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I am working on a daily basis on a web application with very large menus. Also doing lots of other Excel manipulations, copy and pasting, etc., I am quite fond of keyboard shortcuts as much faster than using the mouse to point, double-click and then going back to my keyboard etc.

Hence, my question is quite simple, does anyone know if there is any shortcut under Firefox which would let me actually select (and not highlight) in my web page the search result so that I can for instance do the following manipulation sequence?

  1. [Ctrl]+[F]
  2. type the search string, for instance 'regional_unit'
  3. the missing shortcut to actually select in my page the string which is currently highlighted thanks to the search feature of FF
  4. [Space] or [Enter] key to activate the web element which in my case would systematically correspond to a link or button, etc.

May be there would be an addon replacing the default search feature, I don't know... I tried to look over the internet but with the words I am using for this investigation, I do not get relevant search results under Google :(.

Thanks a lot

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Just a precision, when I say "select" I mean to focus the result element (link, button, etc.) of my search. –  Nicolas C. Sep 25 '12 at 9:08
As it is now, pressing enter when the search is highlighting a link will select that link. That's one of the things I miss, which I wish Chrome had. –  SaintWacko Sep 25 '12 at 13:25

1 Answer 1

up vote 1 down vote accepted

Here's the sequence (tested in FF 15)

  1. Ctrl+F
  2. Type search string (optionally use Ctrl+G to jump to the next result)
  3. press ESC to exit search mode - found text is selected and elements are highlighted
  4. Press Enter to activate link or button.

Alternatively, if you're only looking for links, it's easier:

  1. ' to activate search mode for links only
  3. Press Enter to activate link
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I just love you!!! <3 THanks a million for this! –  Nicolas C. Sep 28 '12 at 12:53

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