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Vimperator: a Vim-like Firefox

vimperator.org

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Re: Vimperator: a Vim-like Firefox

#71

Post by michaelmrose »

autocorr wrote: post #36

I remember using the original keyboard productivity extension for Firefox, "hit-a-hint"[1] back in Firefox 1 & 2. Since discovering vimperator after, it has been an essential extension on par with an ad blocker. However, I found it consistently broke on new releases of Firefox and could take months to fix. Pentadactyl wasn't any better in this regard. For example, the current extension page says it only works up to F…

You have been able to use it with more recent versions by building from source since forever

Re: Vimperator: a Vim-like Firefox

#72

Post by michaelmrose »

rvern wrote: post #67
Mauricio_ wrote: post #60

There's also Vimium for Chrome. Not sure how similar they are, but the only feature that matters about Vimium is pressing the F key, which allows you to open links without using the mouse. It's the greatest idea I've seen and it should be a native feature of major browsers.

It is, people just don't know about it (it seems?). In Firefox, just press '/'. You can also toggle 'Search for text when I start typing' in about:preferences#advanced.

Totally not even remotely the same thing. You need to type several times as many characters in the best case and it will select the first instance of a string even if it's nowhere near your cursor.

Additionaly you can't search for links that are graphics

Re: Vimperator: a Vim-like Firefox

#73

Post by rvern »

If you just want to use your web browser more efficiently, from the keyboard, you don't need addons like Vimperator or VimFX. Firefox already has keyboard shortcuts for everything. You can press Alt+H K to see the list of keyboard shortcuts.

You can press Ctrl+L to select the location bar, Ctrl+K to select the search bar. You can set browser.search.openintab if you want searches from the search bar to open in a new tab and keyword.enabled to false if you don't want the location bar to be used for searches.

You can press / and type text to select any text with the Quick Find bar,[1] or press ' to select only links. You can use Ctrl+G or F3 in the Quick Find bar to go to the next occurrence of your search and Shift+Ctrl+G or Shift+F3 to go to the previous occurrence.

You can use smart bookmarks to go quickly to any website or make searches on any website by putting %s in a bookmark URL and adding a keyword which can be used from the address bar.[2] You can even add keywords that will do POST requests with the 'Add a Keyword for this Search...' context menu item for search fields.[3]

There are also many keyboard shortcuts for editing and selecting text in text fields, which have the benefit of being the same in most applications on all platforms. There's a list on Wikipedia.[4]

There are keyboard shortcuts even for the more obscure features, like Ctrl+Alt+R to enable reader mode and Ctrl+M to mute or unmute the current tab.

Your web browser already has good keyboard shortcuts, you just need to learn them.

[1]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/search-contents-current...

[2]: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Bookmark_Keywords

[3]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address...

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_keyboard_shortcuts#Te...

Re: Vimperator: a Vim-like Firefox

#74

Post by sudarshan_sar »

This is a great plugin and I love being able to open URLs and search google, amazon etc without actually visiting the landing page first - like hitting 'o-g ' or 'o-a ' for example. However with the support for multiprocess not being there, I decided to move on to vimfx which is somewhat more minimalistic and less easily configurable compared to vimperator, but in my experience so far it is really smooth even though it lacks that particular feature(among others) that I highlighted earlier in the comment(well not entirely, you can still google search in a similar way). Overall though vimperator was/is a great plugin, especially for people who are really used to vim and hate switching to mouse for browsing the web.

Re: Vimperator: a Vim-like Firefox

#75

Post by rvern »

michaelmrose wrote: post #72
rvern wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, people just don't know about it (it seems?). In Firefox, just press '/'. You can also toggle 'Search for text when I start typing' in about:preferences#advanced.

Totally not even remotely the same thing. You need to type several times as many characters in the best case and it will select the first instance of a string even if it's nowhere near your cursor. Additionaly you can't search for links that are graphics

Actually, it doesn't select the first instance in the document but rather the first after your cursor. And you can use ' instead of / to select only links.

It allows you to open links without using the mouse, so saying it is not exactly the same thing would be more accurate than saying it is "not even remotely the same thing."

Re: Vimperator: a Vim-like Firefox

#76

Post by autocorr »

sudarshan_sar wrote: post #74

This is a great plugin and I love being able to open URLs and search google, amazon etc without actually visiting the landing page first - like hitting 'o-g ' or 'o-a ' for example. However with the support for multiprocess not being there, I decided to move on to vimfx which is somewhat more minimalistic and less easily configurable compared to vimperator, but in my experience so far it is really smooth even though…

That's something I ran into as well, but actually has had a solution in vanilla Firefox for a while. You can create keywords for searches by right clicking a search box and selecting "add keyword for this search", and can then be used in just the same as vimperator by typing that keyword into the navigation/awesome bar (such as with VimFX). One advantage to this is that you can create a bookmark folder of search keywords, and they'll sync across all your devices thru Firefox sync. I find this especially handy on Firefox mobile.

Re: Vimperator: a Vim-like Firefox

#77

Post by travv0 »

rvern wrote: post #73

If you just want to use your web browser more efficiently, from the keyboard, you don't need addons like Vimperator or VimFX. Firefox already has keyboard shortcuts for everything. You can press Alt+H K to see the list of keyboard shortcuts. You can press Ctrl+L to select the location bar, Ctrl+K to select the search bar. You can set browser.search.openintab if you want searches from the search bar to open in a new t…

Serious question: Is there a way to scroll without using the arrow keys, scroll by pages without PgUp/PgDn, etc? I didn't see anything in the links you provided, and those buttons aren't very convenient on most keyboards I've used.

Re: Vimperator: a Vim-like Firefox

#78

Post by mos_basik »

Dangeranger wrote: post #20

Chrome has Vimium for this, it's good to know there is an analogue for Firefox. I love using Vim bindings while browsing. https://github.com/philc/vimium

I've become so reliant on Vimium that more than once, when I'm working with someone to do something in their Chrome, I've asked "Can I install this extension really quick? It's driving me nuts having to do things with a mouse." So far people have been nice about it. :)

I've known about Vimperator and Pentadactyl since the research I did that led to me starting to use Vimium, but since FF isn't my primary browser I've never tried either. Very interesting to see my sister commenters saying that Vimium doesn't even come close to their functionality. I might have to check Vimperator out.

One nitpick about Vimium - I don't like that "f" is included in the default possible characters for link hints, given that "f" is the shortcut to display hints. I always have to go to the settings and take it out, so I know that I can always hit "f" again (instead of Esc) to remove the hints without fear of accidentally leaving the page if I decide I don't want navigate away yet.

But at least the option is there! For which I am thankful.

Re: Vimperator: a Vim-like Firefox

#79

Post by serb348 »

pmoriarty wrote: post #13
jzelinskie wrote: post #4

Who develops vimperator these days? Some of their primary maintainers moved onto a separate project called Pentadactyl[0] a few years ago. [0]: http://5digits.org/pentadactyl/

Pentadactyl isn't the successor to Vimperator, it's just a similar extension with a different feature set and some former Vimperator developers working on it. From what I understand, Vimperator continued to be developed after Pentadactyl was born. Long ago I compared the two and decided to use Pentadactyl because it seemed to be more powerful, but I'm not sure how they compare these days. A much bigger problem is tha…

Embrace the future! :)

Re: Vimperator: a Vim-like Firefox

#80

Post by CaptSpify »

akurilin wrote: post #63

Any of you figured out how to get vimperator / pentadactyl to work with all of the SPAs that have their own shortcuts? e.g. Asana or Reviewable or Gmail etc? I've always had a pretty bad time with combining those. Also, is there a solid Chrome version of any of the above?

This is a big issue for me. Every stinking website thinks it's a good idea to use crappy inconsistent keyboard shortcuts, but don't have a way to turn them off.
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