8 ms·

Vimium C – Extension to navigate website by keyboard shortcuts

68 points by hidden-spyder 5y ago

nikivi 5y ago
If you're on Safari, Vimari is great: https://github.com/televator-apps/vimari https://github.com/televator-apps/vimari
DoubleFree 5y ago
I have been using tridactyl for the better part of three years now and it's pretty great. It has a feature similar to DDG bang search, where you can add your own search prefixes to search any site. The "hinting" is also very powerful and scriptable. I have used vimium in the past and it never clicked with me as well as tridactyl.
- wyclif 5y ago
  Yes, I agree. I'm still using Tridactyl on Firefox. I also have Vimium on Chrome, but I don't like it as much.
CornCobs 5y ago
I use vimium (or was it vimium C?) on a chromium browser. My biggest bugbear with vimium is that it doesn't work in the browser's native pdf viewer. PDF viewer for vimium C exists but its definitely not as good as the native viewer (better rendering, allows annotating and saving etc). My browsing consists mostly of pdfs so it makes the whole vimium experience pretty moot. Also many modern websites have weird scrollbars, or the scrolling content is not the actual body but some div inside the page, and vimium doesn't seem to handle that well
- dotancohen 5y ago
  Not a solution to your problem, but tangential. Have you tried Okular? I used to hate working with PDFs before I discovered Okular. It is the KDE PDF reader.
  - CornCobs 5y ago
    Will give it a look, thanks! But my guess is I will still stick with the browser inbuilt pdf viewer because most pdfs I view are accessed via url and are not downloaded. It would be too large a context switch to have 2 separate pdf viewers
- vxNsr 5y ago
  > My browsing consists mostly of pdfs so it makes the whole vimium experience pretty moot. This is so strange, what are you doing that is mostly in pdfs?
  - ShamelessC 5y ago
    So many things. Academia lives in pdf-land as do many governments.
  - CornCobs 5y ago
    As the other person said, universities publish majority of their notes as pdfs, very little academic material exists in html. Also papers are still entirely accessed as pdfs through e-libraries
    - vxNsr 5y ago
      got it, makes sense. For this usecase, it almost makes sense to use IE because they still have the adobe acrobat plugin which imo is the gold standard of pdf reader, annotating.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mikae1 5y ago
I'm sorry but this is near unusable since the death of XUL and introduction of WebExtensions. I was an truly avid user of VimFX which did the same thing. Vimium these days does not work when a page hasn't finished loading and it doesn't work on blank pages (about:blank) or any other "system page" (like the preferences or addons). The "o" key can no longer highlight the address bar but brings up a non-native address bar that does not find my bookmarks as it should. Imagine you couldn't click on another tab with your mouse pointer while the current active one is loading. Yes, it's as terribly frustrating as it sounds. In the XUL days I could even hit a key to make every button in Firefox UI accessible via keys. VimiumFX gave me the best browsing experience I've ever had and it's gone. WebExtensions Vimium is nothing buta painful reminder. Qutebrowser may seem like an acceptable remedy, but giving up all the add-ons (mainly uBlock Origin and Tree Style Tab) makes it a no go. As the_pwner224 points out, Vimium-FF is probably the way to go if you want to give this a try despite its shortcomings...
- j_autumn 5y ago
  I loved VimFX and am in the same boat - It was really the best browsing experience. I remember being upset for months when they killed XUL. Wish Mozilla would finally start being their old self again and create a browser that is truly customizable. Call it Firefox Pro, I would happily pay for that. But instead we get “Colorways”..
  - mikae1 5y ago
    > But instead we get “Colorways” Yeah, the browser situation sucks and it's getting worse by the day. > I remember being upset for months when they killed XUL. You know what, still a week does not pass without me mourning the death XUL... I'm currently using Waterfox quite a bit. VimFX is still somewhat maintained[1] and works with Waterfox Current. It should be added that this browser is owned by an adtech company called System1. But my only alternatives at this point is surfing in a straitjacket (without VimFX) or using Waterfox. Haven't really found any apparent wrongdoings by System1 yet, but I guess it's a matter of time... [1] https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx
the_pwner224 5y ago
Vimium-FF was among the first Vim extensions for Firefox post-XUL, and is by far the most popular. It's from the same author (and has the same codebase / github repository) as the Vimium extension originally released on Chrome. Vimium C was forked off of that in 2014 and seems to be targeted towards Chinese users, with added support for the Chinese language. The Github readme does hint towards performance improvements, but doesn't provide much more detail. It also seems to have a new tab override feature, and a vimium-compatible fork of the Firefox PDF viewer, and a few other miscellaneous features.
- ayushnix 5y ago
  Searching using Vimium-FF was broken for me for almost an year. I kept waiting for it to be fixed until my patience ran out and I switched to Vimium C and it worked fine. The author of Vimium C also raised a PR and it looks like it was finally merged but I don't think I'm going back to Vimium-FF now. https://github.com/philc/vimium/pull/3801 https://github.com/philc/vimium/pull/3801
hericium 5y ago
Vim fans might find qutebrowser[1][2] interesting. It's a minimalistic, WebKit-based browser with Vim-like key bindings. [1] https://qutebrowser.org/ https://qutebrowser.org/ [2] https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser
- giansegato 5y ago
  My issue with it, as others have pointed out, is the lack of extensions ecosystem. It's painful how locked in we really are.
fileeditview 5y ago
I always had a way better experience with the tridactyl plugin for FF. Because of my corporate machine I was forced to use chromium/edge and tried Vimium C but it does not compare in terms of features/keybindings. Sadly there seems to be no alternative for chrome/edge.
- bool3max 5y ago
  Tridactyl is terribly slow for me.
lurkr 5y ago
I'm a happy user of vim vixen for quite a while now: https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/vim-vixen/ https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/vim-vixen/
m-app 5y ago
Have been using Vimium C for some time and even sponsored because I cannot imagine using Firefox without it. I love the way you can customise everything, although am not sure how that compares to other Vim-like extensions. The developer is also very responsive and helpful, providing work-arounds and quickfixes when needed.
Phenix88be 5y ago
I wish for a Firefox fork that support Qutebrowser style navigation natively instead of those barely functional extension...
tmalsburg2 5y ago
I love the vi approach to text editing and have been using it in my daily work for 20 years now -- 10 years in Vim, 10 in Emacs, thanks to evil-mode -- and I have no intention to switch to anything else. However, I tried Vimium and other vi-like UIs for web browsers on multiple occasions but surprisingly it never stuck even though it seems so logical to use it for that as well. Eventually I realized that I actually enjoy taking an occasional break from the vi system and using the mouse for a bit. It's relaxing. The other thing is that web browsing as a task is so different from text editing than many vi concepts do not translate 1-to-1 and there's just too much new stuff that one needs to learn to make it work for web browsing. As a result the cognitive and muscle memory savings are really not that big.
_7ur7 5y ago
I have been using vimium-c for the past few months, it was game changing for me. It is true though that sometimes I need to hit the occasional ctrl-w to close an unmanaged tab and f5 to refresh a page the plug in didn't load on. The best feature for me is the omnibar though, shortcuts like ctrl-b to search through bookmarks. Can't imagine using the browser without it.
infinitezest 5y ago
I've been using Surfing Keys on both FF and Chrome for awhile and it's been my favorite vim-like so far. https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys

68 points by hidden-spyder 5y ago

If you're on Safari, Vimari is great: https://github.com/televator-apps/vimari https://github.com/televator-apps/vimari

I have been using tridactyl for the better part of three years now and it's pretty great. It has a feature similar to DDG bang search, where you can add your own search prefixes to search any site. The "hinting" is also very powerful and scriptable. I have used vimium in the past and it never clicked with me as well as tridactyl.

wyclif 5y ago
Yes, I agree. I'm still using Tridactyl on Firefox. I also have Vimium on Chrome, but I don't like it as much.

CornCobs 5y ago

I use vimium (or was it vimium C?) on a chromium browser. My biggest bugbear with vimium is that it doesn't work in the browser's native pdf viewer. PDF viewer for vimium C exists but its definitely not as good as the native viewer (better rendering, allows annotating and saving etc). My browsing consists mostly of pdfs so it makes the whole vimium experience pretty moot. Also many modern websites have weird scrollbars, or the scrolling content is not the actual body but some div inside the page, and vimium doesn't seem to handle that well

dotancohen 5y ago
Not a solution to your problem, but tangential. Have you tried Okular? I used to hate working with PDFs before I discovered Okular. It is the KDE PDF reader.
- CornCobs 5y ago
  Will give it a look, thanks! But my guess is I will still stick with the browser inbuilt pdf viewer because most pdfs I view are accessed via url and are not downloaded. It would be too large a context switch to have 2 separate pdf viewers
vxNsr 5y ago
> My browsing consists mostly of pdfs so it makes the whole vimium experience pretty moot. This is so strange, what are you doing that is mostly in pdfs?
- ShamelessC 5y ago
  So many things. Academia lives in pdf-land as do many governments.
- CornCobs 5y ago
  As the other person said, universities publish majority of their notes as pdfs, very little academic material exists in html. Also papers are still entirely accessed as pdfs through e-libraries
  - vxNsr 5y ago
    got it, makes sense. For this usecase, it almost makes sense to use IE because they still have the adobe acrobat plugin which imo is the gold standard of pdf reader, annotating.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mikae1 5y ago

I'm sorry but this is near unusable since the death of XUL and introduction of WebExtensions. I was an truly avid user of VimFX which did the same thing. Vimium these days does not work when a page hasn't finished loading and it doesn't work on blank pages (about:blank) or any other "system page" (like the preferences or addons). The "o" key can no longer highlight the address bar but brings up a non-native address bar that does not find my bookmarks as it should. Imagine you couldn't click on another tab with your mouse pointer while the current active one is loading. Yes, it's as terribly frustrating as it sounds. In the XUL days I could even hit a key to make every button in Firefox UI accessible via keys. VimiumFX gave me the best browsing experience I've ever had and it's gone. WebExtensions Vimium is nothing buta painful reminder. Qutebrowser may seem like an acceptable remedy, but giving up all the add-ons (mainly uBlock Origin and Tree Style Tab) makes it a no go. As the_pwner224 points out, Vimium-FF is probably the way to go if you want to give this a try despite its shortcomings...

j_autumn 5y ago
I loved VimFX and am in the same boat - It was really the best browsing experience. I remember being upset for months when they killed XUL. Wish Mozilla would finally start being their old self again and create a browser that is truly customizable. Call it Firefox Pro, I would happily pay for that. But instead we get “Colorways”..
- mikae1 5y ago
  > But instead we get “Colorways” Yeah, the browser situation sucks and it's getting worse by the day. > I remember being upset for months when they killed XUL. You know what, still a week does not pass without me mourning the death XUL... I'm currently using Waterfox quite a bit. VimFX is still somewhat maintained[1] and works with Waterfox Current. It should be added that this browser is owned by an adtech company called System1. But my only alternatives at this point is surfing in a straitjacket (without VimFX) or using Waterfox. Haven't really found any apparent wrongdoings by System1 yet, but I guess it's a matter of time... [1] https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx

the_pwner224 5y ago

Vimium-FF was among the first Vim extensions for Firefox post-XUL, and is by far the most popular. It's from the same author (and has the same codebase / github repository) as the Vimium extension originally released on Chrome. Vimium C was forked off of that in 2014 and seems to be targeted towards Chinese users, with added support for the Chinese language. The Github readme does hint towards performance improvements, but doesn't provide much more detail. It also seems to have a new tab override feature, and a vimium-compatible fork of the Firefox PDF viewer, and a few other miscellaneous features.

ayushnix 5y ago
Searching using Vimium-FF was broken for me for almost an year. I kept waiting for it to be fixed until my patience ran out and I switched to Vimium C and it worked fine. The author of Vimium C also raised a PR and it looks like it was finally merged but I don't think I'm going back to Vimium-FF now. https://github.com/philc/vimium/pull/3801 https://github.com/philc/vimium/pull/3801

hericium 5y ago

Vim fans might find qutebrowser[1][2] interesting. It's a minimalistic, WebKit-based browser with Vim-like key bindings. [1] https://qutebrowser.org/ https://qutebrowser.org/ [2] https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser

giansegato 5y ago
My issue with it, as others have pointed out, is the lack of extensions ecosystem. It's painful how locked in we really are.

fileeditview 5y ago

I always had a way better experience with the tridactyl plugin for FF. Because of my corporate machine I was forced to use chromium/edge and tried Vimium C but it does not compare in terms of features/keybindings. Sadly there seems to be no alternative for chrome/edge.

bool3max 5y ago
Tridactyl is terribly slow for me.

lurkr 5y ago

I'm a happy user of vim vixen for quite a while now: https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/vim-vixen/ https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/vim-vixen/

m-app 5y ago

Have been using Vimium C for some time and even sponsored because I cannot imagine using Firefox without it. I love the way you can customise everything, although am not sure how that compares to other Vim-like extensions. The developer is also very responsive and helpful, providing work-arounds and quickfixes when needed.

Phenix88be 5y ago

I wish for a Firefox fork that support Qutebrowser style navigation natively instead of those barely functional extension...

tmalsburg2 5y ago

I love the vi approach to text editing and have been using it in my daily work for 20 years now -- 10 years in Vim, 10 in Emacs, thanks to evil-mode -- and I have no intention to switch to anything else. However, I tried Vimium and other vi-like UIs for web browsers on multiple occasions but surprisingly it never stuck even though it seems so logical to use it for that as well. Eventually I realized that I actually enjoy taking an occasional break from the vi system and using the mouse for a bit. It's relaxing. The other thing is that web browsing as a task is so different from text editing than many vi concepts do not translate 1-to-1 and there's just too much new stuff that one needs to learn to make it work for web browsing. As a result the cognitive and muscle memory savings are really not that big.

_7ur7 5y ago

I have been using vimium-c for the past few months, it was game changing for me. It is true though that sometimes I need to hit the occasional ctrl-w to close an unmanaged tab and f5 to refresh a page the plug in didn't load on. The best feature for me is the omnibar though, shortcuts like ctrl-b to search through bookmarks. Can't imagine using the browser without it.

infinitezest 5y ago

I've been using Surfing Keys on both FF and Chrome for awhile and it's been my favorite vim-like so far. https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys