Busy busy busy

The remainder of August is going to be pretty hectic for me, what with traveling and having friends visit and stuff, so I’m not sure how often I’m going to be able to post. Don’t miss me too much, Internets.

How to Use Multiclutch

I think I’ve written before about my love for MultiClutch, but if I didn’t, here goes: I LOVE MULTICLUTCH. It’s a smart piece of software that I am finding invaluable. The only thing is, it doesn’t really come with instructions, and most of the places where I’ve seen it referenced assume that you will know exactly how to use it. This wasn’t the case with me, and maybe it’s not for everybody else, either. I saw that an Engadget reader posted a MultiClutch question in one of the Mac threads there, so I’m going to use his (or her) question as a way to give people an idea of how you would use MultiClutch on further thought, I think that the action requested is impossible, but since I spent all this time explaining how to use MultiClutch, I’ll post the following anyway. I’ll use Firefox as an example.

How to Set Up and Use MultiClutch

1) Open System Preferences and bring up Multiclutch.
2) Note that on the left side of the MultiClutch window, where it says Application, there are Plus and Minus signs on the bottom. Click on the Plus sign, and add Firefox to your Application list.
3) For the sake of this example, let’s say that we want to go to the previous tab when we rotate to the left. On the right side of the window, where it says Gesture, choose “Rotate Left”. Once you’ve done that, go to the Key Command part of that section, where it shows a generic key combination. Click in that box so that you can edit, and then actually type out the keyboard combination that you would normally use to accomplish your desired action in Firefox (CTRL SHIFT TAB). The box should now show the correct key combination in symbol form. Once you’ve done that, close the program, and the next time you open Firefox, that gesture will perform that action.

I will say that I think the closing program thing may only be necessary when configuring non-native programs, because I didn’t have to close Safari to get it to register the gestures I programmed. I hope this helps somebody!