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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

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/ http://5digits.org/pentadactyl/

pmoriarty 10y ago
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 that Firefox is moving (has moved?) away from XUL and XPCOM, a move which permanently breaks extensions like Pentadactyl (and Vimperator too). Already Pentadactyl is broken for me on the latest versions of Firefox and Pale Moon (though I can't say for sure that it's because of XPCOM and XUL or for some other reason). In addition, the Pentadactyl nightly builds aren't signed, so if I want Firefox to allow them to be installed I have to run the Firefox Developer build and make a global preference change to allow all unsigned extensions to be installed. This breaking of my favorite extensions on Firefox has made me move to Pale Moon, where Pentadactyl was working until recently. Now that Pentadcatyl doesn't even work on Pale Moon anymore, I'm not sure what to do.
- Ar-Curunir 10y ago
  VimFx is not as powerful as the other two, but it is a stable replacement IMO.
- oib 10y ago
  Signed builds are available here: https://github.com/willsALMANJ/pentadactyl-signed/releases 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.
  - pmoriarty 10y ago
    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.
    - oib 10y ago
      Beats me. The scripts that automate all the signing are in the repo though. Maybe you can replicate it yourself. I haven't tried that though.
    - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
      I think because pentadactyl devs don't have any time to spend on it anymore. We (the community) tried to engage them in conversation on Github and through email for months before mandatory signing started, and they never responded. FWIW, I use willsALMANJ's releases with no problems, he was/is quite active on the pentadactyl issue tracker.
    - wsha 10y ago
      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.
- serb348 10y ago
  Embrace the future! :)

pmoriarty 10y ago

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 that Firefox is moving (has moved?) away from XUL and XPCOM, a move which permanently breaks extensions like Pentadactyl (and Vimperator too). Already Pentadactyl is broken for me on the latest versions of Firefox and Pale Moon (though I can't say for sure that it's because of XPCOM and XUL or for some other reason). In addition, the Pentadactyl nightly builds aren't signed, so if I want Firefox to allow them to be installed I have to run the Firefox Developer build and make a global preference change to allow all unsigned extensions to be installed. This breaking of my favorite extensions on Firefox has made me move to Pale Moon, where Pentadactyl was working until recently. Now that Pentadcatyl doesn't even work on Pale Moon anymore, I'm not sure what to do.

Ar-Curunir 10y ago
VimFx is not as powerful as the other two, but it is a stable replacement IMO.
oib 10y ago
Signed builds are available here: https://github.com/willsALMANJ/pentadactyl-signed/releases 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.
- pmoriarty 10y ago
  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.
  - oib 10y ago
    Beats me. The scripts that automate all the signing are in the repo though. Maybe you can replicate it yourself. I haven't tried that though.
  - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
    I think because pentadactyl devs don't have any time to spend on it anymore. We (the community) tried to engage them in conversation on Github and through email for months before mandatory signing started, and they never responded. FWIW, I use willsALMANJ's releases with no problems, he was/is quite active on the pentadactyl issue tracker.
  - wsha 10y ago
    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.
serb348 10y ago
Embrace the future! :)