Netscape Navigator Keyboard Shortcuts

Compiled by Keren Moses for W3C WAI User Agent Working Group

The following is a table of Netscape Navigator functions (or potential functions) and their keyboard shortcuts in Macintosh, Unix, and Windows versions. If a function exists in the browser but does not have a shortcut, its corresponding cell is marked with an asterisk(*). If the function does not exist, it is left blank.

Some entries contain links to special notes. The number in parentheses following the link is the number of the relevant note.

Notes

1. In Windows, active elements can be links, text entry boxes, buttons, checkboxes, radio buttons, etc. In Unix and Macintosh, Tab cycles through text entry boxes only.
2. In Windows, this works for any button, since any button can gain the focus using keyboard commands. In Unix and Macintosh, this only applies to the "Submit" button following a text entry.
3. In Unix, the menus can not be opened with shortcut keys. However, once a menu is opened it stays opened until it is explicitly closed, which means that the menus can still be used with shortcut keys to some extent. Sometimes left and right arrows move between menus and up and down arrows move within menus, but this does not seem to work consistently, even within a single session.
4. In Macintosh, you can not explicitly view the bookmarks menu. However, if you choose "Edit Bookmarks", which does have a keyboard shortcut, you can then navigate through the bookmarks and open bookmarked documents in the current window.
5. To delete a bookmark you must first choose "Edit Bookmarks" and then move the focus to the bookmark you want to delete.
6. In Windows, when you open a link from the history menu using Enter, the document opens in a new window.
7. All three systems have menu items (and corresponding shortcut keys) meant to allow the user to change the font size. However, the menu items are consistently inactive in both Macintosh and Unix. The user seems to be able to actually change the font sizes only in Windows.
8. It is important to allow users to set their own cascading style sheets (css). Although Netscape does currently allow the user to override the author's choice of foreground color, background color, font, and font size, it does not allow some of the advanced capabilities that make cascading style sheets so powerful. For example, a blind user may want to save a series of style sheets which show only headers, only links, etc., and then view the same page using some or all of these style sheets in order to orient himself to the contents and organization of the page before reading any of the actual page content.