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In the Safari RSS screen, there is a slider (or range) control to change an article's summary length. By pressing TAB a couple of times, it is possible to navigate to this control, without using the mouse.

Is it also possible, to slide the slider with the keyboard? Thus sliding the knob to the right and left? The volume slider in iTunes can be operated by the arrow-keys, but in Safari's RSS window, these are used to scroll the text if there are any scrollbars...

Note: in System Preferences, Keyboard (OS X 10.6), Keyboard Shortcuts, I have set Full Keyboard Access to All controls. Otherwise, the TAB key only navigates between text boxes and lists.

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  • Actually, without that system preference, Option-Tab would still get you to any control, including that slider. I can't get it to move using the keyboard though...
    – Arjan
    Oct 7, 2009 at 20:50

1 Answer 1

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Using Web Inspector (or simply view source) reveals:

<input id="apple-rss-slider" type="range" min="0" value="29" max="100"
  onmousedown="startScale()" onmouseup="endScale()" 
  oninput="scaleArticles(this.value)" />

The oninput made me hope I could start typing, but it seems it's all mouse events...

Some HTML5 examples explain how to add additional spin buttons, which can be selected using Option-Tab, followed by Return to press it:

Input type="range" in Safari

But lack of keyboard support seems an old WebKit bug: input type range broken for keyboard users.

The above example looks different in Firefox, and allows for typing a value:

Input type="range" in Firefox

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  • I was looking for native keyboard shortcuts, but no go. Thanks for the reference to the webkit bug.
    – doekman
    Oct 8, 2009 at 7:34
  • I guess that one could add some onkeypress to the HTML of the RSS view (automated using some Greasemonkey script, simplehelp.net/2007/11/14/…), if that would help... Seems a bit over the top though?
    – Arjan
    Oct 8, 2009 at 7:54

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