Conkeror Tutorial

Welcome to Conkeror

The first thing you need to know about Conkeror is how to read key notation. Each key combination is written as a hyphenated list of modifiers and key. The codes for the common modifiers are as follows: C means Control; M means Meta or Alt; and S means Shift. Therefore the key combination C-M-f means to hold down Control and Meta and press f.

The key to scroll down is C-n. The key to scroll up is C-p

Many commands in Conkeror are run by typing a sequence of two or more key combinations. The notation is simple. Each combination in the sequence is written, in order, separated by spaces. The sequence C-h t means to press Control-h, release all keys, then press t. C-h t is the key sequence to view this tutorial.

The key sequence to exit conkeror is C-x C-c.

C-g is the abort key. It is used to cancel a command from the minibuffer, or stop a web page from loading.

Space and Backspace scroll a page down and a page up, respectfully.

Hinting

The system for interacting with the elements of a document is called the hinting system. With the hinting system, you can do things like follow hyperlinks, copy URLs, focus form fields, and more. Let's use the hinting system to follow a hyperlink. You will receive instructions about how to return here after you follow the hyperlink. Scroll so that following numbered list and the hyperlink after it are both visible.

1. Press f. (mnemonic: follow)
2. The hyperlink should be hilighted, with a number on the left side. Type that number.

As a matter of fact, in addition to following links by number, you can also follow them by a substring of the link text. You could follow the link above by typing f t h i s. When more than one link with similar text is in view, hinting will narrow down the choices as you type. You can always specify the one you want by disambiguating the sequence with the hint number.

But hinting is for more than just hyperlinks. Conkeror provides several hint classes for operating on different types of elements. The hint class is specified by typing the corresponding key sequence of the class before the key sequence of the command. It was not necessary to specify a hint class for following the hyperlink above because links are the default hint class for the follow command. The following table lists the most common hint classes.

The c key is bound to a command to copy an URL to the clipboard. Its default hint class is links. To copy the URL of the page you are currently browsing, you use the frameset link class. The top level window with or without a frameset is always number 0 (zero). On this tutorial page, you can type m c to copy the current URL. You do not need to type 0 because this is not a frameset document. If this were a frameset document, you would type m c 0.

Copying Text

Gecko has a feature called caret browsing that gives you a blinking cursor that you can move and select document text with the keyboard. To enter caret browsing mode in Conkeror, first press C-M-q to enter content-buffer-quote-input-mode. All of your keystrokes until you press ESC will bypass Conkeror's key handling and be passed directly to Gecko. In content-buffer-quote-input-mode you can enter caret browsing mode by pressing F7. Move the caret with up, down, left, right, and so on. Select text by holding shift while moving the caret. Exit caret browsing mode by pressing F7 again. Press ESC to exit content-buffer-quote-input-mode. Press M-w to copy the selection to the clipboard.