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    Colemak in Gmail

    • Started by dlip
    • 2 Replies:
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    • Registered: 09-Aug-2011
    • Posts: 2
    09-Aug-2011 02:34:11#1 Colemak in Gmail

    I'm a big fan of Gmail shortcuts, but they are not very nice with Colemak. If you install Custom keyboard shortcuts through labs, you'll get an extra settings tab to change the defaults. I thought I'd share my minimalist change:

    Back to threadlist : change from u to h
    Newer conversation : change from k to u
    Older conversation : change from j to e
    Previous message : change from p to n
    Next message : change from n to i
    Archive : change from e to E
    Archive and go to the previous conversation : add alternative ,

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    • From: Aalborg, Denmark
    • Registered: 18-Feb-2011
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    09-Aug-2011 05:41:13#2 Re: Colemak in Gmail

    Cool. I have wanted this for some time, and then it turns out I already had it enabled in labs and forgot about it. D'oh!

    I see the logic in your mappings, but I'll go a bit more vim style:

    Newer conversation: n
    Older conversation: e
    Next message: k
    Previous message: K

    The k/K is because in my Colemak vim mappings I use those as next/previous. This change hides the Archive function, but I could put it on E like you did if I needed it.


    That said, I don't really like the gmail mappings. j/k (qwerty) should be general down/up keys. It's confusing that in inbox view down/up is j/k while in conversation view it's p/n (qwerty). It would also make much more sense to have p/n switch conversation in conversation view since next/prev usually has connotations of larger steps than down/up. Since p/n don't do anything in inbox view anyway it would be easy to fix this if they wanted to (which I assume they don't).

    http://hi-games.net/typing-test/watch?u=4610

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    11-Jan-2012 00:39:17#3 Re: Colemak in Gmail

    To get to labs in the new Gmail, click the cog at the top right and go to settings. Next click the labs tab.
    From there search for 'Custom keyboard shortcuts' then enable and save changes.
    You will then get a new 'Keyboard Shortcuts' tab at the top of the page.
    In there you can change the keys to a more colemak friendly layout such as mine or erw's.

    Also, don't forget to set 'Keyboard shortcuts on' in the general tab.

    Last edited by dlip (11-Jan-2012 00:40:10)
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