Mac users who’ve recently installed OS X Lion (Ver. 10.7) may have noticed the touchpad’s “pinch-zoom” function no longer works in Firefox. (It still works in Chrome, but not in Firefox.) Distressing, since this was one of the Mac functions I’d very quickly come to love. I prowled around a few forums and discovered that while a lot of people have noticed the problem, no one had a real fix.
I appealed to my son, who always seems to have or find good geekly answers for my un-geekly issues, and he came up with the following. It seems to have solved the problem.
Type the following into the address bar: about:config
Then use the filter (top left side) and type the word: Gesture
Make the following changes to the following 2 fields:
browser.gesture.pinch.in ~ enter the field and type: cmd_fullZoomReduce
browser.gesture.pinch.out ~ enter the field and type: cmd_fullZoomEnlarge
At some point in that sequence, a warning popped up asking if I was sure I wanted to proceed, and I forged ahead. Admittedly, I have an expert on call if I screw anything up, but it all seemed very straight forward. I just triple-checked my typing before entering anything.
In typical Mac fashion, which still unnerves me two months after my switch from a PC, there is no place to click “Okay” or “Enter” or “Done.” I didn’t even see a place to close the window I’d been in. So I just closed Firefox, prayed, and reopened it. Voila!
You’re now a bona fide member of the Mozilla Developer Team. In my opinion anyway.
I just blindly followed instructions. Did they work for you, too? Cool.
I’m running Windows 7 64 bit on a Samsung R580 Laptop and even after following the instructions and restarting FF6, it does not work.
Why is it that as developers update FF, it becomes LESS functional?
These instructions are only for Mac users. As far as I know, the pinch-zoom function doesn’t exist in Windows.
Wow, Many thanks, I wish there was as simple way to fix finder as well
My geek son gets all the credit for finding this fix. I’m so new to Macs I didn’t even realize I’d lost any functionality. I just assumed I was doing something wrong. Same with Finder. If mine’s not working like it should … I wouldn’t know.
thanks man you saved me. it was really getting on my nerves. well done
Thx. Glad I could help.
Tried this in Mountain Lion – it works! It’s not as smooth as Safari, but I’ll take it. Thanks for the info.
You’re welcome 🙂
Hi. Just read this as I’ve just upgraded from Firefox 3.6.28 to 16 (yeah, I’m slow). There are actually 5 things you should be changing:
browser.gesture.pinch.in -> cmd_fullZoomReduce
browser.gesture.pinch.in.shift -> cmd_fullZoomReset
browser.gesture.pinch.out -> cmd_fullZoomEnlarge
browser.gesture.pinch.out.shift -> cmd_fullZoomReset
browser.gesture.pinch.latched -> false
This is the link to the Mozilla Technical Information Bulletin where this information can be found:
http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/781509
Cheers!
Thx for the additional info!