One of the coolest features enabled by touch screen phones is the use of gestures. With gestures, you can draw shapes or make specific swiping gestures to perform actions. Unfortunately, gesture controls are not as common as they could be.
One app that really supports gesture-based control is the Dolphin browser. Dolphin includes a number of pre-defined gestures for actions such as refreshing the page, going back a page, scrolling of the bottom of the page, and opening a new tab. It also comes with a few pre-configured gestures to open specific websites such as Google.
It’s possible to manually change the gesture associated with any action or website. It is also possible to add new websites and create new associated gesture shortcuts.
The only restriction with the gesture system is that the gestures are only accepted in the gesture activations screen. To activate a gesture, you need to long-press the dolphin icon in the centre of the bottom bar, then drag your finger over to the hand icon, found diagonally up and to the left. After doing this, the gesture entry screen will open, allowing you to enter your gesture.
The gestures can be configured from within Dolphin’s settings. To be able to access the settings, you need to tap the dolphin icon in the centre of the bottom bar.
In the popup pane, tap the cogwheel icon in the bottom right corner to open the settings.
In the settings, tap “Gesture and sonar” which will be the third entry in the “Basic” sub-section of the general settings.
In the gesture settings, you have a gesture list with the default website gestures. To add a new website, simply type the URL into the text box under the “Gesture list” title, then tap “Add”.
Tip: The URL of the webpage you’re currently on will be pre-filled into the text box.
After clicking “Add” you will be required to create a new gesture. One will be suggested by default, but you can also customise the gesture to something more memorable if you prefer. For example, you can create a “T” gesture for the Technipages website. Once you’re happy with your gesture, tap “Done” in the bottom-right corner to save it.
Tip: It’s recommended that you look through the existing gestures before creating one of your own, to avoid gestures being too similar and clashing. You should also bear in mind that the gestures are not rotation sensitive. For example, the gesture for YouTube is a lowercase “y”, if you draw this shape upside down or sideways it will still work.
To edit the gesture for an existing website shortcut, tap on the website in the list, then create your new gesture and tap “Done” to save.
Tip: Your custom gesture can be a single continuous swipe or built from multiple swipe gestures. To create a gesture with multiple swipes, you need to make them with almost no pause in between. If you wait too long, the next swipe in the gesture will be regarded as restarting the entire gesture.
Creating gestures for actions
To see the list of actions that can be configured by gestures, tap “More actions” underneath the websites with configured gestures.
There is a long list of actions that can be configured with gestures. Only the ones at the top with gestures next to them are currently configured. To edit one, or to create a gesture for a previously unconfigured action, tap the relevant action, draw the gesture, then tap “Done” to save your gesture.
You can delete the entry of any existing gesture that you don’t want any more by long-pressing the relevant gesture. After long-pressing a gesture, a popup will appear allowing you to edit or delete the gesture.
Tip: Deleting the gesture for an action will return the action to the list of actions with no configured gesture. Deleting the gesture for a website shortcut, however, will delete the entire shortcut.
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