I’ve always thought of myself as a power user. Whenever I have to do a certain task repeatedly, I’ll usually try to find a way to do it quicker. This usually means trying to find a way to do it w/ only the keyboard.
I thought I’d share the way I usually navigate through the ruby core and rails api docs (with Firefox).
First, I take advantage of the fact that the Firefox location bar (ctrl + L) will do a Google I’m Feeling Lucky search if you don’t type in a valid address. I’ll type ‘ruby core’ for the ruby core rdoc or ‘rails api’ for the rails api docs.
Next, press the single quote key ( ‘ ). This will bring up the Firefox page search except it only searches for linked words. Now start typing the name of the class or method you are hunting for.
After you have entered enough letters to narrow the search down, hit F3 until you find what you’re looking for and then just press enter. If you overshoot and hit F3 too many times, hit shift+F3 to search backwards.
You’re done! All keyboard, no mouse.
If you are a really careful typer and know exactly what you want, turning on case sensitive search (ctrl+F, alt+C, ctrl+F, ESC) will help get you what you want quicker. All class names are capitalized and method names aren’t so you can differentiate them using only case.
