Chrome Extension, we can get the same functionality in Google Chrome too. Smooth Gestures is a near perfect Mouse gesture extension for Chrome, that lets you use mouse gestures and keyboard shortcuts for much faster navigation while surfing the internet.
Smooth Gesture is an extension that allows you to move the mouse while holding the right mouse button to trigger actions, such as page navigation or tab management. It supports click-and-drag (mouse gesture), click-and-scroll (scroll gesture), click-and-click (rocker gesture), and keyboard shortcuts!
Smooth Gesture Extension In Action:
After installing the Smooth Gestures extension you might get confused – as to what happens next and what should you do exactly to get it to work, especially if you have never used mouse gestures before. That is why I would advise you to start from the options page.
Hold your right mouse button down and do the gesture shown in the image shown on the left. It would open up the Options page for Smooth Gestures. There it is – you already are getting good at using gestures. 🙂
The options page is quite self-explanatory and the developer has done an excellent job in presenting the gestures and explaining how they work. On the right side of the Options Page, you would see the Navigation links for various Gesture actions like – Page Navigation gestures, Tab management gestures etc.
As you scroll down you would see which gesture performs which action. You can start using the easy ones at first and as you get used to it you can start using the more complicated ones. Here are a few that are quite easy to use and you could start using right away.
These are some of the easy gestures you can use once you install Smooth Gestures.
Moving from one tab to another duplicating or closing a tab, are quite easy to use and you would get used to them pretty soon.
Smooth Gestures – Other Settings:
At the bottom of the options page, you can choose from other settings like setting your new tab page, selecting how the gesture trailing lines look and if you want to synchronize your gestures to all the Chrome browsers you use on other computers.
Creating Your Own Gestures:
Although many common actions in a browser have default gestures associated with them, you can create your own gestures for specific actions.
Kind of gestures you can use with Smooth Gestures:
- Mouse Gesture: Hold down the right mouse button and draw a gesture by moving the mouse, then release.
- Scroll Gesture: Hold down the right mouse button and scroll the scroll wheel.
- Rocker Gesture: Hold down any mouse button, then click another.
- Keyboard Shortcut: Hold any modifier keys (or none), then press another key.
With these combinations, you have unlimited ways of creating the gestures you prefer, whether it’s the Mouse or the Keyboard. For Eg. – For the Google Search Gesture I user Alt + Space. Now when I highlight a word on a webpage and hit Alt + Space – Google Search results for that term open in a new window. You can use any combination comfortable for you.
It also lets you save your gestures on your computer if you want to manually move them on other computer or share it with friends. Quite a useful feature.
Conclusion:
Like I have said before this is a near perfect extension for navigation shortcuts and mouse gestures for Google Chrome, but it still has some chinks in its armor. However, the developer is ever helpful and rectifies the bugs soon after they are reported. No wonder it’s one of the most popular extensions in Google Chrome Extensions gallery.
If you are a fan of quick navigation as well as Mouse and Keyboard shortcuts – You would love Smooth Gestures. Give it a shot.
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