A Firefox keyboard shortcut to quickly jump to links in a web page

Posted on: 5th Mar, 2008 in Software

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If you use Firefox as your browser, and you’re a fan of keyboard shortcuts, then this is the tip for you.  Using this shortcut may mean you never need the mouse again.  Ok, maybe not strictly true, but it may mean you reach for the mouse that little bit less often.

There are loads of great keyboard shortcuts for the Firefox browser, but one that I’ve been using more of lately is the “Quick find” shortcut.  That’s what Firefox calls it at least, but I don’t think that it is a very good description of what the shortcut actually does.

Basically, the “Quick find” shortcut allows you to search through all of the links that are on the webpage.  All it takes is for you to hit the single apostrophe key ( ’ ) and start typing some of the letters of the link you aer looking for.  For example, if you are viewing this web page with Firefox, simply hit the single apostrophe key once, and start typing the word, ‘porfolio’.  You’ll actually notice that you only have to type the ‘p’ before Firefox find the link you are looking for.  Hit return, and the link will be ‘clicked’, all without leaving your keyboard.

You actually don’t need to start with the first letters of the link either.  If you type ‘ee’ in the ‘Quick find’ search field you’ll be jumped up to the ‘Subscribe to the site feed’ link at the top-right of the website.

I imagine that this feature is designed to be an accessibility function as it speeds up the process of going through the links on the page dramatically.  Without using this method, a user would have to use the tab key to cycle through every link one by one.

Do you use this shortcut already?  Do you have a killer keyboard shortcut for Firefox?  Let me know in the comments.

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