Touchpad Web Assistant Gestures and Firefox

Hi all,

I was just wondering how many people out there are using Firefox and are battling to get the Web Assistant gestures functioning. These are the 'back/forward' functions that can be executed by swiping your finger left or right at the top of the trackpad.

I've found out why it's not working with Firefox and have opened a case with Sony to try to get the driver fixed (or at least patched so it will work in most reasonable cases)

I chatted with a customer service representative and it seems that Alps is responsible for actually writing and releasing the driver to Sony and Sony will then make the driver available. However, it doesn't seem like Alps deals with customers directly and anything we need fixed has to go through Sony.

Has anyone had any experience with having things fixed by Sony? Does anyone have any contact information with some 'real' engineers? Literally, all that needs to be done in the driver is to increase the size of one string buffer and it should work in the majority of cases.

Skrunch

 

There is a solution. It deals with some quick registry editing. Dont remember which forum though....

 

Hi,

I have been looking for this kind of thread. It really annoys me why this simple feature won't work w/ FF.

why it doesn't work? hope that sony will come out with solution for this.

shalimar, could you try to recall where it was posted?

 

found this fix here http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=2498666&sid=03cd119874646ff99c59ff331122cdf1 , did it, and now back/fwd scrolling works perfectly in FF. here you go:

>>>
PostPosted: Sep Tue 19th 2006 9:32am
Thnks to this comment https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=202615#c57 I was able to get the forward/back feature of the Alps touchpad working with firefox.

Here is how:
1. backup apoint.exe
2. Open apoint.exe in a hexeditor. Search for Netscape. Replace with <blank>Firefox (i.e. " Firefox"). As we are hex-editing, we have to make sure that eight characters in Netscape are replace with eight characters. Apoint matched this to the last 8 characters of the window title. Thankfully our window title is "something something Mozilla Firefox"!
3. Either a) restart or b) kill the apoint.exe process in task manager. Doubleclick the apoint.exe you just edited to launch the firefox friendly version!

4. If this works, thank Marc Neuberger

<<<

I used xvi32 for my hex editor and " Firefox" as my replacement string (without the quotes; the space is necessary, as mentioned above, to make the 8-character requirement)

 

I was able to get this process to work. Make sure you are using the most current version of the Alps drivers and that you restart both apoint.exe and Firefox.

 

works great thanks for the tip been trying to solve this one out for a while

 

I was able to get my touchpad to work in Firefox 2 (by editing the apoint.exe in a hexeditor to replace "Netscape" with " Firefox").

I can not get my touchpad to work in Firefox 3 (Beta 5). Has anyone been able to get the Alps touchpad to work in Firefox 3?
If yes, how did you do it?

Thanks for any help.
Mike

 

Has anyone noticed that if the Firefox title bar gets too big, that back/forward stops working? For instance, do a search on google for "A search for an incredibly long, and sometimes annoying title breaks the alps touchpad thingy". When the search result page comes up, try to gesture back, and it won't work because the title bar is too long. It looks like the title bar has to be 80 character max (common size of line buffers in programming)

I did some testing with the help of "Titlebar Tweaks" FF plugin. Aside from the 80 character max problem, I found that the text you hex edit into apoint.exe has to match the LAST characters of the title. That's why you have to specifically choose " Firefox". Trying to use "Mozilla" or anything else will fail.

mike1111, I would look to see what the last characters of your title bars of Firefox 3 is and hexedit that into apoint.exe. My guess is your title bars say "Firefox 3 (Beta)" and so you'd have to hexedit "3 (Beta)" instead of " Firefox".

If anyone knows a nice workaround for this 80 character max bug. Please let me know. Or maybe I'm the only one seeing this?

 

atam, why you don't change your browser title to fixed name using titlebar tweaks extension? this should do.

for me this trick with changing string in hex editor doesn't work.
what I get after swapping finger on touchpad is search window of google desktop,
which normally appears after hitting ctrl button twice.

I thought that what Web Assistant does is sending to program a combination of keyboard shortcuts.
there are no shortcuts related with ctrl button and going back/forward in ff, though.
well, why not modify keyboard shortcuts? one extension does it nicely.
too bad that after applying new shortcuts it still does not work.


i had one more idea. if the alps driver has been dedicated for netscape, then maybe shortcut is different? but unfortunately it isn't. it's the same as it is in IE, Opera, and FF alt + left/right arrow.


any ideas much appreciated.

 

I tried that with the same xvi32, and it did not work. I saved the hex edit and then closed down both programs and openeed up the new one. No luck. I've been looking around for something like this since the SZ120 came out.

Edit:
MY back and forward buttons work as do my vertical scroll feature, but my horiz one doesnt work.

 

netholik, I'd like to still see what webpage FF is on when I look down at my task bar. So even when using title bar tweaks, I'll run into the 80 character problem.
When I surf the net, I use FF tabs for links inside a domain. Then if I visit another site, I launch another instance of FF.

 

I forgot to mention that I'm running on a Dell. I thought this problem wasn't specific to Sony computers so I posted here.

Maybe people are having problems because they're using different versions of apoint.exe. I had to install an older version of apoint.exe to get the hexeditor working.

The specific version of apoint.exe I'm using is dated back in 2005/2006. For anyone who's adventurous, you can grab it from dell here:
http://support.us.dell.com/support/...eid=R113813&formatcnt=1&libid=0&fileid=149404

Another solution might be to forget about the alps driver, and go with FF All-In-One-Gestures extension - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12

 

Tried it didnt work. I'm gonna give up.

 

got it working on my tz using the newest alps drivers just makes sure you follow the directions and replace it with netscape with a space

 

of course I did follow exact instructions.
I even have done that on other laptop of the same model, and still no use...

maybe it is matter of alps software version. I guess I have latest one, but I'm not quite sure.
DanyBui81, which version do you have installed on your laptop?

 

Hey folks,

I'm also a Dell user (Latitude D630), and experienced the same problem with the touchpad -- no response in Firefox 3 to the forward/back gestures on the touchpad. Very annoying.

Thanks much for your help!

On my PC, I found Apoint.exe in four places -- in three patch directories in the c:/Drivers directory, and in C:/ProgramFiles/Apoint

It appears the only file that must be edited is in the program fiules directory. I first changed the three in the Drivers directory, and the fix did not work after reboot. I changed apoint.exe from "Netscape" to " Firefox" in the ProgramFiles directory, rebooted and all was well.

Well, almost all -- now someone needs to hack the horizontal scrolling. I wonder if the special corner-tapping gestures work -- I don't have any set up.

It is too bad you started this in a Sony forum instead of an Alps or Firefox forum. I'm lucky I stumbled upon you all through a google search!


take care,

Joe

 

Hi Atam,
You wrote: "Has anyone noticed that if the Firefox title bar gets too big, that back/forward stops working?"

I used hexedit and now I also notice that the back/forward stops working because of the 80 character max bug (I assume).

Atam, you are not the only one seeing this.

If anyone knows a nice workaround for this 80 character max bug. Please let Atam and me know.