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...
I'm a long-time user of Firefox Vim add-ons, but I agree that they just don't cut it any more. The best Vim-based browsing experience is currently offered by Vieb, IMO. It even has robust window-splitting tools, just like Vim.
Compare Qutebrowser's cheatsheet to Vieb's cheatsheet:
Hi, I'm the maintainer/"janitor keeping the lights on" for VimFx. It still works on up-to-date Firefox versions, as long as you copy a litte bit of javascript in Firefox' install directory[1].
> 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"
This is the single thing that makes the (current) Webextension framework unusable for such extensions, and the reason I keep working on VimFx.
Thank you! As I mention further down in the conversation, I use VimFX with Waterfox Current alongside Firefox. I'd rather just use Firefox though. I've been staring at those LegacyFox instruction more than one time. Being lazy I've just continued using Waterfox. Using LegacyFox means I have to build/make it after every update of Firefox, right?
> 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).
While the new limitations in WebExtensions can be limiting, these in particular don't sound insurmountable.
Firstly, while I haven't looked into Vimium's sourcecode (yet) there's no reason in my mind it shouldn't work while page is loading. Unless there's some Firefox bugs (VERY possible), the manifest `run-at: document-start` enables this. Other extensions make ample use of run-at and it has worked perfectly in my experience: things like Violentmonkey even expose it via their own API in the form of `@run-at` metadata and I haven't experienced any delays triggering that.
System pages are disabled by default but I believe there's an option either in Firefox prefs or in about:config to re-enable them. Inconvenient but not insurmountable.
> While the new limitations in WebExtensions can be limiting, these in particular don't sound insurmountable.
That sounds promising, but I haven't seen anybody solve it with WebExtensions yet. Just tried Vimium in Chromium too. Same problems.
The end user experience is worse than the picture I painted as my list of drawbacks was incomplete.
Here's another one... Say the server is offline or you mistyped a URL and you get to the "Hmm. We’re having trouble finding that site." page. You're stuck as your vim shortcuts don't work anymore.
It's like a friend that should just be there, but can't be trusted.
The "Hmm. We’re having trouble finding that site." page is considered one of the internal protected pages, so in theory toggling the appropriate setting to allow extensions on those pages should fix that issue.
Just for clarity, those "special" internal pages in the browser have privileged access to some specific user data, so the intent of having extensions off-by-default on them is to ensure extensions don't all have full access to all that data by default. However, this seems similar to extensions being disabled by default in Private Windows, which is easy to toggle, so I really wish they'd make special browser pages as easy to toggle.
I'm currently using tridactyl, but due to the webext limitations it's far from what even vimfx could do in terms of consistency.
On top of all you said, when you realize not only the browser has inconsistent shortcuts, but a webpage has the right to steal your keyboard shortcut and break the extension itself ...
Every time I use '/' and either it doesn't work because I'm in a field where the extension doesn't have access or in a website where it's redirected to the USELESS site search, I truly get mad.
I'm not even sure why I insist in trying, since there's no clear intention to allow such customization to ever work consistently in the future.
Hear hear, the shortcut stealing is so annoying. Github for example does this; Ctrl-k is some search within Github instead of focusing the search bar in Firefox.
Then we have this option to disable shortcuts in sites which fixes this, but that also disables all shortcuts of the Vimium extension...I want to use an extension like Vimium so badly and its almost there but these little things make it that in the end the whole extension is unusable.
Yes, there is, to block this by default, set 'permissions.default.shortcuts' to 2.
I just found out that doing that does not prevent shortcuts from the extension to work contrary to what I just posted although I'm sure that when I tested this yesterday it did...:) So this is a step in the right direction.
Then I'm still left with sites stealing focus preventing shortcuts to work. Even though Vimium has an option to prevent sites from doing it, it is not fool proof. YouTrack/Upsource for example insist on stealing focus, so when I'm happily switching tabs using shortcuts as soon as I stumble upon YouTrack/Upsource I have to grab the mouse again :'(.
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”..
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...
And, since plenty of other people are name dropping similar extensions/addons to Vimium (like Tridactyl, Vimari, Vim Vixen etc.), I might as well add they all suffer from the same shortcoming as Vimium C and Vimium-FF because they're all WebExtensions. VimFX is not.
FYI Qutebrowser is has a pretty good ad-blocker since 2.0
> Since version 2.0.0, if the Python adblock library is available, it will be used to integrate Brave’s Rust adblocker library for improved adblocking, based on ABP-like filter lists (such as EasyList). If that library is unavailable or on older versions of qutebrowser, a simpler built-in ad blocker is used instead. It takes /etc/hosts-like lists and thus is only able to block entire hosts.
Yes, but uBlock Origin is not only an adblocker. I can enter the element picker mode and remove parts of web pages that bother me. I use this a lot. Also, I have a hard time surfing without Tree Style Tab.
I'm using Vimium, there are some limitations but everything is much much faster than not using it and makes for a much better interaction with the browser.
Then just use lynx, who needs graphics anyways right? Also, you can switch tabs (ctrl (shift) tab) while loading. There is also an equivalent for pdfs, dont know what more would be required?
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...