KeyboardAccess For IE
KeyboardAccess For IE was my first open source project. I wanted to implement it even before I knew how.
The idea of this project was to create an alternative way to browse the web. After installing this Internet Explorer plugin (called a BHO in Microsoft jargon), by clicking the keypad’s ‘+’ key in a web page, all the links on the page get numbers, and you can choose the link you want to open by entering its number in the dialog that pops up.
Generally speaking, it works. It even lets you focus on form elements like text boxes and puts numbers on image maps (this feature I was especially proud of). However, it doesn’t catch all the links, since sometimes the numbering is hidden by other page elements, and of course Flash links are simply not accessible through the HTML DOM.
So after a while I stopped developing it, because it wasn’t as popular as I had hoped, and I currently use Firefox as my browser. I still think it’s a good idea, so maybe I’ll develop it as an extension to Firefox.
so you did got it up and running after all. if you ever get that firefox extension – let me know. i think this idea of yours is very handy. i miss it even more now when i became a laptoper.
[...] It’s a sad day for me – I found out that someone (whose name is Pekka Sillanpaa) implemented something that I wanted to do myself. Pekka implemented what I would call “KeyboardAccess For Firefox”. The funny thing is that he thought of the idea himself the same way I did. He didn’t know about my own Internet Explorer plugin, KeyboardAccess For IE. [...]