Keyboard Control of Streaming Content in Safari

by Cara Quinn

Editor’s note: This article refers to streaming of non-Flash content, such as MP3 files. Not all forms of streaming media are created equal. Experimentation is recommended with streams you frequent, to determine whether this tip can be applied to each.

Have you been listening to a stream on the web in Safari, and wished you could pause or reverse it, but didn’t know how? Here’s a few lil’ tips for you.

When you click on a link in Safari which opens a stream in the browser, you may notice that VoiceOver can’t read the controls in the html area. You can however, still access these controls in many cases via the keyboard, in a limited fashion. Here’s how!

Firstly, once the stream is playing, interact with the html area with VO-Shift-Down Arrow. YOu won’t really get any indication that this does anything, however, just do so.

If you haven’t already got the mouse cursor tracking the VO cursor, use VO-Command-F5 to move it to the VO cursor, and then use VO-Shift-Space or click your physical mouse button to bring focus to the html area. Again, you’ll get no fanfare or acknowledgment that anything has changed.

Once you do this, you’ll be able to accomplish a few things with the playing stream:

• Pause and restart the stream by pressing the space bar
• Rewind with Command-Left Arrow.
• Fastforward with Command-Right Arrow.

When reversing, you’ll notice that the audio still plays and plays at the same speed as it would, forward. So this is not only interesting and fun, but can also be used to do a limited bit of rewinding to hear something you may have missed.

As mentioned above, this may not work in all cases, with all streams, but it does work with some, so it’s worth trying. Hope these tips help you out next time you’re on the web and find yourself browsing to a podcast you’d like to sample without subscribing, or an audio file you’d like to stream.