keyboard friendly google searches
Thursday, 6. December 2007, 19:02:35
Google is running, among its experiments, a keyboard friendly Google search.
Key Action J Selects the next result. K Selects the previous result. O Opens the selected result. <Enter> Opens the selected result. / Puts the cursor in the search box. <Esc> Removes the cursor from the search box.
A really sweet feature - just too bad you cannot configure your own key bindings…
Edit: Ohh, jorunnix, thanks for pointing it out: just add &esrch=BetaShortcuts at the end of the GET URL for your Google search
By jorunnix, # 6. December 2007, 19:05:43
No suprise for readers of this blog hopefully, but this is not really hopeful... Easy keyboard access should not be dependent on site designers adding complex scripts. With Opera, it is easy to get the same keyboard usability:
By Rijk, # 7. December 2007, 16:35:37
Just use Opera's spatial navigation. I use.
BTW, too bad that spatial navigation leaved broken in Opera 9.0 - 9.24
By FataL, # 7. December 2007, 18:26:16
By csant, # 7. December 2007, 18:34:14
Most likely I will just use that works at any site, because my fingers already in position -- I use spatial navigation unknowingly.
BTW, I found Google shortcuts not comfortable. Seems for me (as gamer and Opera user) that "W" (up, previous) and "S" (down, next) would be much better for most users.
And this shortcut will interfere with Opera's in-page search, that I use sometimes on search results pages.
By FataL, # 7. December 2007, 18:52:01
However, I am missing a usable structural navigation in Opera: W and S somehow accomplish exactly the navigation Google's bindings provide - but the link is not activated...
By csant, # 7. December 2007, 19:28:04
By FataL, # 7. December 2007, 20:36:08
By arthur.titeica, # 8. December 2007, 17:25:13
On another note, could it be that spatial nav used to be more robust in earlier Opera versions? I use it very often, but lately I often find the rectangle trapped in some layout, i.e., I cannot move to an expected link even though the euclidian distance and angle would make it the most likely target. Sometimes the rectangle cylcles through some links even though I only press e.g. Shift+down.
By towolf, # 10. December 2007, 14:11:23
By FataL, # 10. December 2007, 17:51:11
but i think it would be great if opera have caret navigation ability, other than accurately selecting links and other elements it can be used to select any text (for copying or whatever) just as a pointing device's cursor. (before 9.5 opera's spatial navigation was able to select link's text, now no more, and the selected link is viewed by a rectangle like it was (and still is) for tabbing navigation)
<!!!almost off topic/!!!>
By Khaled Khalil, # 17. December 2007, 11:29:45