The two things I wanted to achieve were: * Allow `delete` and `shift+delete` to navigate history if one of the pages happens to be a google search page. By default, google will hijack the keypress, regardless of focus, so you'll just delete in the search box. * Allow link highlighting and navigation with the `Keyboard Navigation` extension. I th…

gistfile1.js

// ==UserScript==
// @name           Google Behave
// @namespace      http://twofishcreative.com
// @description    Stops the Google search page hijacking useful key events. Based on Zimzat's Arrow Key Guard http://userscripts.org./scripts/show/88447
// @match          http://www.google.com/*
// @match          https://www.google.com/*
// @match          http://www.google.com.au/*
// @match          https://www.google.com.au/*
// ==/UserScript==

/* Copyright (c) 2013 michaeltwofish
 *
 * This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
 * To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ or send
 * a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.
 */

(function() {
  var ESC_KEY_CODE = 27
  function googleBehave(event) {
    if (typeof googleBehave.behaving == 'undefined') {
      googleBehave.behaving = false;
    }
    if (event.keyCode == ESC_KEY_CODE) {
      googleBehave.behaving = !googleBehave.behaving;
    }
    console.log('Behaving: ' + googleBehave.behaving);

    if (googleBehave.behaving) {
      console.log('Cancelled ' + event);
      event.cancelBubble = true;
      event.stopPropagation();
      // We're not doing preventDefault() because we still want the browser doing its thing.
      // That's the entire point of this script.

      return false;
    }
  }

  window.addEventListener('keypress', googleBehave, true);
  window.addEventListener('keydown', googleBehave, true);
})();