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 Remember that you can press the `<menu>` key to open the context menu (instead
  39 of right-clicking). Instead of clicking on menus, you can press `<a-accesskey>`
  40 where “accesskey” is the underlined letter of the menu name. Sometimes the
  41 underlines aren’t visible until you hold the `<alt>` key. In already open menus,
  42 you can type the access key _without_ holding `<alt>`. If there is no access key
  43 for the menu item you want to activate, you can usually start typing the name of
  44 the menu item to go to it. This is a nice alternative to using the arrow keys.
  45 This is true for most programs, not just Firefox.
  46
  47 Here are two examples where the above comes especially in handy for VimFx:
  48
  49 - You can use the `zf` command to focus a link or video (or anything) and then
  50   press the `<menu>` key to open the context menu, providing you a plethora of
  51   things to do with the focused target. For videos, the access key for the
  52   “Play/Pause” menu item is often `p`. This allows you, for example, to control
  53   some video players using the keyboard.
  54
  55 - When using the `gH` command (which opens the back/forward button menu), or the
  56   `gX` command (which opens the Recently Closed Tabs menu), you can start typing
  57   the name of one the entries of the list to go to it (if you don’t feel like
  58   using the good ol’ arrow keys and `<enter>`).