Spatialnavigation

Spatial Navigation Chrome Extension

Smart spatial navigation with key map to links.

Based off the Spatial Navigation extension by Falsandtru.

Binds WASD, F, E and Q keys for navigation/hints mode.

• W/A/S/D: Four-way spatial navigation
• E/Shift+E: Expand/Contract (change link targets)
• Q: Quit navigation/hints mode
• Enter/F: Click link
• Shift+Enter/Shift+F: Shift-click link (open new tab)
• Ctrl+Enter/Ctrl+F: Ctrl-click link (open new background tab)
• Ctrl+Shift+X: Disable the hotkeys for current tab

Set your own keys: Click the icon and choose Options, or visit the details page in the browser extension manager.

Any contributions are most welcome! 🤓👍

Screenshot

Notes

This extension is far from feature complete, and some things just don't work as expected. The inherited code is also a bit of a mess, and since I am no JS coder there's limits to what can be done. As this started as a very personal extension for my use, some things are the way I want them and not easily changed.

Here are some of the more common issues/bugs/TODOs and some tips:

• Changing keys in options require a tab reload to take effect.

• Using Ctrl+<link key> in hints mode does not work. Using Shift+<link key> works for opening in a new tab though.

• The default Ctrl+F interferes with the common browser shortcut for Find-In-Page. I suggest using something else for Find, like F3, or changing the key to for instance G.

• Even if keys are changed, there might be conflicts with the link hints as they are hard-coded, see below.

• The extension uses a hard-coded list of link hint keys. These might interfere with common browser keys, especially if single-key shortcuts are used in the browser. If so these will need to be removed from the list.

• The list of available link hint keys are in spatial-navigation.js:
  var keys = 'abcdfghijklmnoprstuvwxyz'
  You can edit this string and reload the extension. You can also add keys you want to use instead, for instance the number keys (if not used for anything else).

• The CSS styles for links/hints/url display can if necessary be changed by editing the following values in spatial-navigation.js:
  this.style.innerHTML
marker.style.cssText
display.style.cssText

• There are no language options or internationalization.