

Hints about application specific keyboard shortcuts usually are displayed to the right of a menu item.
MOUSELESS WEB NAVIGATION WINDOWS

MOUSELESS WEB NAVIGATION HOW TO
But before we look at how to control a website with keyboard only, it is useful to know the larger context of controlling any arbitrary application on your computer. So by making sure that your websites are controllable with a default keyboard, many other special input devices is automatically taken care of. But in general they are "mimicking" default keyboards and offer similar interaction opportunities. The complexity of these devices varies a lot, some of them having only a few buttons. Sometimes called "switches", they are tailored to the needs of different user groups.
MOUSELESS WEB NAVIGATION SOFTWARE
Thus, it's crucial that any software (including websites) is operable by keyboard only. Many users control a computer using keyboard only, so no mouse or similar pointing device is available. If you’re a web developer looking to incorporate keyboard shortcuts in your own apps, consider using the jQuery Hotkeys plugin.Controlling a computer with a keyboard only To take advantage of these keyboard-friendly web apps, you’ll need to exclude their URLs in Vimium Settings from chrome://extensions. Anyone familiar with Gmail’s shortcuts will find the interface familiar. GitHub’s issue tracker is also great for managing software projects.

The shortcuts are a bit simple, like Google Calendar, so I still find myself using the mouse quite often. Moving away from the Google products, I use Pivotal Tracker to manage agile software projects. However, I have not been able to figure out how to navigate to and edit a single event. Google Calendar has a very succinct set of shortcuts, but navigation works surprisingly well. Google’s feed reader closely followed suit, with many of the same bindings, but added some subtlety with the Shift key: Like Vimium, the key bindings are Vim-esque.įor this and other Google products, keyboard shortcuts need to be enabled in the Settings. Gmail was probably the first widely used web app to support keyboard shortcuts, and set the standard for others to follow. shift+/) to bring up an explanatory overlay, much like Vimium. What if, like on the desktop, we could have site-specific keyboard support? There’s no extension that supports this yet (it would require quite a bit of custom scripting), but the good news is that several popular web apps do natively support keyboard shortcuts.įor all of these apps, hit the question mark ( ? a.k.a. Vimium is great for bringing keyboard shortcuts to the Web, but it’s a general tool. Last time for Mouseless Monday, I reviewed the wonders of Google Chrome and Vimium. Mouseless Monday #2 - Keyboard-Friendly Web Apps
