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How to make your Laptop’s Touchpad work better in Firefox

After you’ve learned all the main keyboard shortcuts, it’s time to make your laptop touchpad work as great in Firefox as you do.

Most laptop trackpads use Synaptics touchpad drivers. This tutorial will teach you how to configure your trackpad’s settings to maximise efficiency when using Firefox. [photo by pzado]

Get to the settings

Go to Control Panel, then open Mouse, and click the Device Settings tab. Click “Settings…”.

Make sure you Enable Tap Zones, under the Tapping > Tap Zones item.

This will enable your touchpad to accept special commands if you click one of the 4 corners.

Switch tabs using Tap Zones

Wouldn’t it be great if you just tapped the top right corner to go to the next tab? Or the top left corner to go the previous tab?

Difficulty Level: Medium to easy

  1. Click the plus sign next to the Tap Zones item. Click Top Right Action.
  2. From the list, choose Record and play a sequence of keystrokes.
  3. Hit Configure

In the prompt that appears, enter the following:
{CONTROL_DN}{TAB}{CONTROL_UP} This will tell it to press Ctrl+Tab every time you hit the top right corner of your trackpad. Useful for switching tabs in Firefox!

To do the opposite when you hit the top left corner, do this:

  1. Click Top Left Action
  2. As before, choose Record and play a sequence of keystrokes.
  3. Hit Configure

In the prompt, enter:
{CONTROL_DN}{SHIFT_DN}{TAB}{SHIFT_UP}{CONTROL_UP}

Extra: Enable middle-clicking

Everybody knows that a middle-click will open a link in a new tab. It’s a great time saver.

To enable this functionality in your touchpad,

  1. Select either one of the bottom corners
  2. Select Middle click from the list

That’s a wrap. Hope this tutorial (and this one) will help make you more productive in Firefox!

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5 comments:

Unknown said...

hey brilliant tip i finally got easy middle clicking on my laptop!! :)

james said...

great tip! this site is also pretty interesting if your curious about this kind of stuff.
life123.com/technology/computer-hardware/computer-mouse/how-do-touchpads-work.shtml

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much ,,, really it is superb,, Thanks a lot. Really appreciate,,

Rachat de credit said...

Your blog is fantastic and really helped me out significantly to make our laptop’s touchpad work better in firefox . Many thanks

Anonymous said...

Is there a way I can set windows key combinations like windows key and D for the desktop? Thanks!!!

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