Google Chrome (Mac) set keyboard focus from address bar back to page
I'm using the latest Google Chrome (14.0.835.35) on a Mac (10.6.8)
There are quite often instances where the address bar has focus and I'd like to get back to the main page (so I can use arrow keys and all my Vimium shortcuts) without having to use the mouse and manually clicking somewhere on the page... (pressing Escape would be the obvious shortcut but it doesn't work)
Is there a way round this?
This has annoyed me very much too. Using tab is not always desirable, for example when you're reading a large document. Tab could move away from where you were reading to the first link on the page.
I have found a work-around for the missing hotkey inspired by some of the answers from here: In Mac Chrome, how can I return focus from the address bar to the page?
Typing "javascript:" (without quotes) and then enter will move focus back to the page. OK, so that's one solution. That's however not very nice as you would have to do a lot of typing. Now what you can do is add a new search engine with a short keyword, like "u", and set the search string to be "javascript:". Then you can type in "u" and then enter to move focus back to the page without jumping around.
Edit: Apparently this still gets upvotes. If this really bothers you please let the chrome devs know here: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=92885
On Windows at least, I've been using F6 to switch between the URL bar and the rest of the page, also for the purpose of using Vimium. I am not sure if this works on OSX or Linux.
F6 cycles between keyboard accessible panes such as the URL bar, bookmarks, the page itself, and downloads. I generally keep downloads and bookmarks hidden, so F6 acts as a toggle. It's not nearly as clean of a solution as a dedicated "focus to the page" button would be, but I've found it workable.
The best way for me is never using Chrome's URL bar, and always use Vimium's open URL hotkey, which is O by default.
I'm using Shift+F6.
I mapped Ctrl+Shift+L to Shift+F6 so now I focus on the address bar with Ctrl+L and unfocus with Ctrl+Shift+L.
I'm using Ubuntu so I've mapped those keys with autokey