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I really want more firepower and ergonomics out of my browser. Yet I have not found a better solution than Firefox + Tridactyl + a bunch of other extensions. Tw

I really want more firepower and ergonomics out of my browser. Yet I have not found a better solution than Firefox + Tridactyl + a bunch of other extensions. Two strong contenders are Nyxt and Vieb right now but neither checks all the boxes below. I want - complete Vi like keybindings - almost everything should be doable via the keyboard - window management - why can I just not split a browser window into two? - fast and powerful engine - I don't want to use two browsers - Webextensions support

Y_Y 5y ago
It's a bit of a mess, but have you tried using emacs-webkit[0]? You can have vi-style keybindings via evil-collection, the window management is pretty good, the browser engine is pretty standard. I've used it with spacemacs, and it's overall a decent experience. It's not quite Gecko though, and I don't think WebExtensions work yet. Also the single-threadedness of emacs itself can be a bother (of course the browser component is separate).
- e3bc54b2 5y ago
  link to emacs-webkit: https://github.com/akirakyle/emacs-webkit https://github.com/akirakyle/emacs-webkit
slightwinder 5y ago
This always fails with Webextensions support. The simpler solutions just take an existing webengine-component from gtk or Qt and put a browser around it, but this fails with more complex features which are naturally not part of the webengine. I'm curious why nobody takes directly chromium or firefox and just integrates trydactyl to get first-class-support. The major-problem with alternative keybindings is the context they run with. Extensions run inside the page-scope, and thus are only available after the page loaded. Integrating them at app-scope (which mozilla promised to deliver around 4 years ago already), would basically solve most problems instantly.
- jmercouris 5y ago
  Yes, it is incredibly hard to build an extension system. Why does nobody build on top of Firefox and Chromium? Probably because tracking upstream changes will be incredibly difficult. I imagine as soon as FF releases a month worth of patches, trying to integrate them and sift through them would take thousands of hours.
jmercouris 5y ago
Webextensions support is /very/ close, we even have a pull request for basic support: https://github.com/atlas-engineer/nyxt/pull/1762 https://github.com/atlas-engineer/nyxt/pull/1762 now that we've figured out the framework/setup we just have to implement the APIs.

Y_Y 5y ago

It's a bit of a mess, but have you tried using emacs-webkit[0]? You can have vi-style keybindings via evil-collection, the window management is pretty good, the browser engine is pretty standard. I've used it with spacemacs, and it's overall a decent experience. It's not quite Gecko though, and I don't think WebExtensions work yet. Also the single-threadedness of emacs itself can be a bother (of course the browser component is separate).

e3bc54b2 5y ago
link to emacs-webkit: https://github.com/akirakyle/emacs-webkit https://github.com/akirakyle/emacs-webkit

slightwinder 5y ago

This always fails with Webextensions support. The simpler solutions just take an existing webengine-component from gtk or Qt and put a browser around it, but this fails with more complex features which are naturally not part of the webengine. I'm curious why nobody takes directly chromium or firefox and just integrates trydactyl to get first-class-support. The major-problem with alternative keybindings is the context they run with. Extensions run inside the page-scope, and thus are only available after the page loaded. Integrating them at app-scope (which mozilla promised to deliver around 4 years ago already), would basically solve most problems instantly.

jmercouris 5y ago
Yes, it is incredibly hard to build an extension system. Why does nobody build on top of Firefox and Chromium? Probably because tracking upstream changes will be incredibly difficult. I imagine as soon as FF releases a month worth of patches, trying to integrate them and sift through them would take thousands of hours.

jmercouris 5y ago

Webextensions support is /very/ close, we even have a pull request for basic support: https://github.com/atlas-engineer/nyxt/pull/1762 https://github.com/atlas-engineer/nyxt/pull/1762 now that we've figured out the framework/setup we just have to implement the APIs.