- google search keyboard navigation for chrome
- install from github: https://github.com/nqzero/knogs/raw/master/knogs.user.js
use j/k to move thru items, (shift) o to open items (in a new page)- the code is available under the mit/x license
- source: https://github.com/nqzero/knogs
- mit/x license
- this is still just a wrapper - the real work is still done by google's shortcut.5.js
tl;dr - the alternatives worked, but they were no substitute for the real thing, so i wrote my own wrapper
google's experimental search page used to list a keyboard shortcuts feature. it's been deprecated for a long time, and was showing some rust, but was still working, was still an invaluable part of my desktop. a few days ago it finally stopped working. so i tried the google-recommended replacement, the accessibility experiment
- it's not officially supported for chrome
- instead of a cursor (a la gmail) it highlights the selected item
- too large, can't change defaults, leaves artifacts
- it works, though it's a bit clunky
i sent the usual scathing critique to google begging them to give us back the keyboard shortcuts experiment (i'd actually be willing to pay for search + shortcuts, i should have mentioned that). but i wanted to list some of the good stuff about the accessibility experiment
- "n" and "p" move to the next and previous item, including to the next and previous page ... this is a feature that was often requested (and at one point worked iirc) for the shortcuts
- shift-enter is an undocumented shortcut that will open the selected link in a new page
- just tried it in firefox - the highlight box is still too large and no obvious way to change the default. but it does make a cute clicking and wooshing sound as you move though the results, unfortunately a second or two after moving the cursor
another option is google's standard search. pressing tab provides a small cursor that can be controlled with the up and down arrows. enter or ctrl-enter open an item. it's workable, but kludgey. i also tried the 43131 userscript, but couldn't get it to work on chrome
google still hosts the javascript that does the actual control, they just don't provide a means of injecting it, and it's got a little bit-rot. so i wrote my own wrapper. it looks like a userscript, but it doesn't really work right on firefox, so consider it chrome-specific. the shortcuts conflict with google's instant search, so i have a kludge to fix some focus issues that mostly works. here it is: keyboard navigation for google search on chrome. at some point i'll probably write my own javascript (as opposed to wrapping googles), but in the meantime i hope this works for some people
7 comments:
very nice. arrow doesn't line up perfectly, but it works and that's all that matters. thanks!
I'm a Firefox user and I've tried just about every trick I could find online to bring back the old experimental behavior with no luck.
Would absolutely LOVE it if someone could point me in the right direction.
@Alon_G - have you tried http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/43131 ? that's firefox specific, and similar to what my extension does for chrome (though it adds some additional features)
Thank you *so* much for doing this! Not having keyboard shortcuts was driving me mad. I tried using DuckDuckGo for a while, but it just didn't feel as fast.
I'm a bit fussy about the way it looks, so I fixed up the arrows: http://cl.ly/DlWB (and also pointed the JS at a github gist, to be safe).
Would you be ok if I made a Safari extension out of this? Asking because of your copyright.
Thanks again!
@yjsoon - i just created: https://github.com/nqzero/knogs
mit/x license (for both the github and the version that the blog linked to)
thanks for the interest
Great, thanks for the clarification on the license! I posted my versions at http://yjsoon.com/2012/02/re-enabling-jk-keyboard-navigation-on-google-search, and I'll fork to include the styling update.
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