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Comment by vortico | Hacker News Reader

Version 1.0.0 was released today, check it out! This is definitely the best hackable browser out there. It combines QtWebEngine and Python, which are incredibly stable yet fast to develop in.

It's a great alternative to what's left of the Firefox genocide of extensions, where only VimFX and Saka Key exist.

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"Genocide"? Well there's a new low in English word usage.

> The systematic and planned extermination of an entire group.

Sure, technically it only applies to an ethnic/political/racial/etc group of humans, but it's not _that_ far-fetched to apply it to the systematic and planned extermination of an entire group of software (in this case Firefox add-ons).

First they came for Greasemonkey, but I did not speak out, because I was a Scriptish user...

It has some negative connotations worth disagreeing with, though. I for one am pro-Webextensions (WE) because the legacy APIs gave all addons unlimited privileges and kept Firefox internals from improving. WE apis have come miles; even Tree Style Tabs has a WE alternative.

I am hopeful for Qutebrowser, though; the dev is working on an interesting approach to extending the browser without WE support by allowing "userscripts" (not the Greasemonkey-esque ones). They can be written in tons of different languages. [Relevant documentation](https://qutebrowser.org/doc/userscripts.html).

i think maybe we should keep "genocide" reserved for people, or at least wait on applying it to software till we think that software might be sentient. linguistic inflation sort of sucks [0].

[0] http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/is-linguistic-inflati... ("linguistic inflation" is a term that i've been using in my own head for years without using it in conversation, so i'm glad to see others have the same complaint)

Right! Linguistic inflation has literally decimated the English language! /s

I think I sometimes confuse it with hyperbole.

Exaggeration is very common to provide color to otherwise boring language. In this case, it personifies Firefox plugins to describe exactly what is happening to them, to avoid saying something like "makes them incompatible with future releases" which doeosn't do enough grace to represent the amount of work plugin developers have put into the these plugins to have them no longer supported.

I think the intent is clear, it’s the word choice which some may find tasteless.

For example, a person who survived an actual genocide may find your analogy to be shallow because where you’ve lost some extensions due to a browser upgrade, they’ve lost everyone they love due to them having been hacked to death with machetes, or gassed, or worked to death in forced labor camps.

I don’t know, maybe they just need to get over it?

If you or someone else took offense to my word choice because of having personal connections with genocides, and that the horrible concept is brought to their mind after reading my post, I would have happily changed it during the editable time to prevent others from having similar negative thoughts. However, I do not give a bit of concern to people who get offended for others and have no actual personal connection with the word and thus have no real negative thoughts. They are as privileged as I am for being able to say the word and not be bothered by the connotations.

> people who get offended for others and have no actual personal connection with the word and thus have no real negative thoughts.

That could better be described as a capacity for empathy, particularly in the context of genocide. "No real negative thoughts" is your assumption.

A capacity for empathy, and a greater capacity for putting words in people's mouths. The assumed offense is what needs to be proven, not the lack of it.

By the same token, there exist many people who seek reasons to be offended. They will find offense no matter what you say. They will clamor in groups to be more outraged than the last. I try to disengage from those types of people.

I'm reluctant to use the term, but it applies. It's 'virtue signaling' and I presume it gives people an ego boost or a rush of endorphins. I doubt they really care, or have any true investment, they just want you to know they are morally superior and their peers to see them standing up for a cause, no matter how absurd.

My conclusion is, if you seek umbrage, you will find it.

I personally didn't take 'offence'. That would be objection in the domain of social manners, which was considered important in the Victorian era schools, but has somewhat dropped in esteem since.

My objection is in the domain of ethics, as I think taking genocide lightly is an ethical problem for all of us (that is, for humanity, which I take to include you).

> I am ... able to say the word and not be bothered by the connotations.

Quite.

Quick update on that: I just released v1.0.1 which fixes some bugs introduced in v1.0.0:

- Fixed starting after customizing `fonts.tabs` or `fonts.debug_console`.

- Fixed starting with old PyQt versions compiled against newer Qt versions.

- Fixed check for PyQt version to correctly enforce 5.7 (not 5.2).

A great successor to Vimperator is on the works now:

https://github.com/cmcaine/tridactyl

Rather off-topic question: aren't WebExtensions meant to work on all browsers? I don't see either Chrome extensions working with Firefox 57 or the reverse.

as I understand it webextensions are aiming to be a superset of chrome extensions.

WebExtensions are a common extension format/API, i.e. Chrome extensions are WebExtensions.

However, each browser vendor has their own specific additions, and hopefully Mozilla will add some things addons like Vimperator would need, see e.g. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215061

Shouldn't be a problem here, as QtWebEngine is Chromium.

Firefox and Chromium will never support full keybinding-driven navigation. WebExtensions severely limits when keys can be captured, so there are many cases where they cannot be used: when the addressbar is focused, while pages are loading, etc.

Qutebrowser keybindings essentially have full control over the page at all times.

FWIW some people from the Tridactyl project are working with Mozilla at getting a better keyboard WebExtension API for Firefox: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215061

It's going quite slow however...

Some WebExtensions will work in all browsers. Other WebExtensions will only work in certain browsers that offer a capability that the extension needs. Kind of like webstandards have always worked.

For example, Opera and Firefox support the Sidebar API, which allows essentially arbitrary HTML pages to be placed in, you guessed it, a sidebar. Chrome does not support this, because they supposedly just don't want to have sidebars in their browser (it's not exactly an unsolvable task to implement).

Overall, Firefox will support the most extension APIs, but even there not all extensions will work, because there's always going to be some APIs that only make sense in one specific browser.

Lastly, it is necessary for the extension authors to port their extension. The work they have to do for porting might often be as minimal as just repackaging, testing and then uploading to the other browser's extension webpage, but they do have to do it.

So, this is going to cut off many extensions, too. If they're unmaintained, no one's going to port them. And Mozilla has much stricter policies for telemetry, ads etc. in extensions, too, so another chunk of extensions won't get ported for that reason.

If there is a specific Chrome extensions that you care for getting ported and it's unmaintained, then you can try it with Chrome Store Foxified [1], which will do the repackaging automatically. The testing you'll have to do yourself and then the fixing of potentially broken things and uploading, that depends on the license of the extension, if you're allowed to do that.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-store-...

I am using Vimium-FF on Firefox 57.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimium-ff/?sr...

VimFX is dead.

A shame really. VimFX is so critical for my workflow that I am not going to upgrade to FFv57 just because of this.

FF Extended Support Release will provide bugfixes for v52 until June 2018.

I've switched to it with Pentadactyl while hoping there will be a useable API for proper Vim plugins by then.

What's your typical workflow in your browser ?

I use VimFX on FF, i3-wm as my window manager and vim for writing code.

It's mouse free nirvana.

Is there a good alternative for VimFx?

vimium

There's Vimium-FF and Saka Key at the moment:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/vimium-ff/ https://key.saka.io/

Also, Tridactyl is at the planning stage and working with Mozilla on a better keyboard WebExtension API:

https://github.com/cmcaine/tridactyl https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215061

edit: Oh, looks like Tridactyl has quite some code already. I'm not sure if it's runnable yet, though.

Saka Key seems to be using different keybindings than VimFx, Vimium, Vimperator, etc. For example, Saka Key uses `n` to open a new tab[1] whereas others use `t` to open a new tab. I am more used to the latter. So I decided to ignore this and try Vimium instead.

Vimium is good but one thing about Vimium annoys and I don't know a good workaround for it. If I create a new tab, the focus goes to address bar and then there is no convenient way to escape back to normal mode. I know this is a restriction due to the new webextensions. Anyone got any ideas to overcome this limitation?

[1]: https://key.saka.io/tutorial/tabs

Just wanted to mention, one of the unique features of Saka Key is that it lets you define keybinding profiles that are easy to switch between, and there are multiple profiles built in, including one that mimics Vimium.

The address bar autofocusing is annoying. Best advice I have is to replace your new tab page with a URL or a custom new tab extension.

Also, I devised the default keybindings with three goals in mind.

1. Common keys should be easy to reach.

2. Users unintentionally trigger dangerous commands (like close the current tab). To prevent this, I bind dangerous commands to 2 key sequences.

3. Users not being able to remember keybindings. To help users remember, I try to associate commands with an intuitive key, e.g. Zooming is mapped to z.

Saka key author

Thanks for mentioning us, Florian.

We're aiming to get Tridactyl to feature-equality with Vimium and Saka-Key by the end of this weekend. (We are runnable now, but it's not a fantastic UX)

We hope to match or exceed the current WebExtension state of the art (cVim) by the FF57 release date (Mid November).

Our longer-term roadmap depends on how responsive Mozilla are to our feature requests. They've suggested that our two most important API extensions could be merged in FF58 (Jan 2018? I forget), but we'll have to see.

If you don't want to run other WebExtensions or Firefox, Qutebrowser offers a really good solution :)

Great news! I added it to https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser#active now.

Now I wonder, where does the Penta -> Tri come from? Is it intended to be usable with three fingers? (SCNR)

Because we'll only be 3/5ths as good :)

Or maybe because we're only trying.

https://riot.im/app/#/room/#tridactyl:matrix.org/$1507907809...

While not a full replacement, QuantumVim is better than nothing:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/quantumvim/

QuantumVim hasn't seen any activity in the past year: https://github.com/shinglyu/QuantumVim

But there's Saka Key, Vimium-FF and Tridactyl.

Yes, Qutebrowser. :P

Whoops, I meant to say Vimium-FF. Vimperator, VimFX, etc are dead.

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