“Back and Forth” Greasemonkey For The Whole Web

Recently I wrote a Greasemonkey script to add keyboard shortcuts to The Big Picture, to improve on some of their already existing shortcuts. Once I started using some of the shortcuts I made I ended up wanting to use them all over the place at other blogs. This functionality is so tiny, but so useful, that I bundled it into its own script that runs on all web pages!

Grab it here:

//
// ==UserScript==
// @name          Back and Forth
// @namespace     http://blog.bogojoker.com
// @description   Keyboard Shortcut to Jump back and forth on a page. (esc key).
// @include       *
// @version       1.0 - Initial Version - Sunday February 15, 2009
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
  
  // Global States
  var x = null;
  var y = null;

  // Add a new Global Key Listener for `esc`
  document.addEventListener("keypress", function(e) {
    if(!e) e=window.event;
    var key = e.keyCode ? e.keyCode : e.which;
    if ( key == 27 ) {
      var tempx = x;
      var tempy = y;
      x = Math.max(document.documentElement.scrollLeft, document.body.scrollLeft);
      y = Math.max(document.documentElement.scrollTop, document.body.scrollTop);
      if ( tempx != null ) { // First time it should be null
        window.scrollTo(tempx, tempy);
      }
    }
  }, true);

})();

On any webpage the first time you push the `esc` key position A gets stored. The next time you push `esc` position B gets stored and the browser jumps to position A. The next time you push it, A gets stored and you jump to B. So you always jump back to wherever you pushed `esc` last. Hence the name “back and forth.”

This is useful to me when I jump between comments and the content. When I’m reading a comment and I want to check back to the article, I just just push `esc` to save my position, go back to the article, and when I’m all set I just jump back to my saved position (the comments) with `esc`.

Short, Sweet, Simple: The Back and Forth Greasemonkey Script.