Jskeys

A simple (I hope?) key-binding library in JavaScript. Currently only an Experiment, don’t expect miracles.

It has only been tested a little and only on firefox 13 and chromium 19, both on GNU/Linux.

Usage

To use, just include it and call jskeys_initialize. Like so:

<script src="/jskeys.js" language="javascript"></script>
<script language="javascript">
  jskeys_initialize({ "u": [ "jskeys_goto", "../" ],
                      "h": [ "jskeys_goto", "http://www.example.com" ] });
</script>

The argument for jskeys_initialize should be an associative array that looks like this:

{ char: [ function, args... ],
  ... }

Where CHAR should be a string character specification, which can be:

n

Where N is any single character, for just a pressed character.

C-n

Where N is any single character, for <control> + N.

M-n

Where N is any single character, for <alt> + N, or <meta> + N.

S-n

Where N is any single character, for <shift> + N.

Where FUNCTION is a string containing the name of the function to call and where ARGS is any number of arguments in any form that you want to pass along to FUNCTION. It is your own responsibility to make sure that FUNCTION can handle what you put in ARGS.

Caveats

Right now it is in a very early stage of development, so it may get fixed later on, but for now, at least in chromium, not all key-bindings can work. Browser keyboard shortcuts can not (yet) be overridden. This does seem to work in firefox.

When using a browser plugin like pentadactyl, you should first make sure that the keys can get through to the web page.

Example

My own ~org-mode~-powered website uses this in some places. The front page and the project pages use it currently, press u or h there to go “UP” or “HOME”.

There is also the test.html, where u goes to #up, h goes to #home, C-c (that is, <control>+c) alerts the message “works!” and C-i (that is, <control>+i) alerts the message “doesn’t!”.