Monthly Archives: September 2009

Speeding Web navigation: single-step deep menu access

Utter Command speech-enables the Firefox Mouseless Browsing extension, which puts a unique number on every clickable item on a Web page. UC lets you click every item on a page, including links, by saying the number plus the word “Go”, for instance “7 Go”.

This works pretty well, but it gets even better when you discover that an item doesn’t have to be visible for you to click it.

This lets you click items that are off-screen. Better yet, it lets you click items on drop-down menus without having to first drop-down the menu. This lets you use a single step to get to any menu item in a Web application once you know the number.

For instance, to insert a horizontal line in a Google Document you can click the “Insert” menu, then click the menu item “Horizontal Line”. There’s no direct keyboard shortcut for horizontal line, so it’s usually a two-step task.

Using numbers you can say “7 Go” to drop-down the Insert menu, then “84 Go” to click  Horizontal Line. But if, like me, you add horizontal lines often enough to remember the number, you can cut straight to the chase and say “84 Go” anytime you want a horizontal line.