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A small change to improve browsers for keyboard navigation

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Re: A small change to improve browsers for keyboard navigation

#62

Post by Leo-thorne »

I’ve always found Firefox’s / quick find feature incredibly useful. But having to click on a link after selecting it always felt awkward and interrupted my flow. This little tweak is brilliant because it removes that extra step with just a few lines of code. If browsers allowed links to activate automatically once selected, navigating with a keyboard would feel so much smoother. I sincerely hope that becomes a standard feature one day.

Re: A small change to improve browsers for keyboard navigation

#63

Post by myfonj »

Just chiming in with recommendation of yet another hints extension, this one is called »Yet Another Hints Extension (YAHE)« and is really minimal and nice. Signed, happy long-time user.

(YAHE) https://gitlab.com/jpallari/yahe

(BTW, does anyone here remember extension called »Hit-A-Hint«?)

Re: A small change to improve browsers for keyboard navigation

#65

Post by iLemming »

ashwinsundar wrote: post #17

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 no longer use vimium, I use vimium-c, but these should work in both, add these to your custom mappings - you'd thank me later:

    map gf LinkHints.activateOpenInNewTab count=999999
    map go LinkHints.click direct="focused" mode="newtab-active"
    map gb LinkHints.click direct="focused" mode="newtab"

    map gm toggleMuteTab
I would typically do something like this - I'd press "/", search for an occurence, it navigates to one, if it's a link, pressing "go" - opens it in a new tab, "gb" - opens it without switching to it. I promise you, you'd love this.

Share your interesting options.

Re: A small change to improve browsers for keyboard navigation

#66

Post by ashton314 »

sooheon wrote: post #49
ashton314 wrote: post #20

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.

This delay is configurable. The delay is there so you can actually type a bit before the UI pops up, and then the UI will be filtered to just your selection.

Re: A small change to improve browsers for keyboard navigation

#67

Post by ashton314 »

lelandfe wrote: post #32
ashton314 wrote: post #20

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.

I wish this was paid or open source…

As I understand it, a payment system is in the works. I would gladly fork over some cash to support ShortCat. Looks like someone recommended Homerow, which appears to be pretty comparable to ShortCat, and it has a one-time purchase option.

Re: A small change to improve browsers for keyboard navigation

#68

Post by sooheon »

ashton314 wrote: post #66
sooheon wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This delay is configurable. The delay is there so you can actually type a bit before the UI pops up, and then the UI will be filtered to just your selection.

The configuration lies. Even with "Show hints" set to "Immediately", there is a long delay. Feels like half a second on M1 Pro.

Re: A small change to improve browsers for keyboard navigation

#69

Post by sooheon »

ehnto wrote: post #58
sooheon wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Could be, but there is another app that does the same thing faster so there must be some optimizations available.
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