If you're a keyboard shortcut junkie in Google Reader, Gmail and Google Docs you might have noticed Google.com, the mother of all Google services, is a bit lacking in the keyboard shortcuts department. There is currently an official Google-sanctioned experimental keyboard shortcuts program you can opt into, although there's the slight chance that the company may one day kill it off. That and it won't remember to give you the shortcut keys the next time you search if you're not signed in to your Google account.
If both of these things are holding you back from keyboard shortcut dominance, worth downloading is Janakan Arulkumarasan's Google Keyboard Shortcuts extension for Firefox. When installed you can simply use your arrow keys to sift through the results, which get highlighted in a lovely pallid yellow. There are two ways to open up the result links: you can either hit enter, which opens the link in a new window, or enter plus control which opens it up in a new tab. The extension trumps Google's own keyboard shortcuts program in this regard.
As with many of the other neat extensions we've blogged about recently, Google Keyboard Shortcuts is experimental, which means you have to be registered with Mozilla's add-ons site to download it.
Once installed the Google Keyboard Shortcuts extension lets you browse through search results using your arrow keys.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
Stylish, a Firefox extension that lets you make big changes to other people's Web sites with minimal effort, enables one of the cooler Gmail re-skin jobs I've seen. For people who like drumsticks, instead of Gmail's boring, yet supple thigh meat, installing a Stylish plug-in named simply "Gmail Redesigned" lets you turn Gmail's exterior into a gradient and plastic button-filled playground. The best part is that it retains its speed, button placement, and all around "Gmailness" you're grown to love.
Besides your in-box, the add-on skins the compose page, the Google Talk side bar, and entire conversation strings. This is one thing actually improved in the translation, as the color-coding of the conversations (which go from colorless windows to having colored headers) makes it easier to parse through multicontact communications.
The only problems I ran into were small visual quirks. For example, in-box media manager Xoopit (review) works just fine, but retains its old-school Google look and thus sticks out like a sore thumb. I'm assuming any other Gmail add-ons that haven't been integrated into the makeshift style sheet will experience the same thing until special bits of CSS are included to skin them too.
To get going just install the Stylish plug-in here, then restart Firefox. Once you're back up and running, click the download button on this page and enable the new look from the plug-in options menu under Tools --> Add-ons. When you return to Gmail it will be dark and mysterious.
[via Google Blogoscoped]
Gmail Redesigned lets you skin Gmail to look dark and mysterious while retaining all of its speed and menus. (Click to enlarge)
(Credit: CNET Networks)
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