Use mouse browser back/forward button to rotate vertical tabs

Ariel Diamond

The feature to cycle through tabs with the mouse back/forward buttons is quite handy, but when the preferences are set to vertical tabs, it retains the “browser back button = move to the previous tab”, which moves up a tab, whereas I find it much more intuitive for that to be “down” a tab, i.e. the next tab. Is there a setting to swap this behavior (or maybe even make it default since it seems more intuitive)?

Thanks!

mkupper

@Ariel-Diamond I’m trying to understand what is not working for you.

Are do you want to flip the behavior for what happens when you use the keyboard plus mouse wheel or do you want to flip the behavior for what happens when you use the keyboard only to move around.

It may not be possible to change the keyboard plus mouse wheel behavior but is possible to change the keyboard only behavior.

Using the keyboard I normally use Ctrl+PageUp and Ctrl+PageDown to move between the tabs. This works the same for me in Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Notepad++. Ctrl+Shift+PageUp and Ctrl+Shift+PageDown will move the current tab left/right. This also works the same in the web browsers and Notepad++.

I don’t have a browser back button on my keyboard but do use Alt+LeftArrow in web browsers to go back and Alt+RightArrow to go forward. At present Notepad++ does nothing for those keyboard combinations. If you want to use Alt+LeftArrow and Alt+RightArrow in Notepad++ to move between tabs then frmoNotepad++ go to Settings / Shortcut mapper in the menus. It should open the Shortcut mapper dialog box in the Main menu tab. Type the word tab in the filter box near th bottom. You should see lines for

Next Tab - Ctrl+Page down
Previous Tab - Ctrl+Page up
Move Tab Forward - Ctrl+Shift+Page down
Move Tab backwards - Ctrl+Shift+Page up

Those are at lines 16 to 19 for me. Double click on the line for Next Tab and you should be able to define Next tab to be Alt+Left or right arrow. (Note, this aspect may be broken at the moment. See this other forum thread. I’m hoping it’s only broken for me.)

Alan Kilborn

@mkupper said:

Do you want to flip the behavior for what happens when you use the keyboard plus mouse wheel or do you want to flip the behavior for what happens when you use the keyboard only to move around.

@Ariel-Diamond makes it pretty clear what is wanted:

The feature to cycle through tabs with the mouse back/forward buttons is quite handy

Is there a setting to swap this behavior

So IMO it isn’t worth it to explain keyboard-based behavior as a “solution”.

@Ariel-Diamond :

Are you open to a script-based solution to your problem? If so, in THIS other topic I show a script that allows “hooking” the functionality of the forward/back buttons in order to change their functionality.

Although I haven’t done it, it appears that script could be slightly altered in order to swap button functionality.

Let us know if you’d like to go down that road, and can’t modify that script yourself and need help.

BTW, I agree with you about the desire to “swap” the behavior; the other topic I linked to above has me stating: “…I’ve changed the code to swap the functionalities.”

Ariel Diamond

@mkupper Thanks for the reply. @Alan-Kilborn is correct, I’m only discussing the mouse buttons back and forth buttons without any keyboard keys.

I am aware that I can use Autohotkey to create a script to swap their behavior when a Notepad++ window is activated, it’s just a bit clunky and since the default behavior when the tabs are displayed horizontally works intuitively (forward = next tab, back = previous tab), but it’s the opposite of intuitive when the tabs are vertical (one would expect up/forward = up a tab and down/back = down a tab but it’s reversed), I was wondering if there was a setting I’m missing to swap these behaviors.

Thanks both of you for the replies. If I end up doing it, I can post by AHK script if it’s of any interest to someone.

Ariel Diamond

If anyone else is interested in an AHK script that works, it’s simple enough:

#HotIf WinActive("Notepad++")
XButton1::XButton2
XButton2::XButton1
#HotIf