Author: Matt Jacobs
License: TBD
Blog Shortcuts provides visitors of your blog the ability to navigate your site with their keyboard.
- jQuery
- Safari 4.x, Firefox 3.6.x or Chrome 4.x
- A blog
There are two files you'll need to include on your blog.
- blog-shortcuts.js: This is the meat of the application. You'll also do the majority of your configurations here.
- bs-styles.css: This provides a small set of styles for the help and tag interfaces.
The available shortcuts are listed below and you can configure the key commands for your shortcuts in blog-shortcuts.js. Here's some sample configuration:
// Provide the CSS selector that is unique to your blog posts.
bsOptions.blogPostSelector = '.article';
// Keys for next and previous posts
bsOptions.nextPost = 'j';
bsOptions.prevPost = 'k';
// Key to go to your homepage
// bsOptions.goToHomepage = 'h';
// The URL of your homepage
bsOptions.homepageUrl = '/';
The inline comments should be enough for you to figure it out, but it's worth noting that commenting out any of the shortcuts will keep it from firing (and out of the help menu).
- Don't use
g. I've reserved that for go-to commands. - As such, the "go to tag" command is hard-coded to
g then t. - You could make the shortcuts the same for navigating between permalinks or through a list of posts. Otherwise, you really shouldn't use the same shortcut twice.
These are the shortcuts that are included.
- Scroll to the next entry
- Scroll to the previous entry
- Load the newer entry on permalink
- Load the older entry on permalink
- Go to the homepage
- Go to reviews
- Go to archives
- Go to about
- Focus on search
- Go to top
- Show the tag input window (hardcoded to "g then t" for now)
- Help menu (which shows all available shortcuts)
Right now, the only place it's in use is on my blog. You can see it at capndesign.com.
- Firefox doesn't like the
?key for some reason. I need to find a workaround - It doesn't work in IE 6/7 (maybe 8 and 9 too).
Set jQuery selectors via variablesSet keyboard commands via variablesAllow character labels instead of character codes- Figure out open-source license
- Get people to help optimize the JS; it could be better