When used in a browser, the two-finger swipe will move forward and back between pages. This method is way more efficient than moving the pointer up to the back button for a physical click. I was hoping to replicate some of the Magic Mouse functionality on my own mouse: The Logitech G5.

Out of the box, the scroll wheel tilts side to side to achieve horizontal scrolling in undersized browser windows. I wanted right and left tilts to render forward and back buttons in my browser. With a little googling, one download, and a couple minutes it was ready. And it is dead easy to do.

First download SteerMouse. This program adds many features lacking in the stock OSX preference pane. Below is the main window in SteerMouse. The first step here is to set button actions for your specific browser. I’m currently using Safari, so I chose that from my application list.

Next click on the ‘Tilt Wheel’ tab. This is where we set the button inputs for the tilting action. As you can see, I have already set mine in this picture. It will say ‘Same as Default’ on the first open.

Click on ‘Tilt Left.’ Here is where you add the keystroke. In Safari, page back is executed with ‘cmd + ['

Click OK and try it out. It should be noted that with some mice the command must be assigned to the button list, as seen in the first SteerMouse picture. It should also be noted that 'cmd + [' and 'cmd + ]‘ are page back and page forward, respectively, in Safari, Firefox, and Chrome.

1. Fluency Admin: This plugin will customize the admin user interface of wordpress.  It makes everything much more organized, and adds some nice keyboard navigation options. Fluency also allows you to easily customize the login/logout screen with a logo of your choice, replacing the wordpress default logo.

From This

To This

2. Google Site Map: Search engines (google, bing, yahoo) like site maps.  It helps them index your site faster and better which in turn improve your sites visibility in searches.  A nice part of this plugin, is it will automatically update your site map every time you post something new.  Great for sites the post frequently.

3. Google Analyticator: With any new site you need a way to track visitors.  I like to use Google Analytics.  Its free, reliable, and gives you a good amount of information.  This plugin will save you from going into your sites code to put in the javascript needed for Analytics to work.  It also puts a summary of your site stats right in your WordPress dashboard.  Giving you a good idea of how your site is doing and saving you from logging into multiple sites.  The more you can put in a centralized area, the better.  Here is a screen shot of what the box looks like in your dashboard.

4. Akismet: Keep spam off your site.  This is by far the best and most widely used plugin for keeping spam off of your site.  Akismet comes with any WordPress installation, but to activate it you need an API key.  Luckily this is free with any wordpress.com account.  Once you make an account the API key is emailed to you.

5. All in One SEO: Every site needs Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and this plugin makes it pretty simple to do.  Traditional SEO is done through the coding of your website.  For those that don’t want to mess with their code this plugin does a nice job of it.  Through the plugin’s option menu you can set a description for your website and keywords for search engines.  There are several other customization options, but you can learn more once you install the plugin.  You can also do SEO on a post by post basis.  At the bottom of the post editing page this box (see below) will pop up.  You can make a custom title, description, and keywords for the post, or choose to turn off SEO for the post entirely.

In the second installment of what plugins every WordPress installation should have, I’ll focus on the plugins that keep your website running smoothly.  As it grows, you’ll need more and more help keeping it safe, secure, and loading fast. But more detail on that later.