YipYip Keyboard Navigation for Gmail, Hacker News, Reddit, and Other Websites | Hacker News Reader

YipYip Keyboard Navigation for Gmail, Hacker News, Reddit, and Other Websites

yip-yip.com

4 pointsandreseg6 comments

Hi Everyone - writing to introduce YipYip! to you all.

It is an open source framework for selecting links on the web without the use of a mouse. We've optimized it for Gmail and a few other sites, but ideally the community (aka you!) adapts it to work on whichever websites you need. (Firefox extension coming soon)

It's pretty simple to use:

1⃣ YipYip is an always-on search & keyboard navigation assistant that turns Gmail (and any other website) into a keyboard-first product.

2⃣ Just type to search.

3⃣ YipYip highlights any buttons or links in the page matching your search.

4⃣ Press Tab to jump through the matches.

5⃣ Press Enter to select the current match.

Voila!

YipYip! can be optimized to perform better on any given website and it is open source. Feel free to check out the GitHub: https://github.com/comake/yip-yip/

There are some ideas in there with regards to how to improve overall web accessibility by connecting something like the Web Speech API: (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Speech_...)

Inspired by Avatar the Last Airbender. Just like Avatar Aang uses Appa to fly through the his world, you can use YipYip to fly through the web: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiqBt372ESk

Excited to learn what you all think!

Legit question: What’s the main difference between this and using cmd-f search built into the browse? Other than the fact it’s one less key press to use, which in itself honestly does sound pretty nice. (Since the home page even brings up autohide with the ability to use that keyboard shortcut to open it deliberately, which is normally used by the browser itself)

Ctrl F doesn't help you navigate links.

If you're in Gmail - all you have to do is type "inb" and push "enter" and it will take you to the inbox.

Ctrl F will only show you matches on the page that match "inb". It doesn't focus on links, and it doesn't help you easily navigate to that link.

There's a video demo that explains this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7wGtyeEoKQ

Ah gotcha, thanks for replying! I think I'm seeing how this ends up being useful in a lot of sites for navigation. That's a pretty "simple" change to normal searching that feels like it can do a lot, which is really cool. I'll give this a try at some point soon.

My pleasure. Let us know if you ever have any feedback. It's open source so you can always just drop an issue or suggestion there!

And for sure. It's super simple. :)

Hey, another YipYip lover here!

Seriously, such a simple thing can make such a big difference. You'll never have to use your mouse again!

We'd love to have you contribute to the contexual rules that make YipYip smarter on each website you use.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com