Make my Vista Arrow Keys Work.

October 17, 2008 10:07 AM

How do I set up my arrow keys to cycle forward/backward in firefox?

I had this ability with my T42 XP, now I have a 1720 inspiron Vista and I don't have that ability anymore. I've called Dell support, but they have no idea what I'm talking about. I miss using my arrows keys to move back and forth between pages on firefox, instead of the mouse. Help :/

posted by Juicylicious to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Alt+ left and right arrow, to move forward and backward through the history, works for me.
posted by box at 10:18 AM on October 17, 2008

Yep, a casual left thumb on the alt key does it for me.
posted by rhizome at 10:24 AM on October 17, 2008

Is there anyway to set it up to use only the arrow keys?
posted by Juicylicious at 10:30 AM on October 17, 2008

If the tab bar is "active", like if you click on an already active Firefox tab, or if you tab onto the tab bar, you can cycle through the tabs using right/left and up/down. The problem is that the left and right keys have an additional meaning in Firefox: scrolling a page that's wider than the window to the left or right.

Looking at this picture of a (claimed) T42 keyboard, it looks like there are extra buttons next to the arrow keys. Are those the ones you used? If so, they were probably sending the Alt+left or right arrow keycode. Without some sort of programmable key (and this large picture of a 1720 Inspiron doesn't seem to have any) that you're willing to use, you might be stuck. Given that normal left/right arrow means something else to Firefox and I can't see any easy way to do this in Firefox. And you don't really want the left/right arrow keys to send Alt-arrow in general, since that'd break everything else. But, I might be off-base in terms of those keys.
posted by skynxnex at 11:07 AM on October 17, 2008

Is there any extension or greasemonkey script or something that you had on the old computer that you don't on the new one?
posted by winston at 11:14 AM on October 17, 2008

Okay, I just realized that I had those extra tabbing keys shown in the T42 picture. I want those keys on my Inspiron :(
posted by Juicylicious at 11:30 AM on October 17, 2008

Apparently, Keyboard Extensions will allow you to set application specific hotkeys, and it is free. Just set arrow to alt-arrow for Firefox, and your problem is solved (unless you want the scrolling ability :P).
posted by Chuckles at 12:18 PM on October 17, 2008

Be aware that if you set the arrow keys to go back and forward, you won't be able to move the cursor back and forth in web form fields like the ones at AskMe.
posted by cnc at 1:09 PM on October 17, 2008