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osx lion - how do I go back one page using a gesture?

  • 16 cavab
  • 376 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by garbells

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2-fingered swipe used to go backward or forward in Mac Snow Leopard, but it doesn't work now that I moved to Lion.

2-fingered swipe used to go backward or forward in Mac Snow Leopard, but it doesn't work now that I moved to Lion.

All Replies (16)

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System preferences -> Trackpad -> More gestures

Make sure "Swipe between pages" is checked, and you can change the gesture in the drop down box to what you want it to be.

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Thanks for your suggestion but that doesn't seem to work. That was the first place that I went to look and everything was checked. Just doesn't work but it does work in Safari.

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If you are lucky Firefox may become more compatible with Lion, the tech guys know about the problem, but I am not sure what they are doing.

Keep an eye on other threads for any news e.g.

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That's odd...I've been using Firefox, and it works for me. Did you change the options in the dropdown box in the Swipe between pages box? (see picture)

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@ejhutch9125 ... What version of FF are you using? And you're on os X 10.7 ?

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Firefox 5.0.1, OS X 10.7, 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5 Macbook Pro

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Did you guys also change the swipe between full-screen apps option to be something other than "swipe with three fingers"? I don't know if that makes a difference, but just a thought...

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@ejhutch9125 I have that selected. It only works with Safari not FireFox...Bummer. But I think they are working on it and we will be good to go soon.

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Ok I figured it out! You have to go to system preferences

  • Select Trackpad
  • Make sure that swipe between pages is selected
  • Underneath Swipe between pages will be a drop down menu(by default this is set to "Scroll left or right with 2 fingers" Change this to either of the other 2 choices, You will now be able to use it like you could before in snow leopard, KEEP IN MIND that you have to use 3 fingers to navigate foward and backward between pages
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I note changes are being made in Firefox 8 relating to Lion. I do not have any further info at the moment, maybe others have seen postings about it.

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I probably should have mentioned that I was on an imac versus a laptop and was using a magic mouse. I have now moved to a track pad and everything works as described above. Thanks for the help.

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I followed the suggestions and got 3-finger swipe to work in Firefox BUT the default Firefox config works "backwards" from the way two-finger swipe works in Safari. If this bothers you, you can reverse the action by going to "about:config" and exchanging the commands for the "browser.gesture.swipe.left & .right" commands. After restarting Firefox they will now work in the same direction (albeit 3 versus 2 fingers) as Safari.

As someone else mentioned, this does interact with the "3-finger drag" (which I don't have enabled) and the "swipe between full-screen apps" (which I changed to 4-finger) gestures.

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Sure it works to the expense of many features you cant be without. If i enable the "three finger swipe" i can navigate in firefox but then "three finger drag" gets disabled. Apple made some crazy thing here in my opinion. Without the drag you cant move windows, select files , select text using gesture and that is a huge irritation for me atleast. I hope Firefox team can solve this one in a good way while i have drag window enabled.

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So any confirmation from Mozilla that this will be fixed? I mean seriously this is one of the major features in OSX and it is so annoying that i even consider using safari as my main browser. You use this feature all the time as well as selecting text so both must be supported. I know you can enable this but then i have to sacrifice moving windows and selecting text which is even worse.

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I am not sure there seems to be much interest in this subject /forums/contributors/707160 but there is at least a partial workaround for some problems.

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I agree that using Safari as your main browser is a very poor choice. If you are a die hard fan of firefox, switch to chrome. They have have OSX lion gestures built in to their latest release. Maybe firefox will acknowledge this problem if enough people switch to chrome. And google chrome is a pretty competent browser in my opinion.