Outrun Mouse using Keyboard in Firefox

Before the mouse was invented, the keyboard was the only way to navigate around the interface. Either way, there was not much to navigate back then. With the advent of the mouse, everything changed. Now the mouse is the most convenient tool for navigating and clicking links while browsing the internet. What if we tell you that the keyboard is faster than using the mouse — in Firefox, at least? Read on...

Mouseless browsing lets you browse through sites using just your keyboard

Firefox has numerous shortcuts that let you browse without touching a mouse. There’re a little over 50 shortcuts in Firefox and we’ve listed the most useful and the best shortcuts we found.

Firefox lets you download add-ons for additional features. One such add-on is Mouseless Browsing 0.5.1. You can get this from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/879/. Click on Download Now on this page to install the add-on. Once you’re done, restart Firefox.

With the add-on installed, you’ll notice a small logo at the lower right corner of Firefox. You will also notice that some numbers have appeared next to every link on a page. These are the numerical ids given to each link by Mouseless Browsing. To access a link, simply type the numerical id next to it and hit [Enter].

The numbers you type are also displayed next to the logo, and they disappear rather fast. If you think they disappear too fast, adjust the timing in the settings window. For this, click on the icon at the bottom right corner of the browser to open the settings window. Alternately, you can go to Tools>Addons from the Menu bar, select Mouseless Browsing and then click on Options.

You can change the time delay by entering values as per your choice. The default settings for this is 500ms. If you feel this is too fast, you can increase it to a value such as 750ms and 1000ms for a more convenient browsing experience. You can also adjust the settings such that you don’t need to hit [Enter]. Once you’ve typed the id, Firefox will redirect the page to the link directly. If you’re one of those who prefer using the numerical keypad, set the numpad exclusively for Mouseless browsing. The default number of ids set for a single website is 1000. This is enough for most websites, but there might be certain websites which need more. Mouseless Browsing also allows you to increase the maximum number of ids.

If you don’t like using numbers, you can also set alphabets as ids. These work in the same way as numbers. However, you might get some really weird combinations as ids, like QBE and UGZ, but only if the website has that many links to offer.

Using this add-on, along with the available shortcuts, you increase your browsing speed by milestones and even challenge your friend who owns a 4000dpi mouse and beat him in using Firefox.