Mouseless Browsing Add-On Controls Firefox from Your Keyboard

By default, Firefox is a pretty keyboard-friendly browser -- which suits me fine, as I find reaching for the mouse a time-sucking exercise. Of course, there are times when the mouse can't be avoided, like when you need to click a link. Right?

Wrong. The Mouseless Browsing add-on for Firefox lets you do just about everything using only your keyboard.

Once installed, Mouseless Browsing adds a number next to every link. Check it out:

To open any given link, just press Ctrl and the number. To open in it in a new tab, use Alt instead. Want to type something in the address bar? That's Ctrl-0. The search field? Ctrl-00. You get the idea.

The add-on also assigns numbers to your tabs for easy switching to exactly the one you want (as opposed to using Shift-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab to cycle through them).

As you can see from the screenshot, Mouseless Browsing does tend to clutter up your pages -- especially in the blog tool I'm using right now -- and in my tests it seemed to slow the browser a bit as well.

Consequently, I don't think I'll keep it -- but I do think it could come in handy for physically challenged users or anyone who just dislikes mousing around.