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Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

nyxt.atlas.engineer

211–220 of 262 posts

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#211
post #70

Looks like Nyxt, a browser "inspired by Vim", inherits Vim's showstopper bug: Being unusable on many non-US keyboards, at least with the default bindings. The 'switch-buffer-previous' command is bound to C-[, which cannot be pressed e.g. on QWERTZ layouts because the [ character requires AltGr. This is like sending around text files encoded in Windows-1252 and expecting things to just work. Sorry folks, but it turns…

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Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#212
post #17

Hmm, not sure it's for me (a bit too much hacker) but I'd definitely like a highly customizable, module based browser with a pure shell by default. Something like Visual Studio Code but with less cruft from the get go. I've never thought about it until I saw this! Now I'm really irked about there not being a solid, mature browser based on extensibility. Where the base is basically an address bar and history awareness…

So I've ranted about this in various places on the internet... Some recent HN comments of mine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34855750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33541173 I am 100% down for building this, open source, if I had a team to help me see it through as it's just too much for one person. Do you have any dev experience / interest in helping create such a thing?

How much work would it be to convert either Firefox / Chromium / Nyxt into this instead of starting from scratch?

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#213
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spanish keyboards, while QWERTY, are terrible for this too. All the special characters are in a weird place and many require modifiers. While I live in Spain now I still use the US layout I'm used to from the Netherlands. It means I can't type the Spanish accents which are kinda important but anyway...

Try the EN intl layout. Most of the accents are accessible using AltGr. Also the ¡ and ¿

The problem with this is that it works differently on each OS. Every day I use Windows, Mac, Linux and FreeBSD. I need an input method that is unified in every OS or I'll constantly mistype. Apple's different shortcuts for copy paste are difficult enough already.

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modal editing exists because the mouse didn't exist then, and it continues to exist because modal editing is very powerful because you get to be in a mode where you type commands for cursor movements, textual transformations, etc., which allows power users to be very productive.

I don't think I've ever seen evidence that emacs users actually need to be very productive in their text editor even if it works. Though it might not work - the original Mac user research found that keyboards make users think they're faster, but don't actually make them faster, because of time blindness.

I wouldn't know. I'm a vi user. I don't know how much more productive I am with VI than non-modal editors, and even if I did know that would just be anecdotal, but I feel more productive coding in (Neo)vi(m) than I do in any non-modal editor, and it's much more comfortable anyways.

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's key about vi is modal editing. Modal editing is very powerful. It also means not having to use the mouse for everything and also not having to type too many modifier key sequences. For some of us that's absolutely essential to avoid deviations that lead to injury.

I don’t really understand. Many of the common bindings in Vim use modifiers. How do you navigate back a word without a modifier? Do you just exit editing mode like in the old days? Do you just forgo this and arrow back? In case it’s not clear from my tone, I’m totally sympathetic to relieving injury, and whatever works, works. I just don’t understand how Vim bindings help, and am genuinely curious.

Ah, I forgot some context: I use sticky keys, so for me shift is not a problem, but I still have bad habits from before discovering sticky keys so control and other modifiers -and especially multi-modifier combinations- are still a problem for me, and vi doesn't use that many of those.

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#216
post #70

Looks like Nyxt, a browser "inspired by Vim", inherits Vim's showstopper bug: Being unusable on many non-US keyboards, at least with the default bindings. The 'switch-buffer-previous' command is bound to C-[, which cannot be pressed e.g. on QWERTZ layouts because the [ character requires AltGr. This is like sending around text files encoded in Windows-1252 and expecting things to just work. Sorry folks, but it turns…

Any pointers to research? As an emacser I consider most of vim very very :repeat efficient. I'm very much still open to new ergonomic ideas though, I just never see any.

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#217
post #70

Looks like Nyxt, a browser "inspired by Vim", inherits Vim's showstopper bug: Being unusable on many non-US keyboards, at least with the default bindings. The 'switch-buffer-previous' command is bound to C-[, which cannot be pressed e.g. on QWERTZ layouts because the [ character requires AltGr. This is like sending around text files encoded in Windows-1252 and expecting things to just work. Sorry folks, but it turns…

This! I've been programmer for about 20 years now and I could never understand why Vi(m) or Emacs exists with those weird bindings which are completely different from pretty much everything else. I'm not that old, maybe they had their cake in 80s, but perhaps time to move on to something modern which would have modern defaults (if many need to customize there's something wrong with the defaults) that appeal to all ke…

Vi has a steep learning curve, but once mastered, it is on-par or exceeds the best of other editors. It is also present everywhere (on Linux at least) and works via ssh as well as locally.

I'm not using it anymore myself, but I know and respect people who do. For me the tradeoff was not worth it, however it still annoys me to hell and back that I have to reach for the mouse so often in vscode.

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I've ranted about this in various places on the internet... Some recent HN comments of mine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34855750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33541173 I am 100% down for building this, open source, if I had a team to help me see it through as it's just too much for one person. Do you have any dev experience / interest in helping create such a thing?

How much work would it be to convert either Firefox / Chromium / Nyxt into this instead of starting from scratch?

There are always going to be limitations to extension-based approaches but Firefox with tridactyl is most of the way there capability-wise IMO (https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl). I use that plus tree-style tabs and find it excellent. There's always some extensibility limitations that break the integration though, like extensions getting disabled on mozilla domains.

I love projects like nyxt and respect their priorities, but without big-player extension support it's usually a no-go for me. Still, I'll be interested to see the ideas they develop trickle out into the rest of the power-browser ecosystem. I especially like that lossless tree history – history management is a very under-explored UX area IMO

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#219
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember that most European keyboards don't have [ and ] accessible on the first/second level. That's already half of the western civilization, not some random's custom layout.

https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/ Has the US keys on the first/second levels and most/all special symbols for European languages easily accessible w/ modifier keys. Entirely removed the need to switch keyboard layouts for me.

That’s nice but doesn’t include the letters used in Slavic languages.

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember that most European keyboards don't have [ and ] accessible on the first/second level. That's already half of the western civilization, not some random's custom layout.

I live in Europe and buy my Chinese-made keyboards from Amazon, US. In the company I work for, I have not seen a single keyboard with "European" layout. People who buy those keyboards aren't people who need to be good at using their editor, while on the other hand, people who want to be good at using their editor will buy a keyboard that works well with it. Keyboard is a one-time investment of 20-200 Euro, but learni…

Yet nobody here has thought of just localizing the shortcuts like Microsoft Office and macOS have been doing for ages. Solves this problem very elegantly. Ironically, Word is the “professional” editor of most professions outside of coding, and people do learn the shortcuts to use it effectively.

This obviously varies by country, but at the places I’ve worked at, most people used the local layout instead of the US one. They couldn’t bother relearning it and then switching every time they wanted to enter some text in the local (Slavic) language.

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