Legal Research

Mouseless browsing with FireFox

By Shaunna Mireau

One of my favourite blogs, Lifehacker, mentioned a new version of a fabulous Firefox extension.

Mouseless Browsing (MLB) is a Firefox-Extension which enables you to browse the internet with the keyboard. The basic principle is to add small boxes with unique ids behind every link and/or form element. You just have to type in the id and press enter (there is also an automatice mode available) to trigger the corresponding action i.e. following a link, pressing a button or selecting a textfield.

I like browsing without a mouse because I have the perception that it is faster to navigate if you don’t have to take your hands off of the keyboard. Moving around without a mouse is efficient as everyone who uses the Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V to copy and paste can tell you.

Some other mouseless browsing keyboard shortcuts for Firefox are:

• Select location bar: Ctrl+L or Alt+D
• Select search bar: Ctrl+K
• Back: Backspace or Alt+Left
• Forward: Alt+Right or Shift+Backspace
• Open link in new tab: Ctrl+Enter

Happier surfing.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on January 08, 2009 (boomark / email).