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Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

nyxt.atlas.engineer

161–170 of 262 posts

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#161

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.

Navigating back a word while in insert mode is just unnecessary.

The purpose of insert mode is to insert text, and that’s it. This occupies a very small proportion of total editing time.

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#162
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about what "decades of UX research" improvements you are talking about, to me everything about the UI for text editors or browsers hasn't improved much in decades. If you have a laptop with just a touchpad, chances are you'll never get better than vim keybindings. Moreover, the keyboard layouts themselves are centuries old.

> I'm curious about what "decades of UX research" improvements you are talking about Here's the most important one of them: Don't surprise me. Blend in. Look and behave like other programs. There are 50 applications on my system. Yours is one of them. If all other applications use 'Ctrl+C' for copying text, but your application uses 'y', then your application is the problem.

What are you talking about? I suspect you haven't used vim recently.

In the context of the command line Ctrl+C sends SIGINT, which usually interrupts/terminates a program. When I press Ctrl+C, vim shows "Type :qa and press to exit Vim". All my command line programs handle it as SIGINT. Imposing Ctrl+C as copy would be inconsistent and surprising.

If I'm using Visual Studio with vim keybindings Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V are still copy/paste (I suspect this is because VS provides this and the keybindings don't override it). I think every other editor with vim keybindings I've used preserves this behavior. Ctrl-C as copy is consistent with every other windowed program I'm running. Where have you encountered vim keybindings that don't permit this?

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#163
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about what "decades of UX research" improvements you are talking about, to me everything about the UI for text editors or browsers hasn't improved much in decades. If you have a laptop with just a touchpad, chances are you'll never get better than vim keybindings. Moreover, the keyboard layouts themselves are centuries old.

> I'm curious about what "decades of UX research" improvements you are talking about Here's the most important one of them: Don't surprise me. Blend in. Look and behave like other programs. There are 50 applications on my system. Yours is one of them. If all other applications use 'Ctrl+C' for copying text, but your application uses 'y', then your application is the problem.

Vi is several years older than the Ctrl+C shortcut for copy. How could it possibly have know that Ctrl+C would become a more popular choice for copying?

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#164
post #118
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…

Ha, true! But also interesting, how differently we work. I switch to national keyboard layout only when I have to write an email/chat message with my compatriots or maybe a document that needs those national characters. Otherwise, I just use US layout for everything. Like 99% of time I'm on US layout. It makes much more sense when programming (not just brackets, but also quotes, colons/semicolons, slashes, backticks,…

I'm Czech and use the UCW layout which works exactly like US English, but allows me to enter Czech letters with AltGr. It's so much better than the traditional Czech layout.

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#165
post #117
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…

Vim style keybindings and navigation is massively overhyped as is vim itself. Cue endless debates about how Vim is the best ever ...... I'm sick and tired of everyone telling me that their neovim setup with a tiling window manager with million customized rc files is somehow better than vscode with a mouse (which mind you still has plenty of keyboard shortcuts) with sane windows. /rant

I personally don't like having to use a whole browser engine to edit text, and being reliant on a greedy user-hostile corporation for it.

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#166
post #130
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…

The road to hell is paved with UX research.

Sadly, but the goal of those UX research is not a user's satisfaction.

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and calculators have the same issue. I mean, what about Indian numerals, Ethiopian and how does one perform a proper Coptic calculation using these awful devices with showstopping UX flaws? It’s time we pander to each and every culture’s random conception of symbol manipulation and end this era of universal, gate-keeping, commonality. The time of personalized input devices is upon us. Vim and thus this browser is…

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.

European here. I don't care, I don't use the Spanish layout, it sucks for programming. No one uses that at professional level for programming, US-Intl it's much better with the menu/super_r key as the 'compose' one.

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#168
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…

I am a Spaniard which I learnt to use the ES layout as the 100% of the Spaniards and then I realized it sucked a lot for programming symbols. If you use Linux/BSD for programmaing and don't run something like "setxkbmap us -option ctrl:swapcaps -option compose:rwin" (or menu instead or rwin in order to use menu+'+a to type á, you are losing your time. Stuff like "recogerá" can be easily written with menu+' made solely with the right hand as a pinch and 'a' with the left key. The only issue is 'ñ' which is a bit cumbersome to type, but there aren't many words with 'ñ' usable in the same context.

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#169
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 ¿

Using super_r+'+a is not that bad. Super_r+' can be done with ease with the right key as a pinch.

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and calculators have the same issue. I mean, what about Indian numerals, Ethiopian and how does one perform a proper Coptic calculation using these awful devices with showstopping UX flaws? It’s time we pander to each and every culture’s random conception of symbol manipulation and end this era of universal, gate-keeping, commonality. The time of personalized input devices is upon us. Vim and thus this browser is…

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.

Also, remember that Nyxt it's a Lisp based browser, so for sure has an Emacs layout.
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