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Comment by twistedanimator | Hacker News Reader

I used to be a user of pentadactyl, but never liked how it changed the entire look of the browser. Just last a couple of days ago, I found VimFx which is exactly what I always wanted. It's also open source at https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx

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I am currently trying hard to like vimfx but what kills the whole fun for me is the lack of any 'comfortable' jump to tab. It has one with hinting but useless if you keep your browser in fullscreen. The whole " we don't modify the browser" surviving strategy does nothing for me. I liked the way vimperator/pentadactyl did it. the browser should be nothing but a window to a page. no need for that bar and for the hanging tools like pocket, some fancy download progress or one that shows how many ads were captured. for titlebar one has to fight microsoft as well. really hoping usable vim+inspired browsers do not become extinct. they dont need a corp. behind them, they only need us.

I'm the other way around: I tried switching from Vimperator to VimFx for a week, but couldn't really make myself compatible with it. I'm too used to browsing with toolbars=none[1] and browse almost exclusively via Vimperator command line. I found VimFx still not enough to be used with everything hidden.

Too bad that Vimperator will most likely stop working once Mozilla deprecate XUL addons in Firefox 57[2].

[1]: https://files.grid.in.th/0EEhIG.png

[2]: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2016/11/23/add-ons-in-2017/

I switched to VimFx so I could get electrolysis working. I had to tweak scrolling speed quite drastically and and there are some behavioural differences which means I have to unlearn some muscle memory. However, with the classic theme restorer addon the UI is compressed enough that it doesn't bother me much and I can use the keyboard for almost everything.

I still wish I could have the command line back though. Annoyingly Firefox actually includes some sort of command line thing when I press :, but it seems to be only for web developers. I'd be happy if Mozilla provided a way to extend that so that it could be used for actual browsing...

I switched to VimFx recently for the same reason. Actually, the ":" shortcut for the GCLI command line is a VimFx shortcut, not a standard Firefox one. The GCLI can be customized. See for example:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/GCLI/Writing_...

I added a command to toggle a preference in about:config that I switch often. It is kind of a pain to write and debug commands for the GCLI though (compared to writing javascript mapping in Pentadactyl).

Thanks for that. Unfortunately the documentation neglects to even link to API documentation for the objects that get passed to the gcli functions or even mention their types, so I guess I'm supposed to use some sort of console with print debugging to figure out what I can do with them... too bad it seems Firefox' built-in browser console just shows up blank.

How do you make the tabs go away?

In Vimperator, :set toolbars=none will hide the tabs. If you mean the extra blank space at the top left by hidden tabs, then go to customize menu (:dialog customizetoolbar or burger menu next to address bar → customize) and enable Title Bar[1]. It will hide the extra space when use with toolbars=none.

[1]: https://files.grid.in.th/UHj8F1.png

Thanks! I've been wondering about that for some time.

When that day comes, move to Pale Moon

Seconding VimFX. Works pretty much out of the box without having to relearn how to use the browser.

It's real easy to get the default look back. Hit ":" for the commandline and then enter setguioptions+=mrB.

One of the coolest things about pentadactyl is that I can make any combination of the UI into keyboard shortcuts (or a modular key chord) to toggle visibility when needed.

A vote for VimFX from me as well.

I used to be a Vimperator user, but lately I've found it too buggy to use. Even the help pages do not function properly.

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