Google Reader is a web application that I use everyday to read my RSS feeds. I like to use keyboard shortcuts to navigate around the feeds instead of using a mouse – when you have a long river flow of RSS feed items, pressing a key is easier than scrolling on the mouse continuously.
On Google Reader, you can press character “v” to open the feed item link. By default, if it’s opened in a new tab, it will change the focus to the newly opened tab. I found that annoying because usually, I prefer to open all new links while going through the feed and then go through the opened links as a bunch.
I looked around on the net and found a partial solution on Lifehacker that suggested to change the tab opening setting to force it opening in background through “about:config”. But this changes the behaviour of tab opening globally inside Firefox, e.g. if an external program like Thunderbird open a new tab for a new link in Firefox, it will be loaded in background.
So I created a Greasemonkey script so that when you press ‘v’ in Google Reader, the link will be opened in background. To install it:
- Install Greasemonkey addon
- Restart Firefox
- Click here to install the script.
If you have any feedback, just leave a comment here.
15 Comments
7 November, 2007 at 2:56 am
You should change the Include filter to “http*://www.google.com/reader/view/*”. This supports https (I use https for all google apps) and allows for the crud that google sometimes appends to the end of the reader URL. It worked great once I made that change. Thanks!!
11 November, 2007 at 11:05 am
Hi Chris, thanks for the suggestion! I have made the change to my file as a result.
19 February, 2008 at 7:20 am
Hi Sunny,
How about changing line 15 to
if( event.which==118 && !event.ctrlKey ) {
This way it would be possible to use ctrl-v to paste a URL to the Add subscription box instead of just getting a tab opened in the background.
6 July, 2008 at 1:36 pm
That’s saved the life! Thanks very much!
22 July, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Superb! Thanks a lot for the great javascript! Can’t believe so few people commented, it’s a must-have
10 August, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Thank’s for the script, appreciated!
You should also include in the filters other google domains:
“http*://www.google.fr/reader/view/*”
or may be “http*://www.google.*/reader/view/*”
11 August, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Thanks guys for the comment, cheers!
Alex6b: its a great suggestion, I’ll update the script with it later
18 September, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Kudos for the script.
Anyone knows how to modify the script so that when we use the “Email” feature to send the feed item to friends, when we type words with ‘v’ in it, it’ll not open the new background tab?
30 January, 2009 at 12:38 am
Thanks for the script.
This was exactly what i was looking for. I spent too many hours upset about the articles opening in the foreground.
27 March, 2009 at 4:07 am
[...] tab in foreground is a massive annoyance. googling for solutions to that annoyance have thrown up a grease monkey script, a firefox tweak and a firefox addon. but i really really wish that this was part of the settings [...]
30 March, 2009 at 2:12 am
I am trying to improve a little your code :
if( event.which==118 && !event.ctrlKey && !event.metaKey) {
This will allow to use past (ctrl + v) windows or (cmd+v) mac in comment
28 April, 2009 at 6:42 pm
this is pure money– thanks man
7 July, 2009 at 5:32 pm
[...] Google Reader Tweak – Open Links in Background var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); [...]
23 November, 2009 at 4:50 pm
[...] Firefox用にはGoogle Reader Tweak – Open Links in Background « Sunny Wu’s Blogging ZoneというGreasemonkeyスクリプトがあったんですが、Chromeでは動作しなかったので作りました。 [...]
8 January, 2010 at 8:37 am
Oh, thanks, I had started to write my own when I found this page!
This is incredibly useful, and I only found it in a comment you posted. Is this on userscripts.org?
Kudos for your script.