In the mean-time, could this be created as an extension for the current 1.x releases?

(and playing with the feature preferences.

the fonts on that page are terrible...

I love the idea. I favour the keyboard over the mouse for navigation heavily, and this would be great to see in future Firefox milestones.

Two years earlier and easier to use...

Opera's browser factory is proud to include an extra treat in Opera 7's golden release: Spatial Navigation, changing forever how users will interact with their keyboard when online.

Spatial Navigation was first introduced in Opera's iTV business unit. With Opera for iTV on their set-top boxes, TV viewers appreciates how simple it is to use the arrows keys on their remote controls to navigate the electronic program guides or between links in Web pages. Now Opera is bringing the same concept to everyone's desktop computer. By combining the Shift and arrow keys on the keyboard, users can easily move to links or any other navigational element on a page.

"Power users will simply love Spatial Navigation," says Mary Lambert, product line manager desktop, Opera Software. "Combined with earlier Opera innovations like multiple document interface and powerful keyboard shortcuts, this will be a new must-have feature that underlines Opera's lead in browser innovation."

I have to mention a pet project of a good friend of mine: KeyNav. http://www.keynav.com

It does exactly what this spatial navigation does: let you navigate the tab focus in any direction. It's been around for two or more years in an Internet Explorer version, and for the same amount of time, he's been wanting to make a Firefox extension that did it.

"Firefox moving in the right direction"

Hmmm, this looks interesting.

The example on the main SNav page isn't very good though, especially since it says: "Without Spatial Navigation, you would have to hit the tab key 30 times!" That isn't true -- what I actually typed was "try" and the correct link appeared.

I believe that by default you have to type "'try" (with the apostrophe), but I find that I follow links so much more often than I search in the page (doesn't everybody?) that it's worth having 'Firefox' set up like this, and it's a good way of navigating to most links. Since that's so much better than tabbing through links, I make Tab useful again by having the hidden pref set so it only tabs through form controls, not links. Pages typically have few form controls, so if I want to focus one pressing Tab a few times usually does that.

But ... my set-up falls down in 2 circumstances: pages like the 'Slashdot' homepage, where lots of the links are labelled "Read More"; and pages with all the links as images. So I still think SNav sounds useful, and I'm looking forward to trying it.

Gr8 work! This is the only main feature which holds me to use Opera. The combination of "find as you type" and "spatial navigation" is fenomenal! I have waited a long time for a extension or something like this which works integrated with Firefox. I hope it will be a default part of Firefox in a near future.

"experimental feature", "pioneer research"???

Opera implemented it 2 years ago.
You won't claim, that you made something revolutional, will you?

>"experimental feature", "pioneer research"???
>
>Opera implemented it 2 years ago.
>You won't claim, that you made something revolutional, will you?
Mabye he meant the research team at Pioneer ( http://www.pioneer-eur.com/ )? LOL

From Spatial Navigation in Mozilla:
> Eventually, this may build as a default part of FireFox.

Even someone in Mozilla can't spell the word right. XD

Opera users have had this feature for a while. So stop dressing up these catch-up FF features as something new!

Go home Opera jerks. Annoy someone else with your irritating attention whoring. This surely won't get Opera's marketshare past the, err, 2%.

any one here using frogpad?

That's great news.
Also would be nice if zooming in and out of a page (text-only) kept position. Or find as you type, was spatial that is find at the top of the viewable area.
Anyways, Spatial rocks!!

I tried it and it doesn’t conflict with the Windows keyboard layout switching. If you press Alt-Shift it will switch and do nothing in Mozilla, and if you press Alt-Shift-Right it moves the focus in Mozilla and do nothing with the selected keyboard layout.

Nevertheless it would be kind of awkward to have this on the same shortcut. For example, if I press Alt-Shift to move the cursor, and then change my mind and release it, it will switch my keyboard layout. For me this would be bothersome, however many people have unknowingly got multiple keyboard layouts set up on their machine (e.g. Dutch and International) and they might be unintentionally switching between them when using ‘Spatial Navigation’, not knowing what happened and why their keyboard suddenly works differently.

But, Ctrl-Shift is already taken, and so is Ctrl- and Alt-, so there aren’t much alternatives. Perhaps Ctrl-Alt. I would prefer that, as for me reaching for Alt-Shift has one specific meaning, and doing the same for a supposedly often-used navigation method would be weird.

~Grauw

Actually find as you type is spatial [eats own words]

(from the discussion on MozillaZine)

Given the option to use a key combination on the right of the keyboard, might as well just use AltGr+cursors. As a matter of fact, that’s actually not too bad, as you can use that combination with your right hand only! Thumb on AltGr, and do the cursors with your pinkie. RightCtrl+cursors would be even easier to reach. I like the idea of only needing one hand to use this.

~Grauw

You can always tell when a very well made software product is doing everything the right way. The product is rapidly drawing crossfire from other products' fanatics, like cowpies draw flys! ;) If you feel compelled to make a comment about some other product, at least mention if you enjoy using FF and make it in a non-combative tone; but in any case, flaming a FREE product is mighty low and just plain stupid. ;)

I don't use any other browser than IE and FF, both are secure and well made with FF set to be my primary browser. I use Thunderbird as my primary email client, having totally stopped using MS Outlook a long time back without any regrets. Keep up the great work Mozilla! Your primary FF/TB continues (now) to set a new pace and direction for keeping and/or attracting customers. The acceptance and approval ratings are growing online and many sites provide it support. At its current pace/growth, FF should be a major player in the browser world. I do think there should be some marketing time afforded TB, as it definately has a lead in quality, security, ease of use and overall quantity/quality of features over its competition (e.g., the Outlook family, in particularly)!

That's similar to the way i used to position the Cursor on the Commodore 64 way back in the 80'ies... I'm used to it! I like it!

Nobody's flaming FF! But there is no doubt, the OP did not have the information (or ignored it), that the exciting spatial navigation feature may be new to FF, but not to the world. And Opera implementing it in a usable manner for years is nothing more than a plain fact.

FF is great and free, Opera is rather better, but commercial -- anyone'd be free to make his own decision...

Man... reading this thread and the one below sure brings back memories from the Amiga vs Atari ST days :) And even further down the memory path, the Speccy vs C-64 days...

> You can always tell when a very well made software product is doing
> everything the right way. The product is rapidly drawing crossfire
> from other products' fanatics, like cowpies draw flys!

"You can always tell when a product is based on marketing rather than excellent technology. The product is all about pretending things like "we invented this and that", like Don Quixote making up enemies from wind mills."

Look! I can make obviously biased and inflammatory statements too! I'm cool!

;)

@Laurens: Ctrl+Alt isn't such a good idea. Laptop users that plug in an external keyboard tend to use Left Ctrl+Left Alt to simulate the Fn key on laptop computers. (This is useful to easily control the volume or switch displays.) And if you have an international keyboard, there is no Right Alt key. It's the AltGr key.

Off-topic, but: is auto-update for 1.0.3 going to be switched on any time soon?

Innovation is nice and all, but if we don't focus on fixing bugs ( and regressions like Bug 283730 - http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=228991 ), then we're (almost) no better off than IE which kept introducing features but never fully implemented HTML, even.

So is this feature able to be built by specifying "ac_add_options --enable-extensions=spatialnavigation" or are the experimental builds done with code that is not checked into CVS yet?