documentation/handy-standard-firefox-features.md

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   3 Copyright Simon Lydell 2015, 2016.
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   6
   7 # Handy standard Firefox features
   8
   9 One of VimFx’s key features is embracing standard Firefox features. That is
  10 preferred over re-implementing similar functionality.
  11
  12 This section lists a few handy such standard features.
  13
  14
  15 ## The location bar
  16
  17 Firefox’s location bar is sometimes called the “Awesomebar” because it is so
  18 powerful. Other than simply entering URLs, you can also use it to:
  19
  20 - Search through bookmarks.
  21 - Search through history.
  22 - Search through open tabs.
  23 - Search using search engines.
  24
  25 Type a lone `*` to restrict the results to bookmarks only. Use `<c-enter>` to
  26 open results in new tabs. There are [plenty more such tricks][location-bar].
  27
  28 If you use this a lot, you might be interested in the [Enter Selects] extension
  29 and adding a [custom command as a shortcut][location-bar-custom-command].
  30
  31 [location-bar]: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Location_Bar_search
  32 [Enter Selects]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/enter-selects/
  33 [location-bar-custom-command]: https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx/wiki/Custom-Commands#search-bookmarks
  34
  35
  36 ## Menus
  37
  38 Use the `ec` command to open the context menu of elements. (If that fails, try
  39 and see if the element can be focused using the `ef` command—if so, you should
  40 be able to open the context menu using the `<menu>` key.)
  41
  42 Instead of clicking on menus, you can press `<a-accesskey>` where “accesskey” is
  43 the underlined letter of the menu name. Sometimes the underlines aren’t visible
  44 until you hold the `<alt>` key. In already open menus, you can type the access
  45 key _without_ holding `<alt>`. If there is no access key for the menu item you
  46 want to activate, you can usually start typing the name of the menu item to go
  47 to it. This is a nice alternative to using the arrow keys. This is true for most
  48 programs, not just Firefox.
  49
  50 Here are two examples where the above comes especially in handy for VimFx:
  51
  52 - You can use the `ec` command to open the context menu of an image, a link or a
  53   video, providing you a plethora of things to do with the focused target, such
  54   as saving an image or the target of a link. For videos, the access key for the
  55   “Play/Pause” menu item is often `p`. This allows you, for example, to control
  56   some video players using the keyboard.
  57
  58 - When using the `gH` command (which opens the back/forward button menu), or the
  59   `gX` command (which opens the Recently Closed Tabs menu), you can start typing
  60   the name of one the entries of the list to go to it (if you don’t feel like
  61   using the good ol’ arrow keys and `<enter>`).