Grr OS X Lion + Firefox + Swipe Gestures

randal · 6 Nov 2011 at 22:44

So I've put of my upgrade to Lion for some months now, and a couple of weeks I took the plunge and upgraded.

For a time (once I disabled a whole bunch of new features, I'm set in my ways) it was good. Gestures worked on Firefox, in particular:

Three fingers up/down: top/bottom of page
Three fingers left/right: back/forward through pages

Then I purchased a magic mouse, and the only way I could get swipes to work on that was to set to two fingers left/right for back/forward.

Since doing that my left/right gestures on the trackpad haven't worked, I've updated everything and tried various configs and nothing. Short of installing a 3rd party app I really don't know what else to try.

They work perfectly in Safari (surprise surprise), and previously worked in Firefox - what am I doing wrong??

Cheers in advance.

randal · 7 Nov 2011 at 00:20

Got it, well a work around for now until it sorts itself out.

Pinchy FF add-on.

Resorted to additional software to fix a problem, feel dirty.

fez · 7 Nov 2011 at 00:43

Pretty sure this is an issue with lion at the moment. I did the same; used the trackpad at first and set up the gestures and all was well. Then I plugged in my magic mouse and it all went wrong. I adjusted the settings to make the mouse work and went on my merry way.

A week or so later I was using the trackpad again and gestures were screwed. I then realised that it was one or the other. Using both was a recipe for disaster even though they both have their own settings.

Really disappointed about this as you would hope that this sort of really simple thing would have been picked up at some point.

randal · 7 Nov 2011 at 00:48

It's very unlike Apple to get the hardware/software functionality so messed up, although I will hand on heart admit this is the first of such booboos I've encountered from them so it's not bad going!

I reluctantly left Snow Leopard to come to Lion, truth be told I'm not sure what all the fuss is about with Lion anyway. It's good, but it's nothing groundbreaking from SL. In my opinion, Apple hit OS nirvana with that iteration of OS X.

pingwing · 7 Nov 2011 at 10:21

Same thing happened to me, iv given in and migrated to safari... (mainly as it works in full full screen for spaces which is fun)

But the gesture thing in firefox going with lion confused me so much, especially as lion seems to make my mac run hotter

randal · 7 Nov 2011 at 10:56

pingwing said:
Same thing happened to me, iv given in and migrated to safari... (mainly as it works in full full screen for spaces which is fun)

But the gesture thing in firefox going with lion confused me so much, especially as lion seems to make my mac run hotter

I considered that move for a brief moment, but I've been a loyal FF user since it's inception and I can't bring myself to leave my favourite browser behind because Apple/Mozilla have got their thumbs up their respective behinds.

Agree with what you're saying about Lion, I guess the prettiness features (Launchpad, Mission Control etc..) are more GPU intensive and require higher clock speeds at default? I have definitely noticed more heat, nearly cooked my thighs the other night watching Frozen Planet on iPlayer whereas on SL HD iPlayer content streamed across fine and cool.

I do hope they sort this stuff out soon, I'd like to avoid making the step back to SL but the argument is certainly persuasive at the moment.

dav3evans · 7 Nov 2011 at 11:46

Theres another one called Better TouchTool as well. You can assign swipes..functions and all sorts globally or to any specific application. It's ace <3

randal · 7 Nov 2011 at 12:15

dav3evans said:
Theres another one called Better TouchTool as well. You can assign swipes..functions and all sorts globally or to any specific application. It's ace <3

Saw that, but seeing as it's on FF that's affected I didn't want to start making system wide changes to fix small functionality in one app - especially when it worked perfectly before.

As Fez says, it appears there's a bug in Lion that means the OS gets confused for Firefox when there's two multitouch devices installed.

dav3evans · 7 Nov 2011 at 12:19

You can just set the changes for FF if you want to. Just thought it was worth mentioning as I got it to be able to use the extra buttons on my Logitech mouse to be able to page forward and backwards in browsers same as on PC. Only a little thing but it's so annoying when all they serve use for is just another left click!

randal · 7 Nov 2011 at 12:28

Ah OK, that's slightly better. The Pinch add-on for FF does the same too, but with a lighter footprint.

I know what you mean, I use a Logitech mouse on the PC upstairs with side buttons for browsing. Simple things, but annoying when they're not there!

fez · 7 Nov 2011 at 12:30

I can't be bothered to install a 3rd party app to screw with the gestures at the moment. If its still and issue after the next update I may do though.

pingwing · 7 Nov 2011 at 14:04

randal24 said:
I considered that move for a brief moment, but I've been a loyal FF user since it's inception and I can't bring myself to leave my favourite browser behind because Apple/Mozilla have got their thumbs up their respective behinds.

Agree with what you're saying about Lion, I guess the prettiness features (Launchpad, Mission Control etc..) are more GPU intensive and require higher clock speeds at default? I have definitely noticed more heat, nearly cooked my thighs the other night watching Frozen Planet on iPlayer whereas on SL HD iPlayer content streamed across fine and cool.

I do hope they sort this stuff out soon, I'd like to avoid making the step back to SL but the argument is certainly persuasive at the moment.

Yeah it was a really frustrating step to concede that fixing firefox was more effort than learning safari for me

I like ff a lot, just annoyed that they have dropped the ball on lion a bit.

Lion its self just seems to want more from my hardware, given that some of the internals of my mac are 4-5 year old tech (c2d was out when I started uni! and the 9600m is beyond aged) so I'm not surprised about the heat element. Just missed my moment to go back to SL anyway, haven't really got the time to manually rebuild the os install and get back all my documents till christmas and I'll probably replace the mbp anyway.

The only thing iv found that makes it ok is just to use smc fan control to turn up the fans manually earlier which helps the cooling issue (along with a large book between my lap and mac), but its just getting worse meaning it'll need a trip to apple care again before that runs out and finds a new home (well its being given to my mum either way but id rather once its had a service)