Mouse Gestures for Internet Explorer

Mouse Gestures for Internet Explorer - Frequently Asked Questions

How do I...
- Open a link in a new window/tab?
- Where have the mouse gestures gone?

Known issues

New features

Internet Explorer
- InPrivate Browsing (from Eric @ Microsoft)

How do I...

Easy - just start the "open new window/tab" gesture over the link you want to open in the new window. The gesture plugin will recognise that the gesture was started over a link, extract the url of the link and open the new window accordingly.

Where have the mouse gestures gone?

If you've installed the mouse gestures plugin, but they don't appear to work, check the following:

Are third party browser extensions enabled?
From the Tools menu, select the Internet Options option. Switch to the Advanced page, and check that the Enable third-party browser extensions option is checked.
Is the mouse gestures plugin enabled?
From the Tools menu, select Managee Add-ons then Enable or Disable Add-ons. Ensure that Mouse Gestures and Mouse Gestures... are enabled.

Known issues

Why does the mouse gestures plugin cause IE to crash

This is only a problem on Windows NT and Windows 2000 - In order to track the mouse, the mouse gestures plugin uses a technique called Window Subclassing. However, mouse gestures isn't the only plugin that uses this technique (for example, the Google toolbar). As described here this technique has some disadvantages - in particular, the order in which window's are un-subclassed is particularly important. Unfortunately there's no way to control this.

On Windows XP (and Vista) I use an alternative technique (see here where the order of un-subclassing doesn't matter).

Why do mouse gestures slow the system down

Sorry, I don't know. Somewhat predictably, it doesn't affect any of the systems I use. So this makes it impossible for me to debug. If you can give me any more info about how to recreate the circumstances I can try and fix it.

Why does the Mouse Gestures menu disappear?

This used to be a problem in older versions of the plugin, but was fixed in v2.0.0.8

New features

Will there be support for mouse gestures under Win64?

Yes! As of version 2.0.1.1 there's now a x64 version of the plugin. This was made possible with the help of Eric Lawrence at Microsoft how was kind enough to supply me with a copy of Visual Studio 2005 - thanks again Eric!

What about support for Vista?

Again, with thanks to Eric @ Microsoft I'm now developing and running the Mouse Gestures plugin with Vista.

Can you add feature XXX?

Maybe... Please feel free to send me details of any features you'd like to see added. Loads of the features that are now in the plugin (e.g. mouse trails, keystokes, scripts etc. are the result of feature requests). If I can work out a way to do it, and I can find the time then I'll do my best!

See also the wishlist for a list of the requested features

Internet Explorer

InPrivate Browsing (from Eric @ Microsoft)

When IE8 users use InPrivate Browsing mode they will find that mouse gestures are not available because in this mode, extensions are not loaded.

To enable loading of Mouse Gestures (and all other extensions) InPrivate, click: Tools->Internet Options->Privacy, and uncheck Disable toolbars and extensions when InPrivate Browsing starts at the bottom of the dialog.