11mo ago

Vimium is a browser extension that provides keyboard-based navigation and control of the web in the spirit of the Vim editor.

GitHub - philc/vimium: The hacker's browser.

11mo ago

github.com /philc/vimium

29 comments

These plugins just never work quite as well as a browser made specifically for it, namely Qutebrowser. Trouble with Qutebrowser is that's it's Python and parsing a lot of links slows it down. Still the best browser out there for this use case though, as far as I know.
- You might be interested in Nyxt
  
  What is Nyxt?
  Nyxt is a browser with deeply integrated AI and semantic document tools that work as a second brain to help you process and understand more, more quickly.
  Not sure I like that pitch, but looks interesting otherwise
  
  Didn't know about this one. It's so awesome. Added it to the post.
  
  Thanks, I'll check it out!
- Tried Qutebrowser once but it was too complicated for my brain
- I'm trying to create Workspaces support for Qutebrowser via a custimsed config file that uses session saving and loading to essentially create Workspaces that one can switch between but it's a PITA.
Vimium-C is a rewrite and is better, and more well-documented.
https://github.com/gdh1995/vimium-c
- Didn't know Thanks. Also added it to post
- Thank you, Vimium has recently been getting out of whack for me. Whenever I use it to scroll, the clickable areas don’t scroll at the same rate until I use my trackpad to scroll, which really defeats the purpose of keyboard navigation
How does it compare to tridactyl?
- I love that these extensions exist and in theory they sound awesome. Unfortunately for a few reasons I've never been able to get in the habit of using Tridactyl (or any vim browser addon):
  it doesn't play nice with Google drive apps (which my company uses extensively), so if I use the vim shortcuts to cycle between tabs and open a Google doc, the next time I try to cycle tabs it will instead start typing in the document. (Alternatively I would never be able to interact with Google docs without manually enabling ignore mode)
  hint mode works really well for some sites but a lot of sites have multiple anchors close together (eg one for an icon, one for text and one behind both) which leads to longer hints and difficulty figuring out which hint to actually use
  Firefox doesn't allow you to rebund the default "/" search (quick find) cycle keys. The default is c-G for next (not sure about previous); I would like to use n/N
  On simple and well-designed "dumb" webpages it works amazing. I wish more sites were designed that way, but unfortunately a lot are made with the assumption of a mouse/touchscreen :(
  
  I agree, there are a bunch of annoying limitations. But it's better than nothing. To me the best vim based browser is qutebrowser, too bad it's using chromium.
  
  These are the reasons I'm stuck on qutebrowser. It's a great browser and project, but I'd love to move away from chromium. If Firefox allowed customizing all these global key bindings I would make the switch.
- Never tried it. But added it to Post
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/surfingkeys_ff/
SurfingKeys is another such extension and my favorite one. In addition to the Vim like controls, it supports ton of additional functionality, including editing content in a small Vim like editor with I when needed (:wq will close popup window and update the text in the edit field), supports Vim marks with m, copy url with yy or many other clipboard related stuff, is configured in JavaScript, so you can access to anything what the browser does directly.
BTW screenshots were taken by opening the help with ? (Shift+/) on a webpage, and then using the its own screenshot capability to capture scrolling element yS. Which will only capture this element, not the entire webpage, in this case the help.
help
settings
- Cool. Added it to post.
- This seems sketchy : https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys/issues/1796
  
  https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys/issues/1796#issuecomment-1222346944
  That is an old resolved issue, as far as I can tell.
ಠ_ಠ
Do you exit it with escape colon q bang?
- Asking the real questions
- You dont need to exit it don't worry about it.
I'll be honest with you guys. I thought vim navigation in a browser is just a gimmick and clunky. But the more I used it, the more I fell in love with it. I find it hard to use a browser without vim. Simple actions like searching and navigating (inside the page and across tabs) is a breeze. If you are vim user, you should definitely try it.
The concept is great, going to install later and give it a try.
Edit: oh yeah it's great
But it doesn't focus new tabs you opened automatically. You can configure it to do so. But I'm so lazy I want things to work the way I want them to out of the box.

29 comments