RadialContext
The RadialContext menu is a hierarchical, context-sensitive pie menu
for Firefox and Mozilla. It offers an alternative to both the standard
context menu and mouse gestures. The feeling is very similar to
gestures. But there also is a GUI so you don't have to look up what
options are available in the given context.
The fastest way to use the radial menu is to hold down the right mouse
button, drag over the item to select, and release the button. You can
think of it as a mouse gesture with a GUI. By holding Ctrl you can
suppress the radial menu and access the standard one. By holding
Alt you can access alternative functionality for items marked with
an A. Alternatively, you can hold the right mouse button, drag over
the item, and select with a different button.
You can also customize some things. That window is also reachable
through the Add-ons preferences window, of course.
If you find a problem not listed under "known problems" you should do
at least one of the following things:
- Allow me to reproduce the problem. Tell me what website(s) and/or
action(s) trigger it, and list other extensions or settings
involved.
- Figure out how the code is failing (and if you can, tell me how to
fix it! I love patches :)
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Extensions has some helpful
information, mainly on the "Setting up extension development
environment" page.
Display of the menu is limited to the current frame.
CSS and javascript from the displayed page can interfere with the
menu.
The menu behaves strangely in SVG-transformed documents like
http://starkravingfinkle.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/foreignobject-transform.svg
This should be very rare for CSS now. It is still possible though,
and it is definitely possible for javascript (see
http://splasho.com/conveyor/ (which I found because of
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=347014 which is the
same issue affecting Mozilla's autoscroll image).
If you find a page triggering this please let me know, since especially
the CSS case can sometimes be worked around (by making the style resets
more specific).
This problem and the previous one should go away if the menu is
inserted into the browser chrome "document" instead of the content
document. Unfortunately I could not get that to work right: the menu
is no longer properly transparent. Browser chrome renders correctly,
but page content shows up as window-background-gray (in Firefox 2 on
GNU/Linux). In Firefox 3 beta 2 on Windows the content document is
drawn on top of the menu (hiding it). I think this is bug 130078 or
a bug related to it, and those bugs are marked as not completely
fixed in Firefox 3 :(
The "Customize" prefpane is overcrowded and possibly confusing.
I do not know how to fix this without simply making the pane (much)
larger. There is simply not enough room for all the elements currently
on the pane no matter how I arrange them. Suggestions for a better
design would be much appreciated, since I am having trouble thinking
outside of the box I put myself in. Suggestions can be anything from
a paragraph of text to an image or even XUL mockup :).
Interaction with pages responding to RadialContext's mouse button
and/or the context menu is not perfect.
RadialContext tries to either prevent such scripts from running or
do as they "ask" depending on a pref setting, but this is not perfect
even by a long shot and not heavily tested. Feedback (like urls of
pages breaking it or broken by it) appreciated!
Display doesn't work on top of plugins.
Probably not fixable in the extension.
Display does not work in an svg document (internal, not plugins)
This might be fixable by reimplementing the menu in svg (svg on
top of html works, but not the other way around). Might also be
fixable in Firefox 3 with svg foreignObject stuff, but not a
priority to me.
The extension doesn't work properly under MacOS X because wrong
mouse buttons get reported.
I do not have access to MacOS X. Someone with MacOS X: please test
and tell me what button values it does report. If you do not know
how to do that: ask me.
RadialContext-D is simply a continuation of the original RadialContext
extension by Jens Tinz.
Jens has been unavailable since December 2005, so official development
and bugfixing halted. dreadnaut has provided different "unofficial"
versions for a while, now merged as this new RadialContext-D.
All credits for the idea and code go to Jens Tinz. I (dreadnaut) am
merely fixing bugs, adding little features and ensuring compatibility
with the newer versions of Firefox.
dreadnaut can be reached at dreadnaut@gmail.com, but you probably
should not mail him about problems with this version.
Marien forked RadialContext-D to tweak it a bit more and ended up
making a lot of (mostly minor) changes to the internals. Whether they
actually make it work better remains to be seen :)
Accuracy of dates varies wildly.
- 19.06.2008
Release 1.1.1.
- Fix a typo in the "duplicate tab" action.
(reported by yulius on the MozillaZine forums).
- Remove pref checkbox for tips-at-startup (already did nothing).
- Fix two cases where content scripts could run on mouse events.
- 19.05.2008
- Release 1.1.
- 14.05.2008
- The "Force context menu on click" ("click_for_normal")
preference was removed. The normal context menu should now
always just work properly when the radial menu is on the same
button and "open only when dragging" is enabled.
Forcing the normal context menu on a different mouse button
is no longer supported.
- 09.05.2008
- The tooltip timer and preferences code was rewritten.
There are some small behavior changes. Please complain if
something now works less well.
The prefdialog now uses a logarithmic scale + textbox combo
implemented through an xbl binding. I encourage everyone
to steal this because I think it is useful.
- 08.05.2008
- The active page element can now be highlighted.
This feature defaults to off for now, configure it on the
"behavior" pane if you want it on.
- 27.04.2008
- The "search" action now uses the currently selected search
engine (from the search bar) instead of hardcoding Google.
(Just like the context menu "search ... for..." action.)
- 25.04.2008
- The actions now call the standard Firefox context menu
instead of reinventing or duplicating code from there.
Some things may have changed behavior slightly.
The hack used to use that code without an actual context menu
is pretty bad, so this might get reverted.
- 25.04.2008
Added some missing icons for alt-actions:
- The "open in new tab" version of the selection actions
have a tablike thing (a smaller version of part of the
"open link in new tab" icon). This looks reasonably well.
- The "close others" versions of "close tab" and "close window"
now show a very ugly thing that is supposed to be an
exclamation mark. I am not proud of this but I do think
it is necessary to show something here to prevent losing
tabs.
- The "Toggle sidebar" action has the "URL" thing from the
"Copy location" link action. I also saved the reconstructed
base image (window/base.png).
- The "duplicate" versions of "new tab" and "new window"
now show a double "+" symbol. Not great but I think it
works (I wanted to have the "two documents on top of each
other" thing from most "copy" icons in there).
"Reload - skip cache" is a copy of the normal "Reload" icon.
Well, actually a symlink, but apparently jars do not support
symlinks, so it turns into a copy. Will hopefully come up
with an actual alternate icon later.
- 24.04.2008
- The tip dialog was removed. Instead the "about" page is
displayed in a tab when the version of the extension changes
(on install and upgrade, but not reinstall).
- 21.04.2008
Minor changes to the commands to match what standard Firefox
commands do:
- "new window" now opens a blank window (ignoring homepage).
- "save link" now bypasses the cache (like the context menu).
- 18.04.2008
Hack around really weird bug where the prefdialog breaks
when Adblock Plus 0.7.5.4 is installed.
This should get fixed properly later, but debugging this
is no fun at all (and I do not even know if the bug is in
my code, Mozilla code or Adblock Plus code).
- 14.04.2008
- Full page zoom is somewhat supported.
The menu is zoomed along with the rest of the page
(this differs from text zoom, which should not affect the
menu at all), but should work ok.
- 04.03.2008
- The tooltip is now always wide enough to fit the widest bold
entry (it no longer has to resize when you move the mouse over
a different item).
- 01.03.2008
- Automagically adjust the autoscroll interval if the browser
cannot keep up.
- 05.01.2008
- Extra super smooth scrolling scrollmenu. Instead of having
a fixed interval between scrolling a necessarily integer
number of pixels both the number of pixels and the delay
between scrolling them is now varied. This is noticable
at slow scroll speeds.
- 01.01.2008
- Minor fixes to work with Firefox 3 betas.
Claim compatibility up to Firefox 3 beta 2.
Fix typo mainly affecting open-on-drag mode.
- 20.09.2007
- It responds to the "dom.event.contextmenu.enabled" pref now
(the same one previously forced on). Needs testing.
- 20.09.2007
- Menus are now fully customizable (replaces the "undo close
tab"- specific hack).
- 31.08.2007
- All "contexts" are now reachable instead of just the most
important two. The secondary one is still in the bottom
left of the toplevel menu, but moving to the top right
from there now produces more contexts. Dragging down and
left once and then up and right will now always
(eventually) reach the scrolling menu.
This is experimental, feedback on how well this works in
practice is appreciated!
Possible enhancement: bottom left for the first submenu,
top right for the second, bottom left again for the third,
etc. Not that hard to add but testing the current setup
first.
- 25.08.2007
- The "open link" and "save link" actions pass the right
referrer.
- 25.08.2007
- The width of the tooltip is now dynamic.
- 23.08.2007
- Make the esc key close the menu.
- 21.08.2007
- Add "force context menu on click" mode.
- 19.08.2007
- Add "Show Radialcontext tips" item to the browser's help
menu.
- 18.08.2007
- Reworked preferences and tip dialog.
Most changes not visible.
- 17.12.2006
(merged from radialcontext branch into radialcontext-d)
- force the setting "dom.event.contextmenu.enabled" to true
- reactivated code to avoid sabotating right-clicking in
the sidebar
- explicitly unregister the prefs observer to fix a possible
leak
- 14.12.2006
- repackaged as RadialContext-D and requires Firefox 2.0+
- added new Tab action: Undo Last Close
- 06.12.2006
- fixed a bug in the scroll sub-menu
- 22.11.2006
- fixed a compatibility issue with the Tab Mix Plus extension
(later unfixed since TMP 3.5.2 solved the problem)
- 10.11.2006
- fixed a weird address bar behaviour due to some of my
previous fixes :-p
- 01.11.2006
- fixed the "open in new window" bug
- 03.11.2005
- bumped maxVersion to 1.5
- fixed xpi package structure for Firefox 1.5
- fixed right menu showing together with the radial one,
when using the right button
- 08.11.2004
- bumped maxVersion so Firefox 1.0 recognises the extension
as compatible
- 22.10.2004
- menu works somewhat better across frames
- 08.10.2004
-
- 08.08.2004
- fixed the drag to open option on windows
- 08.01.2004
- improved scrolling
- made sure that the startup tip window really appears only
at startup
- internal changes to make the menu layout more flexible
- alt-functions can now have their own icons
- menu now displays above elements with a zIndex >= 100
- startup tip window now grows if necessary
- alt-clicking can no longer trigger a standard context menu
- 07.04.2004
- added an item to set the focus to the address bar
- fixed and improved the image blocking functionality
- 06.30.2004
- added 'close other tabs' and 'close other windows'
functionality
- using opacity for rollover effects (which
reduces the download size)
- highlighted (bold) labels now get slightly compressed to
keep a constant length
- 06.27.2004
- made 'first page' / 'last page' functions accessible
- selections now get highlighted when a page source is shown
- opening a link in a new tab or window marks the link
as visited
- bookmarking pages works again
- page validation is now offered as alt-functionality for
page info
- 06.12.2004
- support for new extensions API of Firefox
- 05.02.2004
- worked over installer (should now properly support install
in app chrome and user chrome)
- 03.14.2004
- menu gets suppressed on text input fields if used with left
mouse button
- changed back the phase the RC functionality is added to the
pages (change may have caused problems on Macs)
- slightly improved handling of text selections
- slightly improved CSS shielding
- 03/01/2004
- opening the menu on text selections, offers appropriate
functionality in the top level menu
- updated tips at startup.
- 12/32/2003
- the extension now gets installed to the profile folder
improved uninstall code
- 11/01/2003
- support for first page, last page and toggle sidebar
- 08/13/2003
- links in imagemaps are now recognized
- 08/03/2003
- label of selected item gets highlighted
- unknown date
- saving images now uses uses cached version
- improved scrolling
- compensate text zoom
- forward and back items get grayed out appropriatly
- support for localisations
- access alt-functionality with mouse button
- fixed rendering on pages written right to left
- added reload frame functionality
- 1.0rc2
- copy email address, tips at startup
- 1.0rc1
- redesigned icons
- 1.0b4
- navigation as secondary context, labels change for Alt
- 1.0b3
- redesigned labels, 'open on drag' option, uninstall button
- 1.0b2
- fixed 'unwanted selection' and other glitches
improved configureability
- 1.0b1
- menu can now stay open and new functionality for frames
- 1.0a4
- improved functionality and configureability
- 1.0a3
- replaced the toolbar with a prefs panel
- 1.0a2
- fixed a stupid bug with images as links
- 1.0a1
- initial public release
