I thought I'd write about the different ways I use technology to be more productive. This is the first post along those lines.
I use firefox as my main browser because it's so extensible and customisable. There's a lot to say about my firefox "setup" so I'll break it down into sections. This entry is about shortcuts.
Why keyboard shortcuts are so great
I love keyboard shortcuts because the actions you carry out on a keyboard go into your motor memory and eventually you can recall them without concious thought. If you're a fast typer, you'll know how this feels. Your hands move around intuitively without you having to think of each letter and tell your fingers where to go. It's the same for seasoned drivers, it all becomes instinctive. As a result you can get really really fast using a keyboard.
With a mouse there's constant feedback between your eyes and your hand that guides you to the right spot. The movements are different every time so they can't get into your motor memory. Rubbish.
Browsing is tricky
Firefox is full of useful keyboard shortcuts to get you around the place. The absolute must-know shortcut is Ctrl-L that takes you to the address bar. From there you can perform searches, look up bookmarks and type in web addresses. I won't bore you with all the built in Firefox shortcuts but here's a useful link if you want more:
The one place where it's hard to ditch the mouse though is on web pages themselves. Links are laid out visually and are designed to be clicked on. So what's the solution? How can you navigate around the internet with a keyboard?
There's is a built in option but it's a bit cumbersome - Press the ' key (apostrophe key). This brings up a search box that finds text on the page but only text that is part of a link. It's find-as-you-type so you only need to type until it's singled out the link you're after then you just hit enter. It's labour intensive and doesn't work for image-only links.
There are a few addons and hacks that can make the situation a little easier and a couple that attempt to make web pages universally keyboard friendly. I'll go through the little tweaks I use first.
Search Keys
Here's a great addon that adds numbers to the results of google searches (and other search engines). You just have to type the corresponding number to be taken to that page. Brilliant.
Extra tip: Alt+number opens in a new tab and Alt+Shift+number opens in a new background tab.
NextPlease
NextPlease is an addon for those occasions when you're reading an article and the publisher has divided the content over several pages. The ones with a "next page" link at the bottom.
NextPlease is able to detect when this is happening and assigns customisable keyboard shortcuts to the "next" and "previous" links so you can keep reading without reaching for the mouse.
Also works well with search results pages.
It is supposedly incomparable with the latest version of firefox. But here's how to fix that!
Tabbing around - the smart way
You could use the tab key to go though all the links on a page but it's massively inefficient an a page with loads of links. I don't think anyone uses tabs to get to links. So here's a way to add a little more functionality to an already splendid key.
In the address bar type about:config and hit enter.
This takes you to the hidden firefox configuration page. Acknowledge the warning message and carry on through to the list on configurable values. Find the accessibility.tabfocus variable and change its value to 3.
Now, when you use the tab key on a web page it will take you through all the form elements and skip all the links. Nice.
Here's a bit more info about the accessibility.tabfocus variable.
The (almost) universal fix
What if you could hold down a hotkey and have a number added to each and every link on a web page? Then all you'd have to do is type the number of the link you want, release the hotkey and get taken to the link!
Well there's an addon for that too! There are a couple in fact. The one I use is called LOL.
I've customised it so space bar is the hotkey. I also set it to only uses 3 numbers so I can type them out without having to move my had around (links are numbered 1, 2, 3 then 11, 12, 13, 21, 22, 23, 21... etc). I had to hack the code to get it to use numbers 123 instead of 012 because 123 is more intuitive I think. Finally, I don't actually type numbers! I use \, Z, X (LOL still recognises them as 123) instead as they are right by the space bar and control keys (the control key makes LOL open links in a new tab while keeping focus on the old tab so it's nice to have all the LOL functionality right under my left hand).
Sometimes you just have to use the mouse
It kills me to say it but there are occasions when you need to abandon the keyboard.
Someone out there might have a solution to these. In which case let me know in the comments.
Flash
Pages that use flash for navigation very often neglect to provide keyboard options but there's a more general problem with embedded flash elements (eg youtube videos) which is that once they have focus, that is, once you've clicked on the element to play the video or whatever, there isn't a keyboard shortcut in the world that can take back focus. You can't even use Ctrl-tab to move between tabs. I've wasted a lot of time looking for a way round this and I really don't think there is one. You just have to pick up the mouse and click out of the element.
Spell checking in gmail
This is a very obscure one but bear with me (if you've come this far you might as well keep going).
If I miss spell a word in firefox it puts a squiggly read line under it. I then just need to right click on it to being up a context menu that includes some suggested corrections. That's great but I'd much rather use the keyboard equivalent or right clicking - that's the context menu key on a standard windows keyboard:
or you can hit Sift-F10.
But here's the rub. In gmail's compose window right clicking brings up spelling suggestions but pressing the context menu key does not (usually anyway. Sometimes it does and I can't replicate under what circumstances it does each).
Anyway, that's it. Do you use any other keyboard tricks in firefox? Let me know in the comments?
Tags: how I use, keyboard shortcuts
