JK posted about the new GeckoTIP extension for Firefox, Thunderbird, and Sunbird yesterday and sure enough, an update was waiting for me in my extensions list. The new version works much better and pretty much makes inking in Firefox a non-event (like it should have been all along). Some nice new enhancements include:
- "Caret tracking" enabling the proper function of the floating Tablet Input Panel in website and UI text fields.
- Manual setting of the Input Scope of a given text field to any combination of predefined Microsoft Input Scope definitions and/or an arbitrary Regular Expression that handwritten input must match.
- Heuristic input scope guessing based on textual information associated to a text field. This allows GeckoTIP to accurately guess an appropriate TIP input scope for you with no user intervention. An important example of this feature is that GeckoTIP automatically sets the URL bar in Firefox to the "URL" scope, allowing easy input of website addresses. The rules used to guess input scopes are user-modifiable.
- Support for alternative 3rd party input panels (currently: Alphatap, MessagEase, SHARK, Fitaly, TAPLESS, and WordLogic). With one of these panels loaded in memory, GeckoTIP can automatically open and position the panel near your cursor when a text field is clicked and automatically close the panel when the text field loses focus.
- Optional scrollbar on the left side of the screen for left-handed users (currently Firefox only, further development to come).
- An alternative "Go" button for Firefox that acts as an Enter key no matter which field is active.
1. Also check out my "Grab and Drag" extension for Acrobat-style grab-and-drag scrolling in Firefox & Thunderbird. It really works well with a pen (IE7 will apparently also have something like this): http://grabanddrag.mozdev.org/index.html
Posted at 10:53PM on Jan 13th 2006 by Ian