Customise keys for scrolling up or down with keyboard

mouravieffantiableism

I could not locate this or get this to work in Settings. Can't I use W and S to scroll like the arrow keys? I was surprised I was not able to find it and I am requesting it be added if it is not available.

Pesala

@mouravieffantiableism In Settings, Keyboard, Page you can enable single-key shortcuts and assign W and S to either:

Page Up
Page down
Scroll Page to Top
Scroll Page to Bottom

You cannot assign shortcuts to:

Scroll Up
Scroll Down

mouravieffantiableism

@pesala said in Customise keys for scrolling up or down with keyboard:

You cannot assign shortcuts to:

Scroll Up
Scroll Down

Why is that? Will it be available? Why not? Page up is not the same function, as I am seeking scroll like the arrow keys do (I find it very reasonable to be able to do so with W and S, as many programs offer W and S as up and down, see the famous WASD configuration in many applications).

Catweazle

@mouravieffantiableism , you can scroll up and down with the keyboard without problems, with the direction keys up and down aside of the right Ctrl key in your keyboard.
No configuration needed.

mouravieffantiableism

@catweazle Don't think you understood my posts. This is a request for a setting in Vivaldi.

Catweazle

@mouravieffantiableism , but why? it's a function by default to scroll up and down with this keys in your keyboard.

mouravieffantiableism

Because it's an accessibility issue for me. We have different preferences. Why allow people to move the tab bar? Why allow people to change themes? Why allow people any commands or configuration? Accessibility, aesthetics, choices, differences, preferences.
Anyway, it seems I can mod this feature I made this post for.(?) I'll get into modding.

luetage

@mouravieffantiableism Don’t listen to the nay sayers. These shortcuts should be customisable and should work in the whole UI, not only webpages. There is no good reason why we would be demanded to use the stupid arrow keys. The workaround for webpages is to use an extension like Vimium, which provides custom shortcuts to scroll, with the added benefit that these don’t lag on first activation, like the arrow keys in Vivaldi do. Vivaldi practically forces us to use the mouse in the UI, which is a terrible circumstance.

mouravieffantiableism

@luetage Right. I don't get why they are gatekeeping in the literal Feature Request subforum.

Vivaldi practically forces us to use the mouse in the UI, which is a terrible circumstance.

Agreeed.

Pesala

@mouravieffantiableism said in Customise keys for scrolling up or down with keyboard:

Why is that? Will it be available?

Because there is no command for it. Several standard shortcuts like Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+V, and Ctrl+A are reserved and cannot be assigned. The Settings UI uses some commands like Up, Down, Tab, Delete, Backspace for navigation.

When will it be available? When/if the developers can find a way to do it without breaking something else.

I do not see how this particular case practically forces anyone to use the mouse. Surely every keyboard has cursor keys? Mine also has Numpad keys that duplicate Up/Down, Left/Right if Num Lock is disabled.

However, I agree that there are many accessibility issues where the keyboard alone is insufficient to navigate the UK. Take Page Actions, for example. It is very difficult to enable/disable any of them without using a mouse.

mouravieffantiableism

@pesala said in Customise keys for scrolling up or down with keyboard:

@mouravieffantiableism said in Customise keys for scrolling up or down with keyboard:

I do not see how this particular case practically forces anyone to use the mouse. Surely every keyboard has cursor keys? Mine also has Numpad keys that duplicate Up/Down, Left/Right if Num Lock is disabled.

Some people only have a single hand. Not two hands.

Pesala

@mouravieffantiableism said in Customise keys for scrolling up or down with keyboard:

Some people only have a single hand. Not two hands.

If that one hand is the right hand then the cursor keys will be easier than QWAS
Anyone with one hand is likely to use the mouse / touchpad more than the keyboard for UI interaction.

Don't misinterpret a reality-check for nay-saying. No doubt there are good reasons why the devs reserved certain shortcuts or did not yet implement certain features. There are over 4,500 feature requests, Thirty-seven of them with 75 or more upvotes, and many of them dating back years. Some look easy to implement, but it is hard to be sure.

mouravieffantiableism

Can you please stop arguing against this? You already come off as unconscious gatekeeping to me. There are different disabilities that make each side of the body easier to use for usability cases depending on where the abnormalities are.
Outside of disabilities, using WASD instead of arrow keys for movement or scrolling is extremely common in computing.

WASD (,AOE on Dvorak keyboards; ZQSD on AZERTY keyboards) is a set of four keys on a QWERTY or QWERTZ computer keyboards which mimics the inverted-T configuration of the arrow keys. These keys are most commonly used to control the player character's movement in computer games.

Gatekeeping isn't good for the browser, and it isn't good for any community. Using WASD for movement (e.g. moving a page in an app up and down has decades of history in computing).

Catweazle

@mouravieffantiableism , try this extension as workarround, it permits to set also the keys for scrolling to wasd or hjkl, apart from the direction keys.

monggiotti

@mouravieffantiableism I am truly deeply sorry for what has happened to you. I cannot even begin to imagine what you have to go through to perform tasks we take for granted.

I was reading the thread and I could not understand why were you refusing to use the keyboard. Now I do see your very valid reasons to ask for that.

I was going to suggest you, if they are useful of course, the screen gestures (can be done with the mouse or if you have a tablet [i think too])

At some point long time ago, there were indeed one key functions, using the keyboard (I dont know if you have a full one or a short one) and those functions could be used even on touch screen devices within the browser only.

I was going to ask if those could return to the browser.. mere coincidence!!

ukanuk

I have seen this feature request multiple times in multiple forms from over a few years. A partial workaround is the extension @Catweazle recommended, and I personally recommend Vimium which has over 400,000 downloads and lets you scroll with "HJKL" by default (and customize that if you want). But, extensions do not function on all pages, for example the Settings page and when viewing PDFs, so this is only a partial workaround.

@pesala said in Customise keys for scrolling up or down with keyboard:

Don't misinterpret a reality-check for nay-saying. No doubt there are good reasons why the devs reserved certain shortcuts or did not yet implement certain features. There are over 4,500 feature requests, Thirty-seven of them with 75 or more upvotes, and many of them dating back years. Some look easy to implement, but it is hard to be sure.

Yep, so true. All I can suggest is upvoting every feature request you find about this, and hope that a developer notices and takes a special interest in developing it. It seems like if developers get excited about a certain feature, they find a way to implement it quickly even if not many people are asking for it (e.g. the clock in the status bar).

@pesala said in Customise keys for scrolling up or down with keyboard:

Because there is no command for it. Several standard shortcuts like Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+V, and Ctrl+A are reserved and cannot be assigned. The Settings UI uses some commands like Up, Down, Tab, Delete, Backspace for navigation.

I've seen this argument too, and I can see it being a huge stumbling block to developers. But I haven't seen anyone ask for the ability to remove these reserved standard shortcuts, just add additional ones that duplicate the original shortcuts which are inconvenient for various reasons.

Surely every keyboard has cursor keys?

The common 60% keyboard form factor does not have arrow keys. (Or at least, it's common in the keyboard enthusiast community). You can typically use Fn+U/H/J/K for the arrows, but it's not as convenient as a custom single-key shortcut.