Introduction

Often, when browsing popular websites such as news, sports, and shopping websites, you are presented with a lot of content to navigate. Inevitably, these web pages can be frustrating and somewhat time-consuming to navigate using the basic Dolphin Cursor navigation keys.

Below you will learn about alternative ways you can navigate webpages with the Dolphin cursor to ensure you reach the information you require quickly and easily.

Reading time: 5 minutes approx.

Quick Navigation Keys

You can use Quick Navigation Keys to move the Dolphin Cursor to specific elements on a webpage such as a heading, link, table, edit area, button, radio button, or checkbox. Through the use of Quick Navigation Keys you can jump to the sections of the webpage that are of interest to you, for example, you may make use of a heading navigation key to move the Dolphin cursor to the main article on a news webpage, enabling you to skip over the links presented at the top of the webpage.

You can move the Dolphin Cursor to the previous element on a webpage by pressing SHIFT plus the Quick Navigation Key. When no element is found in a particular direction, SuperNova and Dolphin ScreenReader will say "not found".

When you become familiar with your popular websites, you may discover combinations of Quick Navigation Keys that work for you.

For example, if you are interested in your local weather report, you may identify that your news website marks your local weather report at heading level 3, and that this is the second heading level 3 following the main heading on the webpage. Thus, pressing 1, then 3, and then 3 again takes you directly to your local weather report on the webpage.

Listing elements with the Item Finder

You can use the Item Finder to list elements on a webpage, and through the Item Finder, you can move to and interact with these elements.

Elements include links, headings, tables, ARIA landmarks, place markers which is discussed in an upcoming section, and controls such as buttons, edit boxes, and checkboxes.

To open the Item finder: Position the Dolphin Cursor on the webpage, and press CAPS LOCK + TAB.

The first tab in the Item Finder is the Summary tab. The Summary tab details the number of links, headings, tables, etc. Present on the webpage. You can navigate the Summary list using the UP and DOWN ARROW keys, and select a list by pressing ENTER.

Tip: You can also press CONTROL + TAB or CONTROL + SHIFT + TAB to navigate through the page tabs.

On selecting a specific list, you can sort the list by the tab order they appear on the webpage or in alphabetical order, and you can press ENTER on an item to perform the default action, for example, activate a link in the Links list, or move the Dolphin Cursor to a heading in the Headings list.

Searching for text on a web page

Quick Navigation Keys are very useful but sometimes the web page can be poorly structured or have to many elements that mean navigating through the content can be too time-consuming.

In this case, you can use the Dolphin Cursor Find option to locate the text you are seeking on the webpage.

To do this:

1. Press F3 or, if you are using the Laptop Universal Hotkey Set, press LEFT CONTROL + CAPS LOCK + F. SuperNova and Dolphin ScreenReader announces "Find" and focus will be in an invisible dialog box.
2. Type the text to find and press ENTER. The Dolphin Cursor will be positioned on the first match it finds below its current position. If no match is found, SuperNova and Dolphin ScreenReader will say "not found".
3. To search for the next occurrence on the webpage, press F4 or, if you are using the Laptop Universal Hotkey Set, press CAPS LOCK + F3.
4. To search for the previous occurrence on the webpage, press F2 or, if you are using the Laptop Universal Hotkey Set, press LEFT SHIFT + CAPS LOCK + F3.

Tip: SuperNova and Dolphin ScreenReader stores the current text you are searching for until you quit the product. This means you can continue your search on new webpages without the need to enter the same search string again.

In the previous scenario, you could visit the news webpage and search for the word "weather" to locate the weather section on the webpage. This maybe quicker than navigating using Quick Navigation Keys, but it is dependent on the number of times the word "weather" appears on the webpage.

Summary

In this section you discovered how you can navigate to specific elements on a webpage. You learnt about the Quick Navigation Keys that you can use to jump to specific elements, the Item Finder that lets you list specific elements, and the Dolphin Cursor Find option that lets you search for specific text on a webpage.

With these three key approaches learnt, you will be able to quickly navigate webpages, irrespective of the layouts web designers may throw at you. But, it is important to maintain a flexible, open mind as the layout of webpages may change.

Quiz

1. Quick Navigation Keys enable you to quickly navigate to the address bar within your web browser. Is this statement true?
2. You can use the Item Finder to view a list of all the links on a webpage. Is this statement true?
3. The Dolphin Cursor Find feature is only able to search for text below the current Dolphin Cursor position on the webpage. Is this statement true?

End of section

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But before you move on, here are the answers to the quiz questions:

1. False.
2. True.
3. False.