RadialContext

About

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.

Reporting problems

If you find a problem not listed under "known problems" you should do at least one of the following things:

http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Extensions has some helpful information, mainly on the "Setting up extension development environment" page.

Known problems

Version history

Forks

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 :)

Changelog

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
  • fixed scrolling on Linux
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