15 ms·

Vimium – A browser extension that provides Vim-style keyboard controls

441 points by kevmo314 4y ago

noloblo 4y ago
this is perfect for my usecase in firefox and mainly text only browsing, vim is perfectly designed to use the limited keyboard options and even more limited cognitive load humans can handle [alt shift ;) you know what i am talking about]
uptheroots 4y ago
Love Vimium! It's easy to ignore sites where you want to use their native keybindings, which is nice.
ernestipark 4y ago
This comes up every once in a while on HN. I've been using vimium for over 10 years now since I did an internship at the same company as the guys who created it. Can't imagine browsing the web without it. Works especially well with HN and those small link targets :)
- jerpint 4y ago
  I’m a big fan of vimium! Works great and consistent
prettyStandard 4y ago
Tried using this recently. Even though I use vim daily I haven't made good use of Vimium yet. In fact I found it more annoying because it naturally breaks sites that I do know keybindings for like YouTube. Overall I don't want to come across as critical of of something that just needs a little effort to use, more of just setting expectations. Normally this would be less of an issue but for me, I ran into this problem while on my rowing machine, and I didn't want to stop to fiddle with keybindings.
- tagolli 4y ago
  You might already know, but if you click on the extension icon, you can specify which pages to disable it for. I disable it in pages that have useful keyboard navigations. But it's great for things like HN, where I can use J/K to navigate, then hit F and open a link I want.
- keyle 4y ago
  I've used this in the past, and I've found that it's not a 1:1 replacement but rather an add-on to my browsing habits. It's great when having lunch with greasy fingers, I can do most things with one pinky press!
- et1337 4y ago
  The few times that happens to me I just hit “i” to enter insert mode and try again.
  - khqc 4y ago
    I actually like using "i" to toggle enabling/disabling the extension, more convenient and powerful imo
- donio 4y ago
  It's very easy to add exceptions for individual sites, for example letting youtube have f for full-screen. You just click on the Vimium icon on toolbar and it pops up the dialog for that. You can do it in 5 seconds even while you are rowing.
friend_and_foe 4y ago
I'm not seeing a ":" command bar in any demos, is there one? I use Qutebrowser and it's fantastic, I even wrote some userscripts for it which are probably easier to build than web extensions.
- Izkata 4y ago
  IIRC Vimium was the one that was pure hotkeys, no commands. Waaay back when Vimperator died with Firefox Quantum, I tried a bunch of different addons that still worked and Vimium was probably the least powerful of them. Currently I use Vim Vixen[0]. It's still nowhere near as feature-full as Vimperator was, but nothing can be nowadays. My only real complaint about it is how link hints don't let you complete with the link text like Vimperator could - it's the one thing that as far as I can tell, no replacement supports even though it's a whole lot better. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vim-vixen/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vim-vixen/
  - bovine3dom 4y ago
    Tridactyl does let filter links like that with `:set hintfiltermode vimperator` and `:set hintchars 1234567890`. Vim Vixen unfortunately has been unmaintained since May [1]. If anyone knows ueokande personally, could they let him know that I would be happy to help get some releases out? I sent an email yesterday but I am not optimistic as it seems like quite a few people have tried over the last few months. [1]: https://github.com/ueokande/vim-vixen/pull/1437 https://github.com/ueokande/vim-vixen/pull/1437
    - Izkata 4y ago
      Oh nice. I had to make a few other tweaks, like making j/k not scroll as far, but it looks like I'll just be using Tridactyl now. Edit: btw the hintfiltermode Tridactyl calls "vimperator-reflow" is what Vimperator actually did
aliencat 4y ago
I also recommended vimium-c (https://github.com/gdh1995/vimium-c https://github.com/gdh1995/vimium-c). It's like vimium on steroid: with a bunch of additional useful features.
- mplanchard 4y ago
  Came here to make the same recommendation, so just making this comment to second yours.
- ashton314 4y ago
  What does it add?
  - dstanko 4y ago
    Presumably -c :)
- N3cr0ph4g1st 4y ago
  Any specific things you do with vimium-c that are must have features to switch over?
  - philipphutterer 4y ago
    I use caret mode, visual selection and P quite often to search for the text in visual selection in a new tab with the preferred search engine. I also like yf for yanking a link to clipboard.
- devsda 4y ago
  Nice feature set especially the Contextual keymapping. Can think of some interesting use cases it enables. Offtopic: The section "Declaration for Applicable Regions" from ReadMe, this is the first time I've come across it. Should it be read as a disclaimer or an opinion?
- woleium 4y ago
  is pentadactyl still a thing? Edit: no, but tridactyl is: https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl
keyle 4y ago
For those looking to replace the mouse at the OS level on macOS (similar vibe), Scoot is pretty good for that... https://github.com/mjrusso/scoot https://github.com/mjrusso/scoot
- gandalfgeek 4y ago
  On MacOS I've been using homerow.app which does the same thing as Scoot but looks a bit more polished.
  - TheLocehiliosan 4y ago
    I like Shortcat https://shortcat.app https://shortcat.app
  - laserlight 4y ago
    Clickable: https://www.homerow.app https://www.homerow.app
- meatjuice 4y ago
  This is the very thing I’ve been looking for since vimac became proprietary (homerow). I was using Shortcat, which is also a proprietary software and I was having a little bit of concern mainly about security, but this software seems to solve the problem. Thank you for sharing.
- GabrieleR 4y ago
  Is there a Linux version? It looks very handful
  - vinceguidry 4y ago
    It certainly would be but looking at the options tells me that they're hooking into MacOS's widget libs and on Linux there's just so many. What I get by with to go mouseless is Tridactyl for Firefox, warpd for when I need a pointer, and when I absolutely, positively need a mouse, mouse emulation on QMK keyboards never fails me. I only need it these days for dealing with MacOS outside of my Linux VM. I also use keyd in order to remap keyboard shortcuts. https://github.com/rvaiya/warpd https://github.com/rvaiya/warpd https://github.com/rvaiya/keyd https://github.com/rvaiya/keyd Why in the world are those links side by side?
jalino23 4y ago
I used this everyday for the past 3 years. can't imagine browsing without it
- synergy20 4y ago
  second this, same here.
- tomerbd 4y ago
  Third this, use it every day.
tastysandwich 4y ago
I used Vimperator on Firefox about 10 years ago. Back then it was fantastic, but I think the add-on environment has changed in FF (WebExtensions) since then and add-ons aren't as powerful. I've used Vimium on Chrome. Every few years I get excited, install it, feel 10x more productive, and then a few days later uninstall it. As I recall, it doesn't work on the New Tab page. It doesn't work if the address bar is in focus. I believe you have to wait for the page to fully load before you can use it. Most annoyingly, a lot of websites have custom keyboard shortcuts, so you have to blacklist them in the Vimium config. Eg Gmail, Miro. Then you need to remember you can't use Vimium on them. None of this is their fault in any way, of course. But it does make Vimium a bit annoying to use for me anyway.
- joobus 4y ago
  > Most annoyingly, a lot of websites have custom keyboard shortcuts, so you have to blacklist them in the Vimium config. No, you just need to enter insert mode. Hit `i`, then all the keyboard shortcuts for the site work. Exit insert mode with escape or ctrl+[.
  - sodapopcan 4y ago
    :mind-unrectifiably-blown-emoji: Thanks for this, this changes everything. Namely, I can re-enable most commands that I've globally disabled. Who woulda thought the path to enlightenment would be to simply RTFM.
- ithrow 4y ago
  I can't let vimium go even as an emacs user ;) As someone else replied, insert mode.
- julianeon 4y ago
  What I have noticed is that the bottleneck in editor vs. browser is different, which explains why I don't use Vimium anymore either. In the editor speed matters: speed is a bottleneck. For example, if AI comes in writes a paragraph based on the function title, "bubble_sort_array", that's great, because now I've sliced 2 minutes off the 3 minutes that would ordinarily take. But in the browser, time is cheap; in fact, that's largely why I used the browser, to luxuriate in the time it takes to, say, read an article, or write a long comment. I'm there to take it slow, to escape the tyranny of efficiency. So when I'm there to relax, shaving 4 seconds off a 10 minute reading time is irrelevant. So I use shortcuts in my editor, but not my browser.
artful314w 4y ago
I get a lot of value out of this. I especially like that I can open a link in a new tab, just from the keyboard
qolop 4y ago
I've been using Vimium for quite some time now, and while I like it, there are two things which annoy the hell out of me. Vimium disables the browser's backward-forward cache (by listening to the "unload" event), causing navigation to be much slower. There is also no way for a website owner to warn a Vimium user of conflicting keybindings. I run a website which implements Vim keybindings and several of my users complain that it doesn't work. I have to remind them to disable Vimium. This issue has been open on their GitHub for more than 4 years with no end in sight.
- omniglottal 4y ago
  As the website author, you can see which extensions the client browser is running, no? Wouldn't that make it your responsibility to detect then disable your custom keybindings rather than the users's?
  - daveidol 4y ago
    > As the website author, you can see which extensions the client browser is running, no? No, not really. Not unless it specifies certain `web_accessible_resources` which you try to load - but that's a bit of a hack, needs to be done on an extension-by-extension basis, and won't even work for all extensions.
  - tempestn 4y ago
    I wouldn't think so. There are infinite ways for people to customize their browsers; it's not reasonable to expect website developers to account for them all. Plus in the case of your parent, their website implements vim keybindings, so basically all of them are going to conflict with this extension, and it's going to be pretty useless if they detect that situation and react by changing all of them to something non-standard.
  - qolop 4y ago
    It's not possible to detect the presence of Vimium. https://github.com/philc/vimium/issues/2399 https://github.com/philc/vimium/issues/2399
devsda 4y ago
The home page doesnt make it obvious but there's a port for Firefox too. It does not compare directly with the old vimperator addon but it works great for regular browser navigation. The only occasional glitch I saw was in UI for adding site exceptions.
- semi-extrinsic 4y ago
  Tridactyl is the best Vim-control-plugin for Firefox, hands down.
S-E-P 4y ago
Trydactyl is mint for Firefox VIM experience
waz0wski 4y ago
For Firefox there's also https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl
- the_pwner224 4y ago
  I switched from Tridactyl to Vimium a while ago. Tridactyl is powerful and feature rich but more complex. Vimium does everything you need for normal usage and is super simple to set up (the default config is a very good base and you'll probably only end up making minimal changes over time).
belinder 4y ago
Been using vimium for years. I have gotten so used to scrolling pages at different speed by pressing keys that whenever I am using someone else's computer I have to fight muscle memory. I also use it for clicking links through keybinds, but really the custom up/down is the main usage. The occasional website having its own keybinds never stops being annoying, but it's easy to disable the extension per site
- dmix 4y ago
  100%. Scrolling with arrows/mouse instead of hitting j or k just feels uncomfortable. Maybe there's something to be learned by browser designers. It's not just the fact it's on the home row and muscle memory for Vim users. The default speed for down/up arrow scrolling and lack of smoothing is just not the same.
  - sva_ 4y ago
    In vim, I usually scroll with ctrl-u/d?
    - dmix 4y ago
      Same but reading on the internet is not like scanning source code files. I tend to read much more linearly and the j/k scroll speed is fast enough. But obviously that's still an option.
    - Marrand 4y ago
      That also works in vimium afaik, just a quicker scroll instead of jumps though.
  - bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
    I think most browser designers expect you to use the trackpad or a mouse wheel
  - dingaling 4y ago
    > Scrolling with arrows/mouse instead of hitting j or k just feels uncomfortable. Page Up/Down?
hajola 4y ago
This looks amazing, but installing the Firefox extension I am worried about all the permissions it asks. I am surprised how comfortable people are signing off on these permissions. How do people at HN put these security worries to rest?
- bspammer 4y ago
  I guess for me it’s a combination of: * The extension has a genuine need for the permissions * It’s an old extension at this point, with known maintainers with names and faces * I really, really want the features
- crabbone 4y ago
  This (your fear) is a result of bad policy by Firefox. This is why a lot of useful add-ons or plugins died, and, overall, Firefox became a shittier browser. Neither Vimium nor SurfingKeys don't hold a candle to KeySnail because back in the days add-ons worked you could control the browser's chrome as well as a bunch of other non-HTML elements. Today, you cannot even use browser extensions to close a browser window if the page didn't load in it. These tools were intended for "power users", who could establish for themselves if the piece of code they want to use is doing something malicious or not. Also being an easy way to extend the browser without a need to recompile it and a need to understand a huge project with a ton of infrastructure... flushed down the drain. This reminds me about how Alan Key said in one of his interviews that if a motorcycle was invented today, it would've been outlawed right away due to safety concerns.
  - hajola 4y ago
    Auditing each tool by ourselves would cost a lot of time. Not to mention that it would not be a one-time thing. At each update, another check would be required for "peace of mind". Curious to discuss if there is a way to trust these extensions without establishing ourselves that the code is not harmful.
    - crabbone 4y ago
      But you don't audit it entirely by yourself. Nor were you expected to before. It's the same idea as with other programs or add-ons you use. Don't you use some add-ons in the code editor you use not authored by the authors of the editor itself? And why would you believe the authors of the editor in the first place? Of course you need to do some due diligence, but it isn't anywhere near as taxing as you seem to think. Security is worthless if it prevents you from doing useful things. Given a choice between a chance of security breach and not being able to do the useful thing at all, in the circumstances like using a Web browser, I'd definitely choose to have the useful thing w/o security.
sva_ 4y ago
I once used Vimium and some bug caused the extension to permanently close my hard-earned ~500 tab collection. So while I feel like I lost a lot, I've never felt so much at peace since either.
- johnhenry 4y ago
  That used to be my solution for managing tabs in chrome. Every few months it would just crash, I'd lose all my tab, and I'd think "probably for the best". Now chrome is a lot more stable :/.
  - bakuninsbart 4y ago
    This causes me some level of anxiety. An important end of day ritual for me is to close every tab I'm not 100% sure I will need the next morning.
    - samb1729 4y ago
      My approach is to use Firefox Nightly and restart it whenever it prompts me to do so. Keeps me at a low tab count :)
- sodapopcan 4y ago
  Holy shit... 500 tabs? I thought I was bad about accumulating tabs but had no idea ~500 was even possible. I'm trying to even but I literally can't--You might say "I literally can't even".
  - Arelius 4y ago
    Honestly, I don't know how you all stay so low, I'm down to 1172, and getting it even that low feels like a bit of an accomplishment.
    - tyre 4y ago
      What are you doing with these tabs? Are they a reading list? Things like gmail that you could reopen whenever?
rbalicki 4y ago
I love being able to easily navigate between tabs (a/J and s/K for me), go back/forward (h and l), open the current tab in a new window, close the current tab, etc. though (of course) the killer feature is "link highlighting" or whatever it's called. You can also enable "link highlighting" where selecting a link copies the URL. I also find that occasionally useful! I can't use the web without vimium.
- ehnto 4y ago
  I also found it useful to have a link bind that just focuses the link element, often that can open up hover menus or trigger other focus/hover CSS changes.
  - rbalicki 4y ago
    oh, that's neat! I'll try that.
ColonelPhantom 4y ago
I used to be a loving VimFX [0] user. It had intelligent link hints (essentially, links it thinks you are likely to want, e.g. because they're big, get single-key shortcuts). The scrolling was actually native, as in equivalent to hitting the arrow keys. I don't think any of the other Vim emulator plugins ever replicated that. Vimium doesn't, Tridactyl doesn't, and Vim Vixen was horribly broken. Apparently VimFX still runs via some hacks on modern Firefox versions? The last release was even in 2022. Maybe I should give it a try again. [0] https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx
- bovine3dom 4y ago
  What do you miss about native scrolling? IMO the scrolling in Tridactyl is better than native as it can work even when the page has put focus somewhere daft (like a pop-up).
  - ColonelPhantom 4y ago
    It's more about 'feeling' native than actually being native. I managed to reinstall VimFX and it doesn't quite scroll like the arrow keys, either. But its scrolling speed still feels more natural than either Vimium or Tridactyl, although it's a bit slow. Tridactyl's huge jumps are annoying to me, as is Vimium's excess smoothness. In Vim, I hit j once to scroll one line, same as <down>.
    - bovine3dom 4y ago
      > Tridactyl's huge jumps are annoying to me You can change that easily with `:bind j scrollline 1` and `:bind k scrollline 1` :) The default bind was a conscious choice to break with tradition with Vimperator because everyone I knew rebound j/k to scroll further. I'm glad you got VimFx working though!
- noname120 4y ago
  I'd suggest to create an issue on the Vimium repo if the big button heuristic isn't implement / didn't get suggested yet.
kytazo 4y ago
For those using firefox there is tridactyl available as others have commented as well. They've gone a step further introducing native messaging [1][2] which opens up an endless ways of interacting with the underlying OS which makes implementing all sorts of useful day-to-day functionality such as personal automation a joyful breeze. For example, saving the current page in a local file can be as easy as: tri.excmds.exclaim_quiet ('echo "' + document.location.href + '"' > $HOME/notes') Sky is the limit given that you can interface with any page with JS and then pipe and process the output with any system utility or system context. A simple example for demonstration would be copying the contents of the body tag, piping them to a readability[3] util and have the output saved to a local vault. Or have a video played with mpv with a press of a button since you can invoke any of these functions be it custom or built-in targeting any element the same way you would follow a link by hinting. Here are a few other, pretty interesting use cases as seen in examplar custom user configurations taken from their github wiki[4] alias playAllVideos js tri.native.run("mpv --really-quiet --ontop --keepaspect-window --profile=protocol.http " + Array.from(document.querySelectorAll("a, iframe, video")).reduce((s, e) => {let r=(/^https?:\/\/((www.)?youtu((\.be\/)|(be\.com\/((embed\/)|(watch\?v=))))[^ ]+)|(.+\.webm)$/);let l="";if(e.tagName=="IFRAME")l=e.src.match(r);else if(e.tagName=="A")l=e.href.match(r)||e.innerText.match(r);else if(e.tagName=="VIDEO")l=[e.currentSrc?e.currentSrc:e.src];console.log(l);return s+(l && l.length > 0 && s.indexOf(l[0])<0?"'"+l[0]+"' ":"")},"")) alias gitclone jsb -p tri.native.run("git clone --depth=1 '" + JS_ARG + "' /home/me/prog/" + JS_ARG.split("/").slice(-1)) alias rsssave jsb -p tri.native.run('cat >> ~/.config/newsboat/urls', JS_ARG + "\n") alias openGithubNotifications composite js Array.from(document.querySelectorAll("li.list-group-item > span:nth-child(1) > a:nth-child(2)")).map(e => e.href) | jsb -p JS_ARG.forEach(url => tri.excmds.tabopen(url)) Edit: I assume native messaging has security implications you should probably consider if the browser is running directly with your system without any means of isolation like sandboxing with bubblewrap or better running under a virtual environment. [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Native_messaging https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web... [2] https://github.com/tridactyl/native_messenger https://github.com/tridactyl/native_messenger [3] https://github.com/cixtor/readability https://github.com/cixtor/readability [4] https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl/wiki/ https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl/wiki/
- 4y ago
rohitag13 4y ago
I find Surfingkeys to be much superior to vimium. Works consistently in all sites. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/surfingkeys/gfbliohnnapiefjpjlpjnehglfpaknnc https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/surfingkeys/gfblio...
- 000ooo000 4y ago
  For the privacy-conscious interested in SK, it may be worth a read of this GH issue: https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys/issues/1796 https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys/issues/1796 I empathise with the author wanting to make a buck but it's hard to reconcile the approach he took with the level of trust granted to this extension.
  - zmmmmm 4y ago
    it looks more naive than malicious ... I just donated to support him. But I agree, there is so much trust with extensions like this it isn't even about intent.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
djha-skin 4y ago
See also qutebrowser for a more immersed experience, or tridactyl if you're Firefox.
donkey-hotei 4y ago
I used vimium to get here and to type this messsage!
trojanalert 4y ago
[dead]
ElijahLynn 4y ago
I used to use Vimium, but switched to Vim-Scroll which is much lighter and didn't conflict with other shortcuts as much. Really great for j/k scrolling.
a_rahmanshah 4y ago
For Safari, there is port for this called Vimari https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vimari/id1480933944?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vimari/id1480933944?mt=12
payphonefiend 4y ago
Or you know, just use a browser like a normal person...
gloosx 4y ago
For me the killer feature is regexp search. It's a shame standard CTRL+F is doing just exact matching.
- unsignednoop 4y ago
  Remember when Opera had link search? Such a shame those features are dead nowadays
  - bovine3dom 4y ago
    Firefox has link search built-in, just press '
nrabulinski 4y ago
Every time this comes up I wonder why no one mentions qute and nyxt browsers which natively support those bindings and have much more minimal UI. I used to be a vimium user at first, then tridactyl but both fell short and felt hacky and for roughly a year now I’ve been using qutebrowser which is miles better.
- level87 4y ago
  I've tried qutebrowser, but always get frustrated with the lack of plugins like adblock.
  - nrabulinski 4y ago
    Qutebrowser has a builtin adblocker and while the ecosystem is much, much smaller than Chrome’s or even FF’s or Safari’s, I haven’t found it lacking to the point of being unusable. Just frustrating a little bit at first, but userscripts from the qutebrowser repo cover pretty much everything for me.
- rochak 4y ago
  I don’t think any of those browsers have the rich extensions I need. For this sole reason, they are out of the competition.
  - nrabulinski 4y ago
    Just out of curiosity, what extensions do you need for your day-to-day use?
    - yonrg 4y ago
      For me those would be required: tridactyl, ublock, foxyproxy. Optional ones: sidebery, stylus, cookieautodelete.
rspk 4y ago
One Vimium feature that I use a lot is the "Vomnibar". As a heavy bookmarks user, it lets me easily search for any existing duplicates before bookmarking a page by just pressing 'b'. If I start the search with "/<Space>", it will show the full path to the bookmark folder too!
- submeta 4y ago
  Been using Vimium for years, and just learned about searching paths in bookmarks via `/` (hitting `b` or `B`, then `/`). - Thank you very much for sharing.
- john_minsk 4y ago
  Always wondered what's this bar doing when accidentally pressing 'b' in the browser:-D Thanks!
- marliechiller 4y ago
  pressing 'o' will achieve the same thing but also allow you to search the internet as if using a google search (or your default search engine)
- senjin 4y ago
  Using `T` to search through open tabs is the best
int3 4y ago
Vimium was my introduction to software engineering :) I contributed a bunch of code to it back in 2011-2012. Glad to see it still being in use! I'm quite proud of the little test I wrote to figure out which DOM APIs could be used to detect the visibility of different kinds of elements, in order that we could display link hints correctly: https://github.com/philc/vimium/blob/master/test_harnesses/visibility_test.html https://github.com/philc/vimium/blob/master/test_harnesses/v...
- philc 4y ago
  You crushed it Jez! I wish we could work on more projects together.
  - int3 4y ago
    It was a great experience! Thanks for your code reviews and mentorship :) Not sure I'll have much time to work on OSS in the foreseeable future, but it would certainly be nice to work together again.
    - AzzieElbab 4y ago
      Thank you both. I have been minimizing mousing after injuring my shoulder. Vimium is a godsend to me
- edanm 4y ago
  Oh really? I've been using it for years and love it, so thanks for that!
- danielskogly 4y ago
  How fun! I'm also quite proud of another contribution, also related to detecting visibility, but this time with `document.elementFromPoint` to filter out elements completely covered by other ones :) https://github.com/philc/vimium/pull/2251 https://github.com/philc/vimium/pull/2251
- tambourine_man 4y ago
  Very clean code, extremely readable. If you can understand everything at first pass, that's gold.
askvictor 4y ago
How does it handle the find key-binding / being used by some sites (such as github) for site-search?
- omgwtfusb 4y ago
  You can hit `i` to enter insert mode, or add URLs/domains to a blacklist - works just fine most of the time
philc 4y ago
(I'm one of the authors) Love seeing this on HN today! It seems to get some front page attention every couple of years. Thank you everyone for the encouragement! Related: last week I published a very similar extension, but for Google Sheets. https://github.com/philc/sheetkeys https://github.com/philc/sheetkeys
- osense 4y ago
  This is cool! Do you have any plans for a Google Docs extension as well? Or do you mostly get by with Vimium there?
- michaelbuckbee 4y ago
  Hey, just wanted to say thanks for your work on Vimium. I have a lot of RSI issues from using a mouse and Vimium has been incredibly helpful in mitigating those. I think it's fair to say that between Vimium and a windows manager on OSX I've cut my mouse actions by 90%. Your work has had a profoundly positive impact on my life and I'm very grateful.
  - Viccro 4y ago
    I'm in a similar boat with RSI; Vimium is a huge help to me. What do you use for a windows manager?
    - michaelbuckbee 4y ago
      I use Divvy as it was the only one I found that had the ability to scale up to larger number grids. https://mizage.com/windivvy/ https://mizage.com/windivvy/ You can see the rest of my ergonomic aids here: https://twitter.com/mbuckbee/status/1463598464252665866 https://twitter.com/mbuckbee/status/1463598464252665866 - Kinesis Freestyle split keyboard tented and then tented even more with slanted yoga blocks - 4K monitor/tv to show multiple screens to reduce alt-tabbing - Magic trackpad mounted on a cellphone stand on the left of my keyboard (I'm right handed). This lets me use my non-dominant hand and requires less arm movement.
phonebucket 4y ago
I used to use a Vimium-FF (a Firefox version). I love the better browsing ergonomics. But, after some thought, I realise that allowing such extension simply requires trusting a third party app access to so much of my personal information. They (understandably) need the ability to read every page I browse. Vimium-FF even requires clipboard access. I do believe the authors have the best intentions. But the amount of trust I need to have in order for a third party app to have so much access to some of my most confidential information (online banking, emails etc.) is very very high.
powersnail 4y ago
The "f" mode in Vimium is just wonderful. I wish that I could have a system-wide keyboard just like that. I seem to remember in Windows 7, there was some sort of voice assistant, that could similarly put a label on every visible clickable element. That was for voice command, but would be great for keyboard navigation, too.
- eigart 4y ago
  I saw this for Windows here on HN once. I’m not sure this[0] is it, but the demo looks promising. [0] https://github.com/pit-ray/win-vind https://github.com/pit-ray/win-vind
- vinceguidry 4y ago
  Warpd is useful on Linux. https://github.com/rvaiya/warpd https://github.com/rvaiya/warpd
- rajishx 4y ago
  kitty kittens does that in terminal https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/kittens/hints/ https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/kittens/hints/ there is multiple easy-motions or variant implementation in the major editors
audunw 4y ago
I used Vimium for a while, mainly for the feature of opening links with the keyboard. But I never stuck with it, forgot to use it, because I really don't like the mode-switching and having it default to taking over keyboard input. Finally found Link Hints, which does only the link opening part, but better (IMO), and with normal keyboard shortcuts. Now I'm constantly using it. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/linkhints/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/linkhints/
- donatzsky 4y ago
  I use Key Jump. It's even simpler. Just hit , or . depending on if you want to open in the same or a new tab. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/key-jump-keyboard-navigation/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/key-jump-keyb...
- caspar 4y ago
  Modeless Keyboard Navigation[0] is a fork of Vimium by an RSI sufferer that doesn't have the mode switching element (but does keep all the other actual features); instead you use Control/Alt + whatever key combinations. Basically it's like Link Hints but with more shortcuts. 0: https://handsfreecoding.org/2017/11/22/extensions-now-available-for-both-firefox-and-chrome/ https://handsfreecoding.org/2017/11/22/extensions-now-availa...
airtag 4y ago
There's also a free, open source vim style browser called Qutebrowser which you can control like Vim if that's your thing. It works well, also with complicated web sites. https://qutebrowser.org/ https://qutebrowser.org/
- kataklasm 4y ago
  I have been using qutebrowser for some time now and it's pretty nice if you can accept having a browser without UBlock Origin and other extensions ranging from nice-to-have to obligatory. The main advantage and the reason and I can't get myself to switch to Firefox is that it's vim-UX is just flawless. It works amazingly well and is just magnitudes better than any Firefox or Chrome extension that adds vim-UX on top since it's built into the browser natively in qutebrowser. Maybe I'll switch away some time in the future, but for now the flawless vim-UX, its customizability and my many scripts and custom bindings I've written for it keep my locked in the qutebrowser garden, haha!
  - mpgarate 4y ago
    +1 my thoughts exactly. It would be so nice if Firefox allowed tridactyl full keyboard control. With qutebrowser, having a proper control mode and an insert mode that work everywhere makes it so much easier to navigate.
    - bovine3dom 4y ago
      Mozilla said they were happy to do that five years ago if we wrote the API. We started work on it here [1] but lost interest because there have always been more urgent things to do (and for me, the ctrl+comma escape hatch that gets you back to Tridactyl from anywhere in the browser is good enough). I think honestly most of the work in getting such an API merged would be political since most of the people who approved it are no longer at Mozilla. If anyone wants to pick it up I would be delighted to help. [1]: https://github.com/tridactyl/keyboard-api https://github.com/tridactyl/keyboard-api
  - szszrk 4y ago
    Qutebrowser seem to have some built-in support for adblocking, have you used that? I'm curious how it works. Tried it before, long long time ago, but found it to complex. But now after using Vimium for a while Qutebrowser actually seems very intuitive and not hard at all.
vegarab 4y ago
I love Vimium. Can't navigate a browser without feeling like I'm suffocating unless it is installed. Same with vim-keys in any text input field.
krmbzds 4y ago
I settled with Surfingkeys after I tried Vimium, Vimium C, Pentadactyl and Vimperator. Here's my Surfingkeys configuration as an ex-Vimium user: api.map('F', 'gf'); api.Hints.setCharacters("asdgqwertzxcvb"); It makes open in new tab behave like Vimium and f work like a toggle. Hope this helps someone looking for a better option migrating from Vimium. [0] https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys
- noname120 4y ago
  Could you expand on the advantages of Surfingkeys compared to the 4 other options that you mention?
  - krmbzds 4y ago
    SurfingKeys has way more features. It supports Firefox and Chromium-based browsers so I can keep a single config file for both (.config/surfingkeys/config). Vimium and Vimium C are good if you need basic Vim navigation capabilities. Pentadactyl and Vimperator (both discontinued) are Firefox-only.
codetrotter 4y ago
I used to use Vim-style key bindings in the browser in that past but haven’t for a while. Back then the browser extensions for Vim key bindings kept breaking now and then, and that’s a big part of the reason why I stopped using these extensions. Probably the situation is a lot more stable today. Another part of the reason that I stopped using these plugins I think is also because I do a lot of my browsing these days on my phone. And aside from that even when I am on the computer, I don’t really miss the feature in my browser. Maybe also because I use a laptop most of the time, and the trackpad of the Apple laptops are nice to use. Anyway, I still use Vim key bindings where it matters the most to me and that is in my editor where I write code and other text. One thing that I came to think of that maybe someone can answer. What happens if you try to run one of those Vim-in-the-browser sites, while at the same time you have Vim-style keyboard controls for the browser itself? For example this one: https://www.vimonlineeditor.com/ https://www.vimonlineeditor.com/
phforms 4y ago
I’ve been using Vimium for about a year now and really like it. I use it almost exclusively for fast keyboard-based scrolling, because I hate having to continuously rub my finger against a cold aluminium surface or spin a little plastic wheel to obliteration (maybe I’m weird). I know, arrow keys are a thing, but somehow I feel more at home with Vim keybindings. Vimium has a lot of other great functions, but I don’t use them often enough to remember them, maybe I should. However, I have to exclude it for a lot of webapps and websites where keybindings are used to trigger different events, which is sometimes annoying if you don’t know or forget about it.
rhymeswithjazz 4y ago
I've been using Vimium for years and while I don't use every feature that it has I feel completely lost on a machine that doesn't have it installed. Just the ability to scroll pages without having to take my hands off the keyboard is worth it for me.
bibanez 4y ago
I use the alternative for Firefox, Tridactyl, and it works like a charm. It helps me keep my hands in the keyboard for 90% of the time I'm browsing
gfiorav 4y ago
I couldn't live without this extension. I'm kind of surprised to see it in the frontpage, as I assumed many other folks here would use it daily (as in: it wouldn't be news). I know the authors are in the comments so let me say: thank you!
bitL 4y ago
Keyboard controls of Vim were one of the most atrocious things I had to endure as a sweng so it's sad to see a replication of this 70s tech derived from inflexible wooden keyboards making it to modern tech stack. Stockholm syndrome/addiction is strong...
- laci37 4y ago
  Keeping your fingers on the home row for basic navigation sounds pretty nice. It's not Stockholm syndrome, it's muscle memory.
_theskumar 4y ago
I've been using it for years. While I use it often, I resort to using the mouse, esp. because many interfaces require a lot of clicks and hidden and hover-based UIs. Maybe one day, I'll be to master this extension for all things, but it's hard for me naturally remember to use it. PS: I'm a moderate level user of Vim and use it for adhoc things.
SilasX 4y ago
I've been using extensions like this since 2009[1], when I went on a deep dive on how to do everything from the keyboard -- eventually leading me to register tyrannyofthemouse.com. Unfortunately, there's been a pretty clear shift in the web away from the interoperability that extensions like this need. I'm increasingly seeing elements that aren't detectable as clickable, or which do something different when you click via extension vs with the mouse. Firefox has compounded the problem by making tabs not apply your extension's changes in a tab until a document has loaded there. I used to be able to do most of what I needed from the keyboard and just occasionally supplement with the trackpad, but I finally relented a few years ago and got a mouse. [1] Was using tridactyl but decided to come back and give vimium another try after seeing this.
napoleonIV 4y ago
I just love this. I can't imagine browsing without it. Lately though I have started using Vimac which works for everything!
hackrnusr 4y ago
+1 Surfingkeys

441 points by kevmo314 4y ago

this is perfect for my usecase in firefox and mainly text only browsing, vim is perfectly designed to use the limited keyboard options and even more limited cognitive load humans can handle [alt shift ;) you know what i am talking about]

uptheroots 4y ago

Love Vimium! It's easy to ignore sites where you want to use their native keybindings, which is nice.

ernestipark 4y ago

This comes up every once in a while on HN. I've been using vimium for over 10 years now since I did an internship at the same company as the guys who created it. Can't imagine browsing the web without it. Works especially well with HN and those small link targets :)

jerpint 4y ago
I’m a big fan of vimium! Works great and consistent

prettyStandard 4y ago

Tried using this recently. Even though I use vim daily I haven't made good use of Vimium yet. In fact I found it more annoying because it naturally breaks sites that I do know keybindings for like YouTube. Overall I don't want to come across as critical of of something that just needs a little effort to use, more of just setting expectations. Normally this would be less of an issue but for me, I ran into this problem while on my rowing machine, and I didn't want to stop to fiddle with keybindings.

tagolli 4y ago
You might already know, but if you click on the extension icon, you can specify which pages to disable it for. I disable it in pages that have useful keyboard navigations. But it's great for things like HN, where I can use J/K to navigate, then hit F and open a link I want.
keyle 4y ago
I've used this in the past, and I've found that it's not a 1:1 replacement but rather an add-on to my browsing habits. It's great when having lunch with greasy fingers, I can do most things with one pinky press!
et1337 4y ago
The few times that happens to me I just hit “i” to enter insert mode and try again.
- khqc 4y ago
  I actually like using "i" to toggle enabling/disabling the extension, more convenient and powerful imo
donio 4y ago
It's very easy to add exceptions for individual sites, for example letting youtube have f for full-screen. You just click on the Vimium icon on toolbar and it pops up the dialog for that. You can do it in 5 seconds even while you are rowing.

friend_and_foe 4y ago

I'm not seeing a ":" command bar in any demos, is there one? I use Qutebrowser and it's fantastic, I even wrote some userscripts for it which are probably easier to build than web extensions.

Izkata 4y ago
IIRC Vimium was the one that was pure hotkeys, no commands. Waaay back when Vimperator died with Firefox Quantum, I tried a bunch of different addons that still worked and Vimium was probably the least powerful of them. Currently I use Vim Vixen[0]. It's still nowhere near as feature-full as Vimperator was, but nothing can be nowadays. My only real complaint about it is how link hints don't let you complete with the link text like Vimperator could - it's the one thing that as far as I can tell, no replacement supports even though it's a whole lot better. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vim-vixen/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vim-vixen/
- bovine3dom 4y ago
  Tridactyl does let filter links like that with `:set hintfiltermode vimperator` and `:set hintchars 1234567890`. Vim Vixen unfortunately has been unmaintained since May [1]. If anyone knows ueokande personally, could they let him know that I would be happy to help get some releases out? I sent an email yesterday but I am not optimistic as it seems like quite a few people have tried over the last few months. [1]: https://github.com/ueokande/vim-vixen/pull/1437 https://github.com/ueokande/vim-vixen/pull/1437
  - Izkata 4y ago
    Oh nice. I had to make a few other tweaks, like making j/k not scroll as far, but it looks like I'll just be using Tridactyl now. Edit: btw the hintfiltermode Tridactyl calls "vimperator-reflow" is what Vimperator actually did

aliencat 4y ago

I also recommended vimium-c (https://github.com/gdh1995/vimium-c https://github.com/gdh1995/vimium-c). It's like vimium on steroid: with a bunch of additional useful features.

mplanchard 4y ago
Came here to make the same recommendation, so just making this comment to second yours.
ashton314 4y ago
What does it add?
- dstanko 4y ago
  Presumably -c :)
N3cr0ph4g1st 4y ago
Any specific things you do with vimium-c that are must have features to switch over?
- philipphutterer 4y ago
  I use caret mode, visual selection and P quite often to search for the text in visual selection in a new tab with the preferred search engine. I also like yf for yanking a link to clipboard.
devsda 4y ago
Nice feature set especially the Contextual keymapping. Can think of some interesting use cases it enables. Offtopic: The section "Declaration for Applicable Regions" from ReadMe, this is the first time I've come across it. Should it be read as a disclaimer or an opinion?
woleium 4y ago
is pentadactyl still a thing? Edit: no, but tridactyl is: https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl

keyle 4y ago

For those looking to replace the mouse at the OS level on macOS (similar vibe), Scoot is pretty good for that... https://github.com/mjrusso/scoot https://github.com/mjrusso/scoot

gandalfgeek 4y ago
On MacOS I've been using homerow.app which does the same thing as Scoot but looks a bit more polished.
- TheLocehiliosan 4y ago
  I like Shortcat https://shortcat.app https://shortcat.app
- laserlight 4y ago
  Clickable: https://www.homerow.app https://www.homerow.app
meatjuice 4y ago
This is the very thing I’ve been looking for since vimac became proprietary (homerow). I was using Shortcat, which is also a proprietary software and I was having a little bit of concern mainly about security, but this software seems to solve the problem. Thank you for sharing.
GabrieleR 4y ago
Is there a Linux version? It looks very handful
- vinceguidry 4y ago
  It certainly would be but looking at the options tells me that they're hooking into MacOS's widget libs and on Linux there's just so many. What I get by with to go mouseless is Tridactyl for Firefox, warpd for when I need a pointer, and when I absolutely, positively need a mouse, mouse emulation on QMK keyboards never fails me. I only need it these days for dealing with MacOS outside of my Linux VM. I also use keyd in order to remap keyboard shortcuts. https://github.com/rvaiya/warpd https://github.com/rvaiya/warpd https://github.com/rvaiya/keyd https://github.com/rvaiya/keyd Why in the world are those links side by side?

jalino23 4y ago

I used this everyday for the past 3 years. can't imagine browsing without it

synergy20 4y ago
second this, same here.
tomerbd 4y ago
Third this, use it every day.

tastysandwich 4y ago

I used Vimperator on Firefox about 10 years ago. Back then it was fantastic, but I think the add-on environment has changed in FF (WebExtensions) since then and add-ons aren't as powerful. I've used Vimium on Chrome. Every few years I get excited, install it, feel 10x more productive, and then a few days later uninstall it. As I recall, it doesn't work on the New Tab page. It doesn't work if the address bar is in focus. I believe you have to wait for the page to fully load before you can use it. Most annoyingly, a lot of websites have custom keyboard shortcuts, so you have to blacklist them in the Vimium config. Eg Gmail, Miro. Then you need to remember you can't use Vimium on them. None of this is their fault in any way, of course. But it does make Vimium a bit annoying to use for me anyway.

joobus 4y ago
> Most annoyingly, a lot of websites have custom keyboard shortcuts, so you have to blacklist them in the Vimium config. No, you just need to enter insert mode. Hit `i`, then all the keyboard shortcuts for the site work. Exit insert mode with escape or ctrl+[.
- sodapopcan 4y ago
  :mind-unrectifiably-blown-emoji: Thanks for this, this changes everything. Namely, I can re-enable most commands that I've globally disabled. Who woulda thought the path to enlightenment would be to simply RTFM.
ithrow 4y ago
I can't let vimium go even as an emacs user ;) As someone else replied, insert mode.
julianeon 4y ago
What I have noticed is that the bottleneck in editor vs. browser is different, which explains why I don't use Vimium anymore either. In the editor speed matters: speed is a bottleneck. For example, if AI comes in writes a paragraph based on the function title, "bubble_sort_array", that's great, because now I've sliced 2 minutes off the 3 minutes that would ordinarily take. But in the browser, time is cheap; in fact, that's largely why I used the browser, to luxuriate in the time it takes to, say, read an article, or write a long comment. I'm there to take it slow, to escape the tyranny of efficiency. So when I'm there to relax, shaving 4 seconds off a 10 minute reading time is irrelevant. So I use shortcuts in my editor, but not my browser.

artful314w 4y ago

I get a lot of value out of this. I especially like that I can open a link in a new tab, just from the keyboard

qolop 4y ago

I've been using Vimium for quite some time now, and while I like it, there are two things which annoy the hell out of me. Vimium disables the browser's backward-forward cache (by listening to the "unload" event), causing navigation to be much slower. There is also no way for a website owner to warn a Vimium user of conflicting keybindings. I run a website which implements Vim keybindings and several of my users complain that it doesn't work. I have to remind them to disable Vimium. This issue has been open on their GitHub for more than 4 years with no end in sight.

omniglottal 4y ago
As the website author, you can see which extensions the client browser is running, no? Wouldn't that make it your responsibility to detect then disable your custom keybindings rather than the users's?
- daveidol 4y ago
  > As the website author, you can see which extensions the client browser is running, no? No, not really. Not unless it specifies certain `web_accessible_resources` which you try to load - but that's a bit of a hack, needs to be done on an extension-by-extension basis, and won't even work for all extensions.
- tempestn 4y ago
  I wouldn't think so. There are infinite ways for people to customize their browsers; it's not reasonable to expect website developers to account for them all. Plus in the case of your parent, their website implements vim keybindings, so basically all of them are going to conflict with this extension, and it's going to be pretty useless if they detect that situation and react by changing all of them to something non-standard.
- qolop 4y ago
  It's not possible to detect the presence of Vimium. https://github.com/philc/vimium/issues/2399 https://github.com/philc/vimium/issues/2399

devsda 4y ago

The home page doesnt make it obvious but there's a port for Firefox too. It does not compare directly with the old vimperator addon but it works great for regular browser navigation. The only occasional glitch I saw was in UI for adding site exceptions.

semi-extrinsic 4y ago
Tridactyl is the best Vim-control-plugin for Firefox, hands down.

S-E-P 4y ago

Trydactyl is mint for Firefox VIM experience

waz0wski 4y ago

For Firefox there's also https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl

the_pwner224 4y ago
I switched from Tridactyl to Vimium a while ago. Tridactyl is powerful and feature rich but more complex. Vimium does everything you need for normal usage and is super simple to set up (the default config is a very good base and you'll probably only end up making minimal changes over time).

belinder 4y ago

Been using vimium for years. I have gotten so used to scrolling pages at different speed by pressing keys that whenever I am using someone else's computer I have to fight muscle memory. I also use it for clicking links through keybinds, but really the custom up/down is the main usage. The occasional website having its own keybinds never stops being annoying, but it's easy to disable the extension per site

dmix 4y ago
100%. Scrolling with arrows/mouse instead of hitting j or k just feels uncomfortable. Maybe there's something to be learned by browser designers. It's not just the fact it's on the home row and muscle memory for Vim users. The default speed for down/up arrow scrolling and lack of smoothing is just not the same.
- sva_ 4y ago
  In vim, I usually scroll with ctrl-u/d?
  - dmix 4y ago
    Same but reading on the internet is not like scanning source code files. I tend to read much more linearly and the j/k scroll speed is fast enough. But obviously that's still an option.
  - Marrand 4y ago
    That also works in vimium afaik, just a quicker scroll instead of jumps though.
- bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
  I think most browser designers expect you to use the trackpad or a mouse wheel
- dingaling 4y ago
  > Scrolling with arrows/mouse instead of hitting j or k just feels uncomfortable. Page Up/Down?

hajola 4y ago

This looks amazing, but installing the Firefox extension I am worried about all the permissions it asks. I am surprised how comfortable people are signing off on these permissions. How do people at HN put these security worries to rest?

bspammer 4y ago
I guess for me it’s a combination of: * The extension has a genuine need for the permissions * It’s an old extension at this point, with known maintainers with names and faces * I really, really want the features
crabbone 4y ago
This (your fear) is a result of bad policy by Firefox. This is why a lot of useful add-ons or plugins died, and, overall, Firefox became a shittier browser. Neither Vimium nor SurfingKeys don't hold a candle to KeySnail because back in the days add-ons worked you could control the browser's chrome as well as a bunch of other non-HTML elements. Today, you cannot even use browser extensions to close a browser window if the page didn't load in it. These tools were intended for "power users", who could establish for themselves if the piece of code they want to use is doing something malicious or not. Also being an easy way to extend the browser without a need to recompile it and a need to understand a huge project with a ton of infrastructure... flushed down the drain. This reminds me about how Alan Key said in one of his interviews that if a motorcycle was invented today, it would've been outlawed right away due to safety concerns.
- hajola 4y ago
  Auditing each tool by ourselves would cost a lot of time. Not to mention that it would not be a one-time thing. At each update, another check would be required for "peace of mind". Curious to discuss if there is a way to trust these extensions without establishing ourselves that the code is not harmful.
  - crabbone 4y ago
    But you don't audit it entirely by yourself. Nor were you expected to before. It's the same idea as with other programs or add-ons you use. Don't you use some add-ons in the code editor you use not authored by the authors of the editor itself? And why would you believe the authors of the editor in the first place? Of course you need to do some due diligence, but it isn't anywhere near as taxing as you seem to think. Security is worthless if it prevents you from doing useful things. Given a choice between a chance of security breach and not being able to do the useful thing at all, in the circumstances like using a Web browser, I'd definitely choose to have the useful thing w/o security.

sva_ 4y ago

I once used Vimium and some bug caused the extension to permanently close my hard-earned ~500 tab collection. So while I feel like I lost a lot, I've never felt so much at peace since either.

johnhenry 4y ago
That used to be my solution for managing tabs in chrome. Every few months it would just crash, I'd lose all my tab, and I'd think "probably for the best". Now chrome is a lot more stable :/.
- bakuninsbart 4y ago
  This causes me some level of anxiety. An important end of day ritual for me is to close every tab I'm not 100% sure I will need the next morning.
  - samb1729 4y ago
    My approach is to use Firefox Nightly and restart it whenever it prompts me to do so. Keeps me at a low tab count :)
sodapopcan 4y ago
Holy shit... 500 tabs? I thought I was bad about accumulating tabs but had no idea ~500 was even possible. I'm trying to even but I literally can't--You might say "I literally can't even".
- Arelius 4y ago
  Honestly, I don't know how you all stay so low, I'm down to 1172, and getting it even that low feels like a bit of an accomplishment.
  - tyre 4y ago
    What are you doing with these tabs? Are they a reading list? Things like gmail that you could reopen whenever?

rbalicki 4y ago

I love being able to easily navigate between tabs (a/J and s/K for me), go back/forward (h and l), open the current tab in a new window, close the current tab, etc. though (of course) the killer feature is "link highlighting" or whatever it's called. You can also enable "link highlighting" where selecting a link copies the URL. I also find that occasionally useful! I can't use the web without vimium.

ehnto 4y ago
I also found it useful to have a link bind that just focuses the link element, often that can open up hover menus or trigger other focus/hover CSS changes.
- rbalicki 4y ago
  oh, that's neat! I'll try that.

ColonelPhantom 4y ago

I used to be a loving VimFX [0] user. It had intelligent link hints (essentially, links it thinks you are likely to want, e.g. because they're big, get single-key shortcuts). The scrolling was actually native, as in equivalent to hitting the arrow keys. I don't think any of the other Vim emulator plugins ever replicated that. Vimium doesn't, Tridactyl doesn't, and Vim Vixen was horribly broken. Apparently VimFX still runs via some hacks on modern Firefox versions? The last release was even in 2022. Maybe I should give it a try again. [0] https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx

bovine3dom 4y ago
What do you miss about native scrolling? IMO the scrolling in Tridactyl is better than native as it can work even when the page has put focus somewhere daft (like a pop-up).
- ColonelPhantom 4y ago
  It's more about 'feeling' native than actually being native. I managed to reinstall VimFX and it doesn't quite scroll like the arrow keys, either. But its scrolling speed still feels more natural than either Vimium or Tridactyl, although it's a bit slow. Tridactyl's huge jumps are annoying to me, as is Vimium's excess smoothness. In Vim, I hit j once to scroll one line, same as <down>.
  - bovine3dom 4y ago
    > Tridactyl's huge jumps are annoying to me You can change that easily with `:bind j scrollline 1` and `:bind k scrollline 1` :) The default bind was a conscious choice to break with tradition with Vimperator because everyone I knew rebound j/k to scroll further. I'm glad you got VimFx working though!
noname120 4y ago
I'd suggest to create an issue on the Vimium repo if the big button heuristic isn't implement / didn't get suggested yet.

kytazo 4y ago

For those using firefox there is tridactyl available as others have commented as well. They've gone a step further introducing native messaging [1][2] which opens up an endless ways of interacting with the underlying OS which makes implementing all sorts of useful day-to-day functionality such as personal automation a joyful breeze. For example, saving the current page in a local file can be as easy as: tri.excmds.exclaim_quiet ('echo "' + document.location.href + '"' > $HOME/notes') Sky is the limit given that you can interface with any page with JS and then pipe and process the output with any system utility or system context. A simple example for demonstration would be copying the contents of the body tag, piping them to a readability[3] util and have the output saved to a local vault. Or have a video played with mpv with a press of a button since you can invoke any of these functions be it custom or built-in targeting any element the same way you would follow a link by hinting. Here are a few other, pretty interesting use cases as seen in examplar custom user configurations taken from their github wiki[4] alias playAllVideos js tri.native.run("mpv --really-quiet --ontop --keepaspect-window --profile=protocol.http " + Array.from(document.querySelectorAll("a, iframe, video")).reduce((s, e) => {let r=(/^https?:\/\/((www.)?youtu((\.be\/)|(be\.com\/((embed\/)|(watch\?v=))))[^ ]+)|(.+\.webm)$/);let l="";if(e.tagName=="IFRAME")l=e.src.match(r);else if(e.tagName=="A")l=e.href.match(r)||e.innerText.match(r);else if(e.tagName=="VIDEO")l=[e.currentSrc?e.currentSrc:e.src];console.log(l);return s+(l && l.length > 0 && s.indexOf(l[0])<0?"'"+l[0]+"' ":"")},"")) alias gitclone jsb -p tri.native.run("git clone --depth=1 '" + JS_ARG + "' /home/me/prog/" + JS_ARG.split("/").slice(-1)) alias rsssave jsb -p tri.native.run('cat >> ~/.config/newsboat/urls', JS_ARG + "\n") alias openGithubNotifications composite js Array.from(document.querySelectorAll("li.list-group-item > span:nth-child(1) > a:nth-child(2)")).map(e => e.href) | jsb -p JS_ARG.forEach(url => tri.excmds.tabopen(url)) Edit: I assume native messaging has security implications you should probably consider if the browser is running directly with your system without any means of isolation like sandboxing with bubblewrap or better running under a virtual environment. [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Native_messaging https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web... [2] https://github.com/tridactyl/native_messenger https://github.com/tridactyl/native_messenger [3] https://github.com/cixtor/readability https://github.com/cixtor/readability [4] https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl/wiki/ https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl/wiki/

4y ago

rohitag13 4y ago

I find Surfingkeys to be much superior to vimium. Works consistently in all sites. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/surfingkeys/gfbliohnnapiefjpjlpjnehglfpaknnc https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/surfingkeys/gfblio...

000ooo000 4y ago
For the privacy-conscious interested in SK, it may be worth a read of this GH issue: https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys/issues/1796 https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys/issues/1796 I empathise with the author wanting to make a buck but it's hard to reconcile the approach he took with the level of trust granted to this extension.
- zmmmmm 4y ago
  it looks more naive than malicious ... I just donated to support him. But I agree, there is so much trust with extensions like this it isn't even about intent.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

djha-skin 4y ago

See also qutebrowser for a more immersed experience, or tridactyl if you're Firefox.

donkey-hotei 4y ago

I used vimium to get here and to type this messsage!

trojanalert 4y ago

[dead]

ElijahLynn 4y ago

I used to use Vimium, but switched to Vim-Scroll which is much lighter and didn't conflict with other shortcuts as much. Really great for j/k scrolling.

a_rahmanshah 4y ago

For Safari, there is port for this called Vimari https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vimari/id1480933944?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vimari/id1480933944?mt=12

payphonefiend 4y ago

Or you know, just use a browser like a normal person...

gloosx 4y ago

For me the killer feature is regexp search. It's a shame standard CTRL+F is doing just exact matching.

unsignednoop 4y ago
Remember when Opera had link search? Such a shame those features are dead nowadays
- bovine3dom 4y ago
  Firefox has link search built-in, just press '

nrabulinski 4y ago

Every time this comes up I wonder why no one mentions qute and nyxt browsers which natively support those bindings and have much more minimal UI. I used to be a vimium user at first, then tridactyl but both fell short and felt hacky and for roughly a year now I’ve been using qutebrowser which is miles better.

level87 4y ago
I've tried qutebrowser, but always get frustrated with the lack of plugins like adblock.
- nrabulinski 4y ago
  Qutebrowser has a builtin adblocker and while the ecosystem is much, much smaller than Chrome’s or even FF’s or Safari’s, I haven’t found it lacking to the point of being unusable. Just frustrating a little bit at first, but userscripts from the qutebrowser repo cover pretty much everything for me.
rochak 4y ago
I don’t think any of those browsers have the rich extensions I need. For this sole reason, they are out of the competition.
- nrabulinski 4y ago
  Just out of curiosity, what extensions do you need for your day-to-day use?
  - yonrg 4y ago
    For me those would be required: tridactyl, ublock, foxyproxy. Optional ones: sidebery, stylus, cookieautodelete.

rspk 4y ago

One Vimium feature that I use a lot is the "Vomnibar". As a heavy bookmarks user, it lets me easily search for any existing duplicates before bookmarking a page by just pressing 'b'. If I start the search with "/<Space>", it will show the full path to the bookmark folder too!

submeta 4y ago
Been using Vimium for years, and just learned about searching paths in bookmarks via `/` (hitting `b` or `B`, then `/`). - Thank you very much for sharing.
john_minsk 4y ago
Always wondered what's this bar doing when accidentally pressing 'b' in the browser:-D Thanks!
marliechiller 4y ago
pressing 'o' will achieve the same thing but also allow you to search the internet as if using a google search (or your default search engine)
senjin 4y ago
Using `T` to search through open tabs is the best

int3 4y ago

Vimium was my introduction to software engineering :) I contributed a bunch of code to it back in 2011-2012. Glad to see it still being in use! I'm quite proud of the little test I wrote to figure out which DOM APIs could be used to detect the visibility of different kinds of elements, in order that we could display link hints correctly: https://github.com/philc/vimium/blob/master/test_harnesses/visibility_test.html https://github.com/philc/vimium/blob/master/test_harnesses/v...

philc 4y ago
You crushed it Jez! I wish we could work on more projects together.
- int3 4y ago
  It was a great experience! Thanks for your code reviews and mentorship :) Not sure I'll have much time to work on OSS in the foreseeable future, but it would certainly be nice to work together again.
  - AzzieElbab 4y ago
    Thank you both. I have been minimizing mousing after injuring my shoulder. Vimium is a godsend to me
edanm 4y ago
Oh really? I've been using it for years and love it, so thanks for that!
danielskogly 4y ago
How fun! I'm also quite proud of another contribution, also related to detecting visibility, but this time with `document.elementFromPoint` to filter out elements completely covered by other ones :) https://github.com/philc/vimium/pull/2251 https://github.com/philc/vimium/pull/2251
tambourine_man 4y ago
Very clean code, extremely readable. If you can understand everything at first pass, that's gold.

askvictor 4y ago

How does it handle the find key-binding / being used by some sites (such as github) for site-search?

omgwtfusb 4y ago
You can hit `i` to enter insert mode, or add URLs/domains to a blacklist - works just fine most of the time

philc 4y ago

(I'm one of the authors) Love seeing this on HN today! It seems to get some front page attention every couple of years. Thank you everyone for the encouragement! Related: last week I published a very similar extension, but for Google Sheets. https://github.com/philc/sheetkeys https://github.com/philc/sheetkeys

osense 4y ago
This is cool! Do you have any plans for a Google Docs extension as well? Or do you mostly get by with Vimium there?
michaelbuckbee 4y ago
Hey, just wanted to say thanks for your work on Vimium. I have a lot of RSI issues from using a mouse and Vimium has been incredibly helpful in mitigating those. I think it's fair to say that between Vimium and a windows manager on OSX I've cut my mouse actions by 90%. Your work has had a profoundly positive impact on my life and I'm very grateful.
- Viccro 4y ago
  I'm in a similar boat with RSI; Vimium is a huge help to me. What do you use for a windows manager?
  - michaelbuckbee 4y ago
    I use Divvy as it was the only one I found that had the ability to scale up to larger number grids. https://mizage.com/windivvy/ https://mizage.com/windivvy/ You can see the rest of my ergonomic aids here: https://twitter.com/mbuckbee/status/1463598464252665866 https://twitter.com/mbuckbee/status/1463598464252665866 - Kinesis Freestyle split keyboard tented and then tented even more with slanted yoga blocks - 4K monitor/tv to show multiple screens to reduce alt-tabbing - Magic trackpad mounted on a cellphone stand on the left of my keyboard (I'm right handed). This lets me use my non-dominant hand and requires less arm movement.

phonebucket 4y ago

I used to use a Vimium-FF (a Firefox version). I love the better browsing ergonomics. But, after some thought, I realise that allowing such extension simply requires trusting a third party app access to so much of my personal information. They (understandably) need the ability to read every page I browse. Vimium-FF even requires clipboard access. I do believe the authors have the best intentions. But the amount of trust I need to have in order for a third party app to have so much access to some of my most confidential information (online banking, emails etc.) is very very high.

powersnail 4y ago

The "f" mode in Vimium is just wonderful. I wish that I could have a system-wide keyboard just like that. I seem to remember in Windows 7, there was some sort of voice assistant, that could similarly put a label on every visible clickable element. That was for voice command, but would be great for keyboard navigation, too.

eigart 4y ago
I saw this for Windows here on HN once. I’m not sure this[0] is it, but the demo looks promising. [0] https://github.com/pit-ray/win-vind https://github.com/pit-ray/win-vind
vinceguidry 4y ago
Warpd is useful on Linux. https://github.com/rvaiya/warpd https://github.com/rvaiya/warpd
rajishx 4y ago
kitty kittens does that in terminal https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/kittens/hints/ https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/kittens/hints/ there is multiple easy-motions or variant implementation in the major editors

audunw 4y ago

I used Vimium for a while, mainly for the feature of opening links with the keyboard. But I never stuck with it, forgot to use it, because I really don't like the mode-switching and having it default to taking over keyboard input. Finally found Link Hints, which does only the link opening part, but better (IMO), and with normal keyboard shortcuts. Now I'm constantly using it. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/linkhints/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/linkhints/

donatzsky 4y ago
I use Key Jump. It's even simpler. Just hit , or . depending on if you want to open in the same or a new tab. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/key-jump-keyboard-navigation/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/key-jump-keyb...
caspar 4y ago
Modeless Keyboard Navigation[0] is a fork of Vimium by an RSI sufferer that doesn't have the mode switching element (but does keep all the other actual features); instead you use Control/Alt + whatever key combinations. Basically it's like Link Hints but with more shortcuts. 0: https://handsfreecoding.org/2017/11/22/extensions-now-available-for-both-firefox-and-chrome/ https://handsfreecoding.org/2017/11/22/extensions-now-availa...

airtag 4y ago

There's also a free, open source vim style browser called Qutebrowser which you can control like Vim if that's your thing. It works well, also with complicated web sites. https://qutebrowser.org/ https://qutebrowser.org/

kataklasm 4y ago
I have been using qutebrowser for some time now and it's pretty nice if you can accept having a browser without UBlock Origin and other extensions ranging from nice-to-have to obligatory. The main advantage and the reason and I can't get myself to switch to Firefox is that it's vim-UX is just flawless. It works amazingly well and is just magnitudes better than any Firefox or Chrome extension that adds vim-UX on top since it's built into the browser natively in qutebrowser. Maybe I'll switch away some time in the future, but for now the flawless vim-UX, its customizability and my many scripts and custom bindings I've written for it keep my locked in the qutebrowser garden, haha!
- mpgarate 4y ago
  +1 my thoughts exactly. It would be so nice if Firefox allowed tridactyl full keyboard control. With qutebrowser, having a proper control mode and an insert mode that work everywhere makes it so much easier to navigate.
  - bovine3dom 4y ago
    Mozilla said they were happy to do that five years ago if we wrote the API. We started work on it here [1] but lost interest because there have always been more urgent things to do (and for me, the ctrl+comma escape hatch that gets you back to Tridactyl from anywhere in the browser is good enough). I think honestly most of the work in getting such an API merged would be political since most of the people who approved it are no longer at Mozilla. If anyone wants to pick it up I would be delighted to help. [1]: https://github.com/tridactyl/keyboard-api https://github.com/tridactyl/keyboard-api
- szszrk 4y ago
  Qutebrowser seem to have some built-in support for adblocking, have you used that? I'm curious how it works. Tried it before, long long time ago, but found it to complex. But now after using Vimium for a while Qutebrowser actually seems very intuitive and not hard at all.

vegarab 4y ago

I love Vimium. Can't navigate a browser without feeling like I'm suffocating unless it is installed. Same with vim-keys in any text input field.

krmbzds 4y ago

I settled with Surfingkeys after I tried Vimium, Vimium C, Pentadactyl and Vimperator. Here's my Surfingkeys configuration as an ex-Vimium user: api.map('F', 'gf'); api.Hints.setCharacters("asdgqwertzxcvb"); It makes open in new tab behave like Vimium and f work like a toggle. Hope this helps someone looking for a better option migrating from Vimium. [0] https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys

noname120 4y ago
Could you expand on the advantages of Surfingkeys compared to the 4 other options that you mention?
- krmbzds 4y ago
  SurfingKeys has way more features. It supports Firefox and Chromium-based browsers so I can keep a single config file for both (.config/surfingkeys/config). Vimium and Vimium C are good if you need basic Vim navigation capabilities. Pentadactyl and Vimperator (both discontinued) are Firefox-only.

codetrotter 4y ago

I used to use Vim-style key bindings in the browser in that past but haven’t for a while. Back then the browser extensions for Vim key bindings kept breaking now and then, and that’s a big part of the reason why I stopped using these extensions. Probably the situation is a lot more stable today. Another part of the reason that I stopped using these plugins I think is also because I do a lot of my browsing these days on my phone. And aside from that even when I am on the computer, I don’t really miss the feature in my browser. Maybe also because I use a laptop most of the time, and the trackpad of the Apple laptops are nice to use. Anyway, I still use Vim key bindings where it matters the most to me and that is in my editor where I write code and other text. One thing that I came to think of that maybe someone can answer. What happens if you try to run one of those Vim-in-the-browser sites, while at the same time you have Vim-style keyboard controls for the browser itself? For example this one: https://www.vimonlineeditor.com/ https://www.vimonlineeditor.com/

phforms 4y ago

I’ve been using Vimium for about a year now and really like it. I use it almost exclusively for fast keyboard-based scrolling, because I hate having to continuously rub my finger against a cold aluminium surface or spin a little plastic wheel to obliteration (maybe I’m weird). I know, arrow keys are a thing, but somehow I feel more at home with Vim keybindings. Vimium has a lot of other great functions, but I don’t use them often enough to remember them, maybe I should. However, I have to exclude it for a lot of webapps and websites where keybindings are used to trigger different events, which is sometimes annoying if you don’t know or forget about it.

rhymeswithjazz 4y ago

I've been using Vimium for years and while I don't use every feature that it has I feel completely lost on a machine that doesn't have it installed. Just the ability to scroll pages without having to take my hands off the keyboard is worth it for me.

bibanez 4y ago

I use the alternative for Firefox, Tridactyl, and it works like a charm. It helps me keep my hands in the keyboard for 90% of the time I'm browsing

gfiorav 4y ago

I couldn't live without this extension. I'm kind of surprised to see it in the frontpage, as I assumed many other folks here would use it daily (as in: it wouldn't be news). I know the authors are in the comments so let me say: thank you!

bitL 4y ago

Keyboard controls of Vim were one of the most atrocious things I had to endure as a sweng so it's sad to see a replication of this 70s tech derived from inflexible wooden keyboards making it to modern tech stack. Stockholm syndrome/addiction is strong...

laci37 4y ago
Keeping your fingers on the home row for basic navigation sounds pretty nice. It's not Stockholm syndrome, it's muscle memory.

_theskumar 4y ago

I've been using it for years. While I use it often, I resort to using the mouse, esp. because many interfaces require a lot of clicks and hidden and hover-based UIs. Maybe one day, I'll be to master this extension for all things, but it's hard for me naturally remember to use it. PS: I'm a moderate level user of Vim and use it for adhoc things.

SilasX 4y ago

I've been using extensions like this since 2009[1], when I went on a deep dive on how to do everything from the keyboard -- eventually leading me to register tyrannyofthemouse.com. Unfortunately, there's been a pretty clear shift in the web away from the interoperability that extensions like this need. I'm increasingly seeing elements that aren't detectable as clickable, or which do something different when you click via extension vs with the mouse. Firefox has compounded the problem by making tabs not apply your extension's changes in a tab until a document has loaded there. I used to be able to do most of what I needed from the keyboard and just occasionally supplement with the trackpad, but I finally relented a few years ago and got a mouse. [1] Was using tridactyl but decided to come back and give vimium another try after seeing this.

napoleonIV 4y ago

I just love this. I can't imagine browsing without it. Lately though I have started using Vimac which works for everything!

hackrnusr 4y ago

+1 Surfingkeys