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A small change to improve browsers for keyboard navigation

b.43z.one

51–60 of 72 posts

Re: A small change to improve browsers for keyboard navigation

#51
post #11

Incidentally, I've been trying to use the keyboard to scroll webpages recently, and it's a disaster. Nobody does it, apparently. PageUp/PageDown do not work correctly on sites that have a permanent topbar (some of the content is never shown). Cursor up/down often does something unexpected (for example in Mastodon, if you use PageDown several times and then cursor down, you will get yanked back). I think it is a sad r…

Mapping mouse events to key shortcuts might be the only way forward that could realistically work. Something like moving the mouse where the cursor/selection is, and sending scrolling events from there.

The lenovo keyboard with its trackpoint and mouse buttons is a kind of solution to this, but IME scrolling is still a PITA as it needs two inputs (switching to scroll mode while moving the trackpoint)

Re: A small change to improve browsers for keyboard navigation

#52
post #11

Incidentally, I've been trying to use the keyboard to scroll webpages recently, and it's a disaster. Nobody does it, apparently. PageUp/PageDown do not work correctly on sites that have a permanent topbar (some of the content is never shown). Cursor up/down often does something unexpected (for example in Mastodon, if you use PageDown several times and then cursor down, you will get yanked back). I think it is a sad r…

Before adding the AI summary, google required:

    Tab+tab+enter
to highlight the first link result.

Now, with the summary, it's:

    Tab+tab+enter+tab+tab
Just wild lol

Re: A small change to improve browsers for keyboard navigation

#53
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vimium has better smooth scrolling. I really, really want to use Tridactyl, but I just can't stomach their smooth-scrolling implementation.

Ha! I actually switched from Vimium to Tridactyl partly because I prefer the rough, snappy scrolling. It felt much more like the ctrl+d ctrl+u navigation in VIM.

I never started with Vimium (was using an even less known one), also in part because I find smooth scrolling disorienting. Also on Tridactyl now, once someone on here showed me the hintfiltermode, hintchars, and hintnames settings to get the old Vimperator behavior (which I also find so much better than any current defaults):

  set hintfiltermode vimperator-reflow
  set hintchars 1234567890
  set hintnames numeric
Lets you type the words in links, and the hints filter down to only matches. If you go all the way to 1 match it automatically picks it, but as the hints filter down the numeric labels also reset - so there are no gaps betweeen the numbers and it's almost always between 1 and 5 to get the link I want.

Re: A small change to improve browsers for keyboard navigation

#55
post #33

I installed Vimium a few months ago and haven't looked back -> https://vimium.github.io/ Mouseless as well for navigating anywhere on the computer without a mouse -> https://mouseless.click/

i use i3wm so there are various keybindings you can use. for mouseless stuff i use xdotool to move the pointer in 16 or 64 pixel increments using the keyboard. if i could toggle the mouse pointer on and off i would.

Warpd is really cool in that context. (https://github.com/rvaiya/warpd)

First, hint mode: https://github.com/rvaiya/warpd#hint-mode-alt-meta-x

switching to normal mode: https://github.com/rvaiya/warpd#normal-mode-alt-meta-c

Re: A small change to improve browsers for keyboard navigation

#58
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For macOS users, I highly recommend ShortCat: https://shortcat.app/ ShortCat uses the accessibility API to put Vimium-style keyboard links on buttons and text fields in any app. I find that Vimium works faster in Firefox than using ShortCat to click around websites, so I use both, but ShortCat technically should do everything (clicking-wise) that Vimium does.

Shortcat has a ~second delay before showing links, homerow ( https://www.homerow.app ) is faster.

I wonder if it has to do with accessibility API thread locking. I found a different extension I used to emulate an i3 style environment suffered when I used the Unity game engine. It ended up being limitations of the accessibility API.

Re: A small change to improve browsers for keyboard navigation

#60
post #7

On a related note, highly recommend the Firefox Vimium extension if you're a "keyboard warrior". https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimium-ff

Keyboard warrior is people who are on the 10% far end of political spectrums. I'd like a better term for such people but power users is too broad.
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