Keyboard Shortcuts [Feature Request]

I would love it if keyboard shortcuts were added to the site. It would make it a lot easier to navigate the site instead of using the mouse 99% of the time.

+1, left and right arrows would be extremely helpful!

-1 Any website that uses shortcuts is horrible, imo. Usually they override default browser functionality. Just look at Deviantart.com using left/right/up/down arrows to load next images? well.. now I cannot scroll large images that make a scrollbar (I don't really like using the wheel to scroll, and not all mice have a left/right scroll wheel) ctrl+s to save an image? well.. what if I wanted to save the page to my desktop/saved websites folder? etc...

websites are not programs, they don't need hotkeys. Browsers are programs, they need hotkeys. If anything, find or make an addon that adds hotkeys to your favorite sites.

I made a Chrome extension some time ago. I don't know if I can post the link here.

The shortcuts are mostly for the search bar, but I also included some vim-like navigation with j, k, gg and G.

So, I've had that idea quite a while ago and was going to add some keyboard shortcuts eventually, although it's one of those things with a fairly low priority. I use keyboard shortcuts a lot and I could definitely see a few cases where they might be useful.

Now, tidbit definitely has a point in that any shortcuts we add should not interfere with the browser's shortcuts. So common shortcuts like ctrl+s, arrow keys, space bar etc. are out of the picture. However there are plenty of keys that browsers don't use for anything, mostly regular letter keys without any modifiers (ctrl, alt etc.).

So we could for example use the vim-like

hjkl

navigation, use simple

s

for saving an image, maybe

f

for faving etc. Of course none of these would activate while the cursor is inside a text-input like the search bar. That's just an idea though, we'd still have to properly test this approach to see if it works out.

tidbit I think you're seeing this a little too dramatically. Like I said I agree that shortcuts should not interfere with the browser's functionality, but there are definitely a fair amount of websites that have long crossed the border from simple, passive website to an interactive application and there is no reason not to try and make that interaction interface as comfortable as possible. I mean be honest, How often do you really press ctrl+s to download a page with tons of javascript going on? Chances are what you download won't even work outside of context due to cross-site scripting policies in your browser.

KuroiKitsu That sounds very useful. If it's not doing anything that harms our site (like massive scraping) you're absolutely welcome to post it.

Ok, here it is.

You can download as zip, extract somewhere, and load the unpacked extension.

**Search

shakugan no shana

:**

/

shakugan no shana

<Esc>

R

**Search

shakugan no shana

in

Anime

, with all purity filters enabled:**

/

shakugan no shana

<Esc>

C

C

c2

F

R

---

Each key is explained in the repository.

I make breaking changes often, so if anyone wants to pack it as

.crx

or something, feel free to get the code (or fork the repo).

• *UPDATE:

  /

  is now the same as

  s s

Gandalf ya, ctrl+s isn't that commonly used, but was just tossing out examples. a popular site, imgur, also has some weird hotkeys that are annoying. Like pressing my Volume_Mute key on imgur pops up a window. the idea of using hjkl is nice, if you have a standard qwerty keyboard :P

Maybe a poll/topic or 2 asking users what keyboard layout they have and hotkeys they would or wouldn't like. According to another topic, a lot of people here seem to be non-english. not sure if qwerty is pretty universal or if it's more of an english layout. if the majority want hotkeys that might be fairly common keys, so be it. if a lot of people (like me) find it annoying, find other keys. Or just leave it to addon devs and people can find an addon they like.

I think qwerty is pretty universal. There are a lot of variations as countries add special letters or move a few around but the home row tends to be stable enough. The people who created the vi shortcuts all those years ago knew what they were doing. ^^

Another thing is, we could add a simple option to the user settings to disable the shortcuts, for people who really don't want any of it. (inb4 I'm definitely not going to make the shortcuts customizable.)

By the way I'm also thinking about staff features here, which won't concern most users but might help speed up mod work. So that's a whole set of shortcuts that most people won't have to worry about.

Gandalf said:

So, I've had that idea quite a while ago and was going to add some keyboard shortcuts eventually, although it's one of those things with a fairly low priority. I use keyboard shortcuts a lot and I could definitely see a few cases where they might be useful. Now, tidbit definitely has a point in that any shortcuts we add should not interfere with the browser's shortcuts. So common shortcuts like ctrl+s, arrow keys, space bar etc. are out of the picture. However there are plenty of keys that browsers don't use for anything, mostly regular letter keys without any modifiers (ctrl, alt etc.). So we could for example use the vim-like

hjkl

navigation, use simple

s

for saving an image, maybe

f

for faving etc. Of course none of these would activate while the cursor is inside a text-input like the search bar. That's just an idea though, we'd still have to properly test this approach to see if it works out. tidbit I think you're seeing this a little too dramatically. Like I said I agree that shortcuts should not interfere with the browser's functionality, but there are definitely a fair amount of websites that have long crossed the border from simple, passive website to an interactive application and there is no reason not to try and make that interaction interface as comfortable as possible. I mean be honest, How often do you really press ctrl+s to download a page with tons of javascript going on? Chances are what you download won't even work outside of context due to cross-site scripting policies in your browser. KuroiKitsu That sounds very useful. If it's not doing anything that harms our site (like massive scraping) you're absolutely welcome to post it.

Yeah, I'm really used to Vim's

hjkl

navigation, as I'm in Vim a lot ever since I switched to Arch Linux around a month ago from Windows. I'm also glad that you had the idea of implementing keyboard shortcuts before I posted this thread. :)

KamranMackey Still, don't expect it to happen very soon. It's a nice thing to have but we still have a whole bunch of more important stuff waiting to happen.