Firefox & pinch-zoom

I'm getting older, and I should probably have bought bifocals this last time when I got new glasses, but also being weirdly vain and sometimes stingy with things for myself, as well as concerned about the acclimatization period, I didn't. I just usually zoom my computer windows a couple notches instead.

But back when I upgraded Firefox to version 4, the trackpad pinch-out zoom stopped working, and it didn't start when I upgraded again to version 5. Not being able to zoom has been annoying me for months now. Mouse wheel doesn't work either, if I bother to plug in a mouse (and with version 3.6 it used to, before you remind me that Macs don't normally come with scroll-wheel mice).

Today, I finally asked google about it. Lo and behold, the developers at Mozilla, in their great wisdom, intentionally disabled the pinch-zoom. Apparently they were tired of getting bug reports from people who invoked it accidentally, and didn't get enough votes from middle-aged folks with weakening eyes to keep it.

Here's the solution, from this Mozilla forum thread for anyone else who wants it back. You'll also find the bug report linked there.

So combining the steps, the complete solution that worked for me is: - Open a new Tab and type in “about:config” (without the quote) in the address bar - You will be asked to confirm to continue. Just do it. - Search for the term “browser.gesture” (without the quote). - Edit the browser.gesture.pinch settings as follows: browser.gesture.pinch.in Value = cmd_fullZoomReduce browser.gesture.pinch.in.shift Value = cmd_fullZoomReset browser.gesture.pinch.latched Value = false browser.gesture.pinch.out Value = cmd_fullZoomEnlarge browser.gesture.pinch.out.shift Value = cmd_fullZoomReset