Why I Am No Longer Using Mouse Gestures

I have been a long time PC user (mostly because the vast majority of web users are on PCs) and have been in love with mouse gestures since first seeing them on a Linux machine. When the FireFox extension came out I immediately began to use them and life was great. Well, recently I switched to a mac (now that PC emulation is trivial) and of course I installed mouse gestures.

Unfortunately, the standard mac mouse only has 1 button, but you can use OSX to simulate a 2-button mouse. However, it isnt very accurate and it is very easy to left-click when you mean right and right-click when you mean left. It also turns out that its easy to right-click, followed by a quick left-click, which I use as a shortcut for clicking the back button in the browser.

Where am I getting with this? Well, after spending 2 hours writing up a real post for today, I went to publish it and instead of left clicking, my mouse triggered the back button shortcut. And well, the rest is history… there went my blog entry.

What have I learned? Mouse gestures are not worth it on the mac and from now I will be writing my posts in a word processor before posting.