Some of our readers may remember the Ubiquity project from Mozilla. The idea was to integrate a system for controlling the web browser using “natural language”, with the versatility and speed of the keyboard. Today we can add a similar function to Google Chrome thanks to the Cato extension, which concentrates the most useful commands for the user in a single place.
Why Keyboard Control?
Web browser. Keyboard. The idea may not seem very compatible at first, but once we grasp the main shortcuts, our productivity multiplies. Ctrl+T, Ctrl+Tab, Shift+Ctrl+Tab, Alt+D... what once required dragging the cursor and doing a couple of clicks now is at the mercy of our keyboard speed. So why not expand that potential? What if we control a larger number of elements in the browser using direct keyboard commands? Mozilla already explored that possibility with Ubiquity. The project was abandoned five years ago, but a loyal group of users maintains an updated fork. However, Chrome is the most popular browser right now, and anyone wishing to try something similar in it can install the Cato extension.
Cato's operation boils down to clicking on its icon or using a keyboard shortcut to invoke the command line. Its factory option is Ctrl+J, but that conflicts with the downloads tab in Spanish-language Google Chrome, so I recommend going to the extensions section, clicking on “Keyboard shortcuts” and assigning a different shortcut (I chose Ctrl+H for my test). New tabs, incognito windows, access to browsing history, enabling and disabling extensions, copying and pasting addresses, controlling media playback, opening Gmail and Google Drive... discovering all the commands compatible with Cato requires a certain amount of exploration, but the process is worth it.
The author of Cato, Clifford Fajardo, is working to officially turn the extension into open source, but anyone who wants can check his code now via GitHub. Personally, I think Cato is a much cleaner implementation compared to the old Ubiquity, and most importantly, it doesn't interfere with the flow of your sessions. Don't hesitate to try it.
