

Mouseless Browsing in Firefox with Pentadactyl - garfield
http://mshared.tumblr.com/post/2856324781/pentadactyl

======
nphase
Vimium for Chrome is great:
[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/dbepggeogbaibhgn...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/dbepggeogbaibhgnhhndojpepiihcmeb)

~~~
babeKnuth
up until 3 days ago, i would have agreed. but after using pentadactyl since
then, there pretty much is no comparison. the whole browser is pretty much
accessible and configurable. it feels a hella lot more liberating.

being able to search your bookmarks, history, and even your files on you hard
drive QUICKLY and from within the browser is just a completely different
world.

and that's just one example....

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kilian
Some activity in the vimperator project (even if it's a fork) is great. I've
been using it for years, but some annoying bugs (that I've learned to live
with) continue to persist, such as the state reverting on page load. On most
sites, this is _after_ you're able to interact with the page. You could be
typing something in a form, then the state resets, and you press r only to
have it reload the entire page.

Edit: Just installed Pentadactyl, it's also much faster.

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bretthoerner
Is there anything like this but with Emacs bindings, for Chrome or FF?

Yes, I know of Conkeror, but leaving behind every other extension I depend on
(or wasting my time supporting hacks to make them work) just doesn't work for
me.

~~~
babeKnuth
keysnail <https://github.com/mooz/keysnail/wiki>

firemacs <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firemacs/>

i'm an emacs user, but i still recommend pentadactyl. you don't need that many
keyboard chords for browsing the porn.

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w1ntermute
Can anyone who's moved from Vimperator to Pentadactyl comment on how hard it
is to port your .vimperatorrc to a corresponding .pentadactylrc? I've got a
bunch of bookmarklets set up in my .vimperatorrc with custom shortcuts
(Readability, QR code generator, add to InstaPaper, etc.), plus a lot of
custom shortcuts.

One of the big things I like about Vimium is that it allows for lettered
hinting, which I prefer to numbered hinting (which is the only option in
Vimperator). Also, very annoyingly, you can't use "[" or "]" as shortcuts in
Vimperator - I'd like to use them to switch tabs to the left & right, but I'm
stuck using "{" and "}" instead. This is just a bug, but the low activity
level in Vimperator means there's no one around to fix it.

~~~
garfield
You'll rarely run into any errors from the switch but if you do, go ahead and
ask about it in the IRC channel (#pentadactyl on irc.oftc.net)

Also - if you'd like lettered keys, try setting the following option in your
.pentadactylrc:

set hintkeys='ASDFGHJLK;"

You'll lose the ability to type the hints' text to hit them.

~~~
chousuke
Actually, any key that you don't use as a hintkey can still be used to narrow
down the hints. I use lowercase hint keys, and I can hold shift and type the
link text (as the matching is case-insensitive, but the labels are not). It
works very well.

For aesthetic reasons I like to render the hint labels in uppercase. It can be
done by adding text-transform: uppercase; to the Hint selector with :highlight

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ZeroGravitas
So this article prompted me to upggrade to Firefox 4 and from Vimperator to
this. I've noticed one annoying bug:

If I start typing the first few letters of a site I want to visit then hit tab
to complete it the highlight jumps to the first item in the list just before
the tab completion kicks in. So the site I want to visit is highlighted, but
the command line at the bottom shows a different site (the top entry if I tab
complete from nothing) so it keeps sending me to the wrong site. Am I doing
something wrong?

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tumba
I tried this and was very impressed. However, I'm primarily an emacs user and
switching back and forth is jarring. Can anyone recommend a similar Firefox
add-on patterned after emacs?

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husted
Looks nice. However I much prefer LOL (<http://elder-gods.org/lol/>) which
brings up numbers next to all links. Pentadactyl does this too and much more.

Never got a hang of VIM but there's been a lot of writing about it lately.
Perhaps I should give it a try soon.

~~~
garfield
I suggest you start with vimtutor. It's a great introduction.

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garfield
My .pentadactylrc file is linked at the bottom of the post but if you missed
it -
[https://github.com/mattsacks/dotfiles/blob/master/pentadacty...](https://github.com/mattsacks/dotfiles/blob/master/pentadactylrc)

~~~
nickknw
Just curious about that Shortcuts section in there - what's that for?

It almost looks like it's doing the same thing as the quickmarks (:he
quickmarks).

~~~
babeKnuth
where? the "command...." entries? those are basically javascript bookmarklets
that are typically installed in your bookmarklets bar, but have now been
assigned their own command. e.g., just type

:postToPinboard

when you want to bookmark the current page.

~~~
nickknw
Sorry, should have been more specific. In your .pentadactylrc, under the
Shortcuts section, where the first line is `map <Leader>r :o read<CR>`.

It looks like this is so that when you type <Leader>r, you go to google reader
or something. Is that right?

With quickmarks, you press `Mr` or `M<buffer>` while you're on a page to set
it, then `mr` or `m<buffer>` to go back there. It's pretty sweet :)

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remi
If you are using Pentadactyl on OS X, my pentadactyl-files
(<https://github.com/remiprev/pentadactyl-files>) include a "feline"
colorscheme which is more Mac-like.

~~~
spiffworks
How does this extension behave with Gmail shortcuts? I love keyboard
navigation in Gmail and would hate to lose it.

~~~
garfield
If you read the post, I detail how to allow keyboard shortcuts per website to
pass through the addon and go to the website.

Look for ":set passkeys"

~~~
spiffworks
Whoops. Read right over it. Thanks for clarifying.

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unicornporn
The Firefox extension "Mouseless Browsing" should really be mentioned here!
<http://www.mouseless.de/index.php?/content/view/14/26/>

~~~
babeKnuth
it is mentioned.

"pentadactyl".

:)

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dataminer
This is a great alternative to vimperator, just switched to pentadactyl and
really like numbered hinting.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
I'm planning to switch from Vimperator to this when I install Firefox 4,
however, I already have numbered hinting when I hit _f_. Is it different in
some way?

~~~
BCM43
It's still f. It just looks a lot nicer.

~~~
rue
…It looks pretty much exactly the same.

I had continuous problems with Vimperator on FF4, thus far Pentadactyl's been
a bit more stable although occasionally it seems to get deactivated altogether
and I need to restart the browser.

~~~
BCM43
Actually, I just realized that the nicer look is only is in the nightlies
right now.

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jokermatt999
I've found that binding J and K to switching tabs makes things much easier.

~~~
sudont
That's one of the few things Safari actually does (somewhat) well. ⌘-] , while
not single key, makes tabbing fairly easy.

~~~
jokermatt999
I actually find that to be more awkward than ctrl+tab, which is Firefox's
default. I just find J and K to be less of stretch for my pinky.

~~~
sudont
Actually, I tried it and ctrl+tab is on by default in Safari as well.

However, thanks for letting me know it exists in FF.

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alnayyir
Like vimperator, too slow to feel usable. The delay in hitting F to getting
links is way too deep into human perceptibility to be anything other than
irritating.

The highlighting drives me mad too, and no I don't care if it can be shut off.
The slowness already killed my enthusiasm.

Is there something about how Firefox interacts with plugins that vimperator
and now Pentadactyl can't seem to get the performance down?

~~~
babeKnuth
are you using something else that is faster (for comparison)?

are you on a netbook? low on RAM? everything feels fairly responsive on my
end.

~~~
alnayyir
I've got a macbook pro with 4 gb of ram, a linux laptop with quad-core + 6gb
of ram, and a CR-48.

On the mac and the linux machine, it was too slow to be usable.

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xd
I would have gone with the default gamer movement keys (w,s,a,d) for scrolling
up, down, left and right; respectively.

~~~
spacemanaki
Vimperator and Pentadactyl are inspired by Vim, so that wouldn't make any
sense. (w is move forward by a word, s is delete char under point and enter
insert mode, a is insert after point, and d is the delete action)

~~~
xd
I did say _I_ rather then _They_. I wasn't attempting to criticize; just
giving my opinion is all fella.

