Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Vimperator: a Vim-like Firefox

vimperator.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 100 posts

Re: Vimperator: a Vim-like Firefox

#91

Post by wsha »

pmoriarty wrote: post #38
oib wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signed builds are available here: https://github.com/willsALMANJ/pentadactyl-signed/releases It works for me on Firefox 50.1.0 But the move away from XUL is indeed worrisome for plugins like these... I kinda hope someone will just build it into the servo project and make that into a usable minimal browser.

Why aren't these on addons.mozzila.org or on the official Pentadactyl site? I'm a little wary of installing addons from some random github repo.

I am willsALMANJ. The Pentadactyl devs never responded to repeated attempts to engage them on the continued distribution of the addon. I could have posted it to addons.mozilla.org, but it didn't feel right to package their work unchanged when they had an official account and could have done it themselves if they wanted to. I made the GitHub repo partly so that my own browsers would get the compatibility updates and partly to help out others who wanted to keep using Pentadactyl. I like keeping the working xpi available for those who want it but I don't think it is worth promoting Pentadactyl any more because it is only a matter of time before Firefox changes too much for it to keep working.

Re: Vimperator: a Vim-like Firefox

#92

Post by wsha »

chimeracoder wrote: post #44

I love Vimperator - unfortunately, it's incompatible with e10s (multiprocess Firefox) and it is also completely dependent on the deprecated XUL. Replacing that would essentially be a ground-up rewrite[0]. It looks like Vimperator is likely not going to be updated to work with newer versions of Firefox, which is a real shame, because it works far better than any alternative I've found for either Firefox or Chrome. I e…

I have followed the situation fairly closely, and I agree with your assessment. I haven't seen anything that makes me think either Pentadactyl or Vimperator will survive the deprecation of XUL. The most promising vim-like addon is VimFx (followed by the Chrome addons like Vimium and cVim which maybe will work in Firefox one day as WebExtensions -- I try on Nightly every couple months but they don't work so far). The reason I say this is that it has active development and developers committed to the WebExtensions transition (plus has less features so it is easier to port). You can follow the progress here:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215061 https://github.com/lydell/webextension-keyboard

Re: Vimperator: a Vim-like Firefox

#93

Post by travv0 »

rvern wrote: post #81
travv0 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep. You can use Space to scroll a page down and Shift+Space to scroll a page up. For more precise scrolling, though, you will have to use the arrow keys or the mouse.

Thanks, not sure how that slipped my mind.

Re: Vimperator: a Vim-like Firefox

#94

Post by leephillips »

sirn wrote: post #84
leephillips wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you make the tabs go away?

In Vimperator, :set toolbars=none will hide the tabs. If you mean the extra blank space at the top left by hidden tabs, then go to customize menu (:dialog customizetoolbar or burger menu next to address bar → customize) and enable Title Bar[1]. It will hide the extra space when use with toolbars=none. [1]: https://files.grid.in.th/UHj8F1.png

Thanks! I've been wondering about that for some time.

Re: Vimperator: a Vim-like Firefox

#95

Post by SilasX »

groovy2shoes wrote: post #83
SilasX wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! I love being able to click on links from the keyboard! Sadly, a lot of new interfaces make it hard for programs to recognize clickable links. I went through a phase where I became obsessed with doing everything from the keyboard rather than mouse[1] and that led me to pentadactyl (and then to vim[2]), an add-on I fell in love with. When the FF upgrades made it stop working I read the docs for how to compile pent…

> Yes! I love being able to click on links from the keyboard! You don't need an extension to do that in Firefox. Press the key and start typing, you'll get an incremental search like gives you, but limited to hyperlink text. Once it's highlighted any bit of the link you want, press to follow it. Works in Seamonkey, too.

Interesting! Didn't know that, thanks! I still prefer the pop-up codes in the extensions, though; they also allow the option of doing other operations on the links, like copying, or opening in a new tab/window.

Re: Vimperator: a Vim-like Firefox

#96

Post by michaelmrose »

rvern wrote: post #75
michaelmrose wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

It is sufficiently poor as not to be worth using as it would only work part of the time and would be more effort than using the mouse.

Re: Vimperator: a Vim-like Firefox

#97

Post by protomikron »

citisincyber wrote: post #57
protomikron wrote: post #52

Is it possible (in VimFX) to remap the (Shift) Escape? E.g. in my ~/.vimrc I use imap jj How users can live with Vim's default behavior (Escape, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-[) is mysterious to me (I do not like hitting Ctrl). :)

system bind caps -> ctrl. reduce stress on the pinky

I may give that a try again, however 'jj' was more natural for me.

Re: Vimperator: a Vim-like Firefox

#98

Post by govg »

krzyk wrote: post #50
exDM69 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not GP but same situation. Firefox isn't always great. Start-up time is really slow, hogs a lot of memory, unnecessarily slow and sluggish and most sites are primarily engineered for WebKit/Blink -based browser engines these days.

Lot's of memory? Firefox nowadays uses less then Chrome (Chrome one process per tab is a killer for free RAM). As for websites engineered for WebKit/Blink I haven't seen that yet, but I was afraid it might happen eventually - new IE6 (or was it IE5?) will happen again :(.

I've never had an issue with memory (have RAM to spare) even though I use tab-groups extensively and frequently have 600+ tabs stored that way. But I do have issues with slow startup times. Is it linked to tab groups? I didn't see any significant speedup upon switching to an SSD, so I'm assuming it is inherent in the program and not anything specific to reading profiles from disk.

Re: Vimperator: a Vim-like Firefox

#99

Post by chousuke »

wsha wrote: post #86
chousuke wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched to VimFx so I could get electrolysis working. I had to tweak scrolling speed quite drastically and and there are some behavioural differences which means I have to unlearn some muscle memory. However, with the classic theme restorer addon the UI is compressed enough that it doesn't bother me much and I can use the keyboard for almost everything. I still wish I could have the command line back though. Annoy…

I switched to VimFx recently for the same reason. Actually, the ":" shortcut for the GCLI command line is a VimFx shortcut, not a standard Firefox one. The GCLI can be customized. See for example: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/GCLI/Writing_... I added a command to toggle a preference in about:config that I switch often. It is kind of a pain to write and debug commands for the GCLI though (compared to…

Thanks for that. Unfortunately the documentation neglects to even link to API documentation for the objects that get passed to the gcli functions or even mention their types, so I guess I'm supposed to use some sort of console with print debugging to figure out what I can do with them... too bad it seems Firefox' built-in browser console just shows up blank.

Re: Vimperator: a Vim-like Firefox

#100

Post by innn »

twistedanimator wrote: post #6

I used to be a user of pentadactyl, but never liked how it changed the entire look of the browser. Just last a couple of days ago, I found VimFx which is exactly what I always wanted. It's also open source at https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx

I am currently trying hard to like vimfx but what kills the whole fun for me is the lack of any 'comfortable' jump to tab. It has one with hinting but useless if you keep your browser in fullscreen. The whole " we don't modify the browser" surviving strategy does nothing for me. I liked the way vimperator/pentadactyl did it. the browser should be nothing but a window to a page. no need for that bar and for the hanging tools like pocket, some fancy download progress or one that shows how many ads were captured. for titlebar one has to fight microsoft as well. really hoping usable vim+inspired browsers do not become extinct. they dont need a corp. behind them, they only need us.
Post reply on HN