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Comment by wodenokoto | Hacker News Reader

The idea sounds intriguing, but I fail to see how `:back` is easier or faster than `cmd+LeftArrow` or how `:open url.com` is faster than `cmd+l url.com` or `cmd+t url.com`

What is the killer feature here?

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What? Do the docs on the page really say that[0]?

':back' is mapped to 'H' -- in correspondence to the usual Vi/Vim paradigm to move the cursor with the home-row keys, hjkl. ':open' is naturally mapped to 'o' and drops you into a tab-completable shell. ':tabopen' -> 't' and so on.

The key part, as in Vim, are /not/ the mnemonic, highly effective shortcuts. Rather, it's the modal workflow that Vim and it's spritual descendants bring to the table. I'll leave it at that (sounding like a damn preacher already).

[0] Now that I've looked at it, it becomes clear that they're selling rather directly to Vim-acolytes. Pity, perhaps.

The 2 killer features for me are:

    1. Vi(m)-like keybindings
    2. Portable configuration (dotfile)

Like Vi(m), there are standard keybindings mapped to common commands, plus the ability to create your own. My fingers never have to leave the keyboard to navigate the Web, unless I have to interact with certain plugins.

Vimperator reads its configuration from a ~/.vimperatorrc file when it launches. I keep this in version control like the rest of my dotfiles, so I can deploy it to any machine for a reproducible environment. It supports setting Firefox preferences (about:config settings), bookmarks, search engines, etc. I have mine set to remove all the browser chrome, so Firefox has looked almost exactly the same to me since 2009.

For example, I have a bookmark defined for Hacker News in ~/.vimperatorrc:

    bmark -keyword=h -title="Hacker News" https://news.ycombinator.com/

Now I can open Hacker News by typing 'oh' ('th' if I want it to open in a new tab), then 'f<n>' to follow a link where <n> is the number highlighted over the link (which decreases if you start typing some letters found in the link text).

I can create searches, as well:

    bmark -keyword=g -title="Github" https://github.com/search?q=%s

Now I can type 'ogvimperatorrc' to find interesting configurations on GitHub.

The tab completion is great, so don't feel you have to limit keywords to a single letter.

I'll be really sad if/when Vimperator becomes incompatible with Firefox. At least there are other extensions or browsers that provide some of the same functionality.

Another way to perform similar operations: Firefox's bookmarks support very similar keywords (or maybe the same ones). For example, to use a bookmark keyword to HN:

  1) Create a bookmark to Hacker News
  2) In the bookmark's properties, in the keyword field,
     type: h
  3) In Firefox's main UI, type ALT+D to move focus to
     the URL field, then type: h

To search Github (I'm assuming the URL in the parent is correct):

  1) Create a new bookmark
  2) In the address field, type:
     https://github.com/search?q=%s
     (in case it's not obvious, you can use the
     %s variable in any URL)
  3) In the keyword field, type: g

  Then you want to search Github:

  4) In Firefox's main UI, type ALT+D to move focus to
     the URL field
  5) In the URL field, type: g foobar
     You'll soon see a Github search for foobar

>"What is the killer feature here?"

The killer feature is being able to navigate around the web without using a mouse. Some people don't like switching between the keyboard and the mouse and would rather use their keyboard most/all of the time. That's who Vimperator is for.

With the examples you gave there's already good keyboard shortcuts for those actions, but in most browsers there aren't decent keyboard shortcuts for selecting links. You can use the tab key to cycle between links, and some websites have extra support for keyboards (for example, Google allows you to navigate through search results using arrow keys), but tools like Vimperator allow you to select any visible link with a small number of keypresses.

Here's a simple example, showing one way to navigate to a link posted on HN:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy2as2mBrMM

Using j and k to scroll is really nice. One of my favorite things is that you can use marks. I'll mark where I am while reading, scroll back to check something, and then jump back to my mark. It's very handy.

How have I used Vimperator for years and not known about mark support?!? Thank you!

I don't use ":back" (because using "H" from normal mode is better) but having a command line in your browser is awesome! Firefox has much better address bar than Chromium (which seems to be designed to maximize the number of Google searches from the browser), which does smart auto complete with fuzzy finding and search engine completions for lots of sites and vimperator makes really good use of this.

Example use case (which I use daily): press "o w<tab>" which is short for ":open wikipedia" and then type in your Wikipedia search, and you get smart autocompletion from Wikipedia. Much faster and better than doing a Google search and clicking the first link (while looking at a few ads).

You can also use `H` for back and `o` for opening the URL prompt, among others. That requires you to be in the insert mode for typing in input boxes or interacting with the website you're on via keyboard shortcuts though.

I haven't used vimperator for a long time, but in petadactyl you can use C-o and C-i to go back and forth, respectively. The key bind matches pretty well to what it is in Vim too.

You can just press `o' to open instead, plus you can add your own key bindings. My favorite feature is probably the buffer searching if you have a lot of tabs open, and the link highlighter when you press `f' or `;’.

Usually you map single characters to commands like that in your .vimperatorrc

Is that a joke or can you actually do that?

You can. I used to be a Vimperator user few years ago. Left because I felt it made browser a bit slow.

yes, you can definitely do that. I'm using the chrome version (vimium) but have back mapped to capital h (for history)

Not a joke. Here's something I posted in a recent thread to disable/enable CSS in web pages with the s / shift-S key (perhaps because CSS makes a particular website worse).

    nmap s :emenu View.Page Style.No Style<CR>
    nmap <S-s> :emenu View.Page Style.Basic Page Style<CR>

You could assign the 'b' character to the :back command, or use the default shift-H. If you want to go back 4 pages, you can simply type "4 o", just like in vim.

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