How to: Add Keyboard Navigation to Facebook

Written by Marshall Kirkpatrick / October 12, 2009 4:23 PM / 4 Comments

Firefox users can now add and customize keyboard navigation to Facebook with just a few clicks using a new plug-in added to Userscripts.org this afternoon. Want the ability to jump to your friends' photos, your groups, or any other page on Facebook with a single keystroke? This simple script is really handy and is already helping me access parts of Facebook that have always been a few too many mouse-clicks away for them to show up regularly in my visits to the site.

Called simply Facebook Keyboard Navigation, the tool requires the Firefox plug-in Greasemonkey - a powerful browser customization tool you can learn to make even more advanced use of in 5 minutes.

After you install Greasemonkey, installing Keyboard Navigation takes two mouse clicks. Now you can jump around Facebook in Firefox by simply pressing some keys, like:
B - Go to list of birthdays
C - Go to photos
D - Find friends
E - Go to your list of events

There are 15 keystroke shortcuts out of the box, but by going through your Firefox menus Toolkits, Greasemonkey, manage scripts then select that script and hit edit - then you can make some additional customization. It's a remarkably simple script, just look at the format in the file and either change or add to it in the same way.

I assigned the letter "R" to jump to my Facebook list of "real friends" by grabbing the part of that list's URL that follows facebook.com, pasting it into the edited script and saving. I then had to reload Facebook but sure enough, it works great.

Once you've done that, try the Facebook Fixer script. These are all remarkably easy to use and they make life so much better!

Comments

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I wish J and K would do page up and page down ;)

NICE POST!

Posted by: Andrew Mager | October 12, 2009 4:45 PM

In firefox, I can press "f" and have all the links on the page labeled with numbers, a la their tab order. Typing one of the numbers then follows that link or clicks that element.
Truly mouseless navigation is a joy.

Posted by: ram | October 12, 2009 8:18 PM

How do you take script off? it is annoying especially if you have the security popup box that appear on facebook to confirm that your not a bot or something and you have to type the letter into the box, everytime i have typed a letter executes the pages C - Go to photos E - Go to your list of events. So how do you take this off or make it so that you have to press the control button and then the letter to execute the action.

Posted by: Rohan | October 13, 2009 12:13 AM

Rohan, I think you're stuck with either turning it off or running automatically when you load a page. So far as I know you can't choose exactly when to run a Greasemonkey script.

Thanks for sharing this Marshall, it makes Facebook much less painful. ;)

Posted by: stevenwalling.com | October 13, 2009 11:11 AM