Cato
Instant Spotlight-like search for your web browser.
Start new thread
Clifford Fajardo

Cato - Instant Spotlight-like search for your web browser.

by
Your First Year in Code
•

Do you use your web browser a lot? Do you usually have dozens of tabs open, bookmark pages or watch videos online? Cato is for you! The power of dozens of extensions with just one.

Cato is lightning fast, intuitive and customizable⚡

Press Ctrl (or) Command + J to open the extension, navigate with arrow keys & press Enter to execute a command 🚀

Add a comment

Replies

Best
Erick Barron
I already use Vimium, so I don't see the need for this - for me.
Clifford Fajardo
Maker
@erickbarron86 - vimium is a great chrome extension for content navigation on the web! Though it only has some of the action Cato offers. Cato is intended for a more broad audience and has a lower level of entry for usage. DIfferences Cato vs Vimum: ------------------------------ - If you know how to type into a google search box, then you already know how to use all of Cato. Vimium has a steep learning curve (depending on who you ask) with all of the commands you need to learn to use it - Cato has built in fuzzy search. So you don't have to worry about typing the entire name of an action, bookmark or tab correctly. With Vimium you have to be very precise with the name of the tabs or bookmarks your searching, which offers a less great user experience for the user. Cato VS Vimium search GIF: https://goo.gl/ByzZnK - Cato uses the same fuzzy search engine as the Atom text editor so it's fast and intuitive. - With Cato, you only need to remember one keyboard shortcut to launch it and use it. You can even call it by clicking the icon, if you don't want to remember any shortcuts at all too. With Vimium you need to need to learn dozens of shortcuts. - Cato can be used on ANY webpage, tab or context in Chrome. I couldn't use Vimium while typing in this text box. Vimium can only be called and used from regular web pages. So if your looking at an empty new tab, the settings page in chrome or any URL with "chrome://" you can't call or use Vimium to change tabs, find text on a page or any other feature it offers. - The entire Cato extension lives in a background script, so the app doesn't get injected into the webpages that your viewing like Vimium. As a developer, this means you don't have to worry about Cato manipulating the DOM or doing anything strange. I work a lot on the Frontend and I've had other Chrome extensions inject code into the web pages I'm viewing and break or hijack event listeners in my app. This can be easily resolved by disabling the extension, but with Cato you don't need to worry about that.
Erick Barron
@cliffordfajard0 haha, yeah - I don't even remember all of Vimium's shortcuts. Okay, cool - I'll give it a shot and then decide if I should make the switch. 😎👆👉
Theodore Strauss
@cliffordfajard0 best response from a maker I’ve seen. Explanatory, descriptive, yet completely sensitive to the makers of Vimium and original commenter
Smokie
@cliffordfajard0 This is how you talk to users! Great explanation, excellent visual aids, and respectful to both the user and other applications. 11/10
Niv Dror
Made GIF ✨
Clifford Fajardo
Maker
@nivo0o0 - thanks! I'm been sending this GIF to lots of folks =)
Maarten Arts
Did anyone get this to work in Vivaldi browser yet? Installation went fine and I can open the command launcher. But the keyboard shortcut doesn't work for me. (I tried changing it, that didn't help) Would love to use this next to Vimium though! I use Vimium only for navigation and opening links, but I can't remember all the other shortcuts.
Clifford Fajardo
Maker
@muurtegel There seems to be an ongoing bug with extension shortcuts in Vivaldi. Currently, I'm focusing my time on supporting Google Chrome at the moment since there API's are the most stable at the moment. I'll try tweaking a few things and see if I can get things to work. Vivaldi issue link: https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/...
Maarten Arts
@cliffordfajard0 I totally understand that you're focusing on Google Chrome 👍. I didn't expect it to work on another browser in the first place and was surprised it (almost) did. I'm going to add a comment to the topic you linked and I hope they'll be able to fix the issue..
Smokie
Problem: ctrl+J is default in Windows Chrome for opening the downloads page. I know I can change it myself on the extensions page, but you might want to change it by default to accommodate those users. Do you want me to open a ticket on GitHub?
Clifford Fajardo
Maker
@xtoq - yes please and thank you for bringing that issue up!
Kevin Mehrabi
Interesting... I could see this being a time saver for me. I'll try it out :)
Nitesh Manav
Hi , loved this. Can't you make cato search websites or links listed in our bookmark section as well? Thank you
Marat Zakaryan
nice
Charles Magnuson
Hey Clifford, this is an extremely handy extension! Thank you for sharing it with us. I'm having a small issue which is that in addition to using the up and down arrows to select actions in Cato, I would like to use the Tab key. However, once I press the Tab key Cato appears to break. Pressing tab once selects the next item in the list, as expected, but when I press Tab one more time focus suddenly moves back to the text field instead of to the next action displayed. I've recorded a quick screencast where I reproduce the issue. In the screencast, I first demonstrate two times how I can use the up and down arrows without issue followed by trouble with the Tab key at the end: http://ca.mag.cm/0T0c1q0l2U3W What happens is that pressing the Tab key makes me unable to use the action I've selected by pressing the Return key. Instead, if I press Tab one more time to move focus to the text entry field, I can again use the Return key to use the selected action. My original expectation is that each press of the Tab key will move the action selection down to the next action, just like the behavior exhibited when typing in the URL bar. Are you able to reproduce the same issue or am I seeing some kind of trouble caused by overlapping extensions?
Clifford Fajardo
Maker
@magnuson - I'll look into it today. Thanks for the screencast!
Clifford Fajardo
Maker
@magnuson - I fixed the problem on my machine and will get the next fix out in the next release
Artem Yaremko
Hi, intersting idea guys. Let's see how it works.
Clifford Fajardo
Maker
I'll look into it! That definitely sounds possible
12
Next
Last