Laughing Means A Lot To Me » Safari

Using magic mouse 2 fingers swipe in Chrome/Firefox in Lion

Tkjune — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 20:21:10 +0000

UPDATE on Sep 15th:

If you don't want to use any other 3rd party software, it still can be done. Take Trackpad as example: Keep the default setting no change (2 fingers for Safari smooth history, 3 fingers for full screen app switch), when going forward or backward in Chrome or Firefox etc., press ALT(OPTION) key while swiping with 3 fingers. Thanks to Alejandro to provide the useful tip!

UPDATE on Aug 31st:

jitouch, the Solution for Multi-touch Gestures of OS X Lion

IMPORTANT UPDATE on Aug 21st:

After upgrading to 10.7.1, solution below does not work anymore. If you want forward/backward back, try using MagicPrefs. I'm testing. Again, you cannot use 2 fingers swipe of Trackpad (1 finger for Magic Mouse) go back and forth in Chrome, Finder, iTunes, Firefox and so on in 10.7.1 without help of 3rd party software's help.

Just upgraded to Mac OS X Lion. A lot of new features come with some habits you may have to change. For example, the smooth browsing backward/forward experience in Safari together with no functioning of magic mouse's 2 fingers swipe for backward/forward in Chrome/Firefox or other web browser or applications.

You may have same habit with me, on using magic mouse:

Use 1 finger to scroll around (few webpages scrolls left to right, but they exist)
Use 2 fingers to go backward/forward
The 2 habits above apply to all browsers Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Opera, etc. Oh, and Finder.
Some other applications may need this too, like in Sparrow, to fold and unfold a mail

When upgrading to Lion, something changed as follows by default:

Use 1 finger to go backward/forward in Safari. (Yes, it's moving smoothly, nicely, elegantly...)
Use 2 fingers to move to different desktop in "Mission Control"
Cannot go backward/forward in other favorite browsers. Oh, and Finder.
Cannot fold/unfold a mail in Sparrow either.

And here's the solution(with which, you need to give up something):

Open Magic Mouse setting in System Preferences
In More Gestures tap, click the drop down list under Swipe between pages and choose Swipe left or right with two fingers
Uncheck the Swipe between full-screen apps

Now you get your old 2 fingers gesture for magic mouse back, and you give up smooth moving backward/forward in Safari -- you can still move backward/forward in Safari, just not smoothly.

Wait a minute, how about the "Swipe between full-screen apps"? If you really need that and don't mind to use 3 fingers to swipe for this, you can use MagicPrefs, which provides you so many different actions for Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad, Macbook Trackpad. You can define a 3 fingers swipe gesture to "Switch Space Left/Right", and it's free, Hallelujah!

For smoothing moving backward/forward in Safari, if only one finger swipe can be applied to it, I have to give it up. One reason is as above, the other is, it may cause some mis-action when browsing. Hope apple could give a update for magic mouse 2 fingers gesture later.

God, I still have to take care 48% IE6

Tkjune — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 14:30:20 +0000

The browser war has so many players in it: IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera... and some other mobile browsers. After turning to Mac, I have a delusion that most people are using Firefox, or Safari, or Chrome. When I check the website visitor report, the truth kicks me off from the cloud -- There are still 48% IE6 users visiting the website.
I'm not a super fan of Firefox in Windows, but in Mac, all the fonts looks so nice in any browser (definitely not including IE) and I just don't want to look back to the IE in Windows. Isn't it a nightmare? With the Web Developer and Firebug add-on, Firefox is so powerful a web app development tool. In the meanwhile, the IE develop toolbar looks like a kid. Even in IE8, the improved built-in develop tool bar, has so many limitations. It's killing me.
After complaining so much, I have to face the fact: 48% IE6! The good side is, Firefox and other browsers are stronger than last year. Take Firefox for example, it grows from 7% to 8%.

Feeling web-based 3D graphics

Tkjune — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 03:20:28 +0000

After turning to Mac, in a sudden, I'm thinking why it's so attractive to me? When there are a lot of reasons like OS X is more stable, virus free (though partly because of market share is smaller than Windows) and so on, it's much more important to me that OS X has a great user interface. I got the impression from friends that Mac has a strong graphic engine, more powerful than PC. Since they are using similar hardware, then it's all about the beauty of software.

Apple mobile system inherits this. Safari on iPhone could provide web-based 3D graphic. 3D graphic is not new to web browser. JavaScript, Java Applet, Flash has been working on it all the time. You can even start a 3D virtual tour of THE FOBIDDEN CITY which requires extra plug-in. Powered by WebKit, Safari supports CSS Transforms and now CSS Animation. With Safari 4, you can see beautiful leaves falling here. The more wonderful thing is on iPhone OS:

Though this 3D animation can be created by JavaScript too, WebKit's CSS transforms offer greater performance. And CSS could be handier for Web UI designer to create and manipulate elements to interact with users.

"It's hardware accelerated, and all the timing and intervals needed for the animations are handled more efficiently by Safari itself instead of Safari's JavaScript engine," Peter Zich, a Chicago-area developer, told Ars. "The framerate for JS animations on the iPhone usually doesn't get past 5fps, for instance, while with CSS it is far more."

Personally, I'm using Firefox more for there are many convenient plug-ins. Hope it could catch up soon.

When 3D graphic control becomes a standard of industry and more web applications get involved, we are getting one step near to the Matrix world.