If you are comfortable using Firefox mostly without touching your mouse (see the previous article) and you’re a passionate Emacs user, today I’d suggest to incorporate your known and loved Emacs keybindings to Firefox (KeySnail) and add even speedier link clicking foo (HoK).

Introducing KeySnail

KeySnail is a Firefox extension for Emacs users. It comes pre-configured with many sensible Emacs keybindings but here’s my take (place it in ~/.keysnail.js).

Important and surprising keybindings (Emacs notation, note that M- is Cmd):

F1-b (Show all key bindings)
C-x 1 (Close all tabs but current)
C-x l (focus to location bar)
C-x t (focus to first textarea)
C-x s (focus to first button)
C-c u (undo close tab)
C-M-y (select text from kill buffer)
F3    (Start macro recording!!!)
F4    (Stop recording/play)

Basic Emacs goodness:

C-x 3 (New Tab)
C-x k (Close Tab)
C-g (Abort)
B (Back)
F (Forward)
R (Reload)
C-s (incremental search)
Movement and copy/yank behavior works with C- and M-

HoK - Turbo navigation

The plugin section of KeySnail has HoK, a hit-a-hint clone that adds ad-hoc short keybindings to links, button and text fields. This enables you to navigate most pages without any keyboard use.

My prefixes (contained in .keysnail.js):

C-c c   (open link)
C-c l   (open link in backgorund)
C-c y   (yank link)
C-c C-e (continous HoK mode)

HoK has different dynamics as find-as-you-type for links:

• You have to look up the shortcuts on the screen and cannot go after the links text.
• Lookup keys are much shorter in HoK.
• You can also navigate to text fields in HoK.

Try HoK and see if it changes your workflow.