I use a Thinkpad T43, and I love it. Along with other Thinkpads and IBM keyboards, it has a couple little keys above the arrow keys that go "back" and "forward" in your browser. At least, in Windows IE. Shockingly, they don't work with Firefox (in Linux) out of the box.
Update: Rob Mayoff's howto, originally for Mozilla, now includes Firefox. He's done most of the work in a package that you can install with a single click. If you just want your thinkpad keys to work already, follow his howto.
Otherwise, here's the recipe for Firefox, versions 0.8 through 2.x. (It probably works with earlier and later versions too, but no guarantees.)
First, you need to map the keys to X keysyms. There are in-depth instructions on the linux-thinkpad mailing list, but all you need to do is add these two lines to ~/.Xmodmap:
keycode 234 = F19
keycode 233 = F20
and then reload it:
$ xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap
Now, you need to perform surgery on one of the jar files that Firefox uses to
configure itself. In the chrome/ subdirectory of your Firefox directory, unpack
the browser.jar file like so:
$ cd firefox/chrome
$ unzip browser.jar
Fire up your favorite text editor and open the content/browser/browser.xul file.
In the
<key id="goBackKb" keycode="VK_LEFT"
command="Browser:Back" modifiers="alt"/>
<key id="goForwardKb" keycode="VK_RIGHT"
command="Browser:Forward" modifiers="alt"/>
...and add these two lines immediately after them:
<key id="goBackKb" keycode="VK_F19"
command="Browser:Back"/>
<key id="goForwardKb" keycode="VK_F20"
command="Browser:Forward"/>
Repackage browser.jar, like so:
$ zip -rD0 browser.jar content/browser/
If you weren't working in your firefox/chrome directory, copy the new
browser.jar over the existing one in firefox/chrome.
Restart Firefox, and you should be set! If not, feel free to email me, and I'll try to help.
See also:
Ryan,
Sat 25 Nov 2006