Close tab without clicking on X?

Question

I'm using a 2012 Retina Mac Book Pro running OS X 10.7.5. I am a Windows power user and a OS X neophyte. While many of the keyboard and mouse shortcuts I am familiar with in Windows have functional equivalents in OS X. A feature that I find particularly useful in Windows is the ability to middle click to close tabs (works across the OS Firefox, Chrome, Visual Studio etc.). This saves a user from having to click explicitly on a tabs X icon. Is there a functional magic trackpad click equivalent to middle clicking a Windows mouse?

Answer 1

The middle click to close tab functionality isn't really a common OS X UI pattern. The standard keyboard shortcut for closing a tab is command ⌘W (which will also close non-tabbed windows, or windows with only one open tab).

If you really want a Magic Trackpad gesture for closing tabs, you could use BetterTouchTool to map a gesture to ⌘W, but it would still be a bit limited, in that it would only close the currently active tab. I suppose you could use a combination of programs to make a macro that would perform a click to switch to the tab under your mouse, then close it, but it's still a bit hacky.