gHacks technology news » firefox without mouse http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:31:44 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Use Firefox Without A Computer Mouse http://www.ghacks.net/2009/01/06/use-firefox-without-a-computer-mouse/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/01/06/use-firefox-without-a-computer-mouse/#comments Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:31:09 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=9669 It is most of the times faster to perform an action with the keyboard than with the mouse if a keyboard shortcut is available for that action. There may be situations where you have to use the keyboard. Think of a computer notebook without connected mouse. If you have ever tried to make good use of the notebook’s touchpad you know how painfully slow day to day activities become while using it. Moving some of the actions that are usually performed with the mouse to the keyboard to speed up things might also be interesting for power users who like it speedy.

Mouseless Browsing is a Firefox add-on that can aid the user in all of the scenarios mentioned above. It can be used to speed up things in Firefox while using a keyboard and mouse or exclusively in situations where no mouse is at hand or where it is not practical to use a computer mouse.

The Firefox add-on concentrates on links and form elements. It will display a number next to each element. Pressing the number on the keyboard and hitting enter will perform the action. A link will be opened, a form element activated.

mouseless browsing

If that would have been all the extension would be nice but some users would not like it that much. One reason is that the IDs are always displayed and it can happen that IDs move elements on the page to another position. While that does not hurt the page’s functionality it reduces the visual experience of the user.

Another reason might be the [enter] key which has to be pressed before the action is activated. The options contain extensive means to customize the add-on. IDs can be hidden by default and activated with a shortcut [decimal]. The enter key can be removed from the keyboard shortcuts so that pressing the numbers will automatically perform the action.

mouseless browsing

IDs can be disabled for different types of elements and it is even possible to change the styles and define rules for specific websites.

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