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Comment by bovine3dom | Hacker News Reader

Coinciding with this release, Firefox 52 ESR is no longer supported, so no supported versions of Firefox support the legacy extensions.

I'm mentioning this here just so I can tell Vimperator / Pentadactyl / VimFx users that there are loads of options you can replace your old extensions with, some of which are... okay.

Links follow in increasing order of user-friendliness:

https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl [^]

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

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

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

[^] Disclaimer: I develop this one. If you've tried it before in the past, now might be a good time to try it again. We've just pushed out a release that moved quite a lot of code around, hopefully eliminating a whole class of bugs, especially relating to ignore mode and multiple windows.

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Thank you for your work. I'm currently a tridactyl user. However I'd like to point out that none of these replacements can currently compete with the previous extensions in term of usability.

Simply put, you cannot count on the keyboard shortcuts to work consistently throughout Firefox. They do not work in built-in pages (such as errors). They do not work when inside an input field in GTK. There's no way to consistently override built-in FF shortcuts that simply get in the way.

It's pretty sad for users which expect the keyboard experience to be consistent. I now mostly use FF's own shortcuts for most of the tab-management actions, since those are the only ones that work most of the time when an error page is generated.

Have you looked at xkeysnail [1]? I've heard it's OK but I haven't got around to trying it myself.

Personally I just hit Ctrl-W to close tabs when I get to somewhere I can't use it. `fixamo` and `set csp clobber` mean that I only really ever get trapped in PDFs (as I rarely open about: pages except to do a specific thing and then immediately close them).

[1] https://github.com/mooz/xkeysnail

Relevant WebExtensions metabug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215061 "Better keyboard shortcut support"

> They do not work when inside an input field in GTK.

I feel like this is a symptom of a larger issue: if Firefox is a GTK app (in Linux), why is it up to Firefox to decide how to resolve these inputs? Shouldn't it be GTK doing that? Ergo, shouldn't the "vi-ization" be occurring at the GTK level, and so apply to all GTK apps loaded by the user?

> They do not work in built-in pages (such as errors).

That's certainly dumb, though.

Worse is the unreliable working of vi-keys. Often enough focus ends somewhere on the page, and the vi-extension just stops working. I've yet to find a reliable way to gain input-focus again in those cases.

Sometimes this is our fault - there's a bug with our command line where it doesn't close properly and can steal focus (particularly `tabopen about:addons`). I am sorry about that. We're working on tearing it out and starting again as the command line has lots of problems.

Otherwise, it's usually YouTube. I just only interact with the videos using the mouse (or MPV via `;v`) and make sure to click outside them afterwards.

I do have a trackpoint on all of my keyboards, so I don't really notice having to click the mouse because it's just another keyboard button, so I might not be the most representative person here.

I don't think it's just that bug. I have a userstyle to mark the displayed element, so I sometimes see when something is grabing the focus, and neither tab nor ESC or Alt-l helps in those cases. But after some reseach I found out F6 can help there. Till now I thought it's just the same as Alt-l and only focus the addressbar, but turns out it can also unfocus it and switch focus between the different areas of firefox. I tested it in the last hour and it really worked in several cases where I was stuck in focus-hell.

Another Tridactyl contributor here! :wave:

I'm on a phone and it looks like bovine3dom is fielding questions so I'll just chime in with my pitch.

If you're willing to get your hands dirty in the name of power, please do give Tridactyl a go - the new webextension model limits add-ons pretty sharply, but I feel that Tridactyl pushes those limits much harder than the alternatives. It's one of the main reasons I'm on Firefox instead of Chrome. Tridactyl is also under more active and aggressive development ([1] vs. [2]); for example, I think that one of our other contributors is in the process of pushing a fix to Firefox's permissions API so we can get even closer to the line. If you want features or fixes, come on over to our issues page or chats and let us know!

1: https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl/pulse/monthly 2: https://github.com/philc/vimium/pulse/monthly

Hey. First I would like to thank you for the awesome work. I really enjoy using your plugin. Being a avid vim user it just makes it more easier right now. I do like to point out few issues that I have noticed so far.

1. key n used to traverse through all the found elements doesn't work properly.

2. The add on doesn't work when I am using pdf preview.

I believe I am using the most updated version of the plugin (last checked yesterday as of this comment).

I hope you look into this. If I am missing something please let me know.

Again thank you for the awesome work. If you have some time I would love to pick your brain about a few things.

1. is probably because you're using a Firefox feature. We don't have a find mode (well, we do, but it's terrible so I left it unbound). Ctrl-G/Ctrl-Shift-G cycle results in the Firefox feature. There are some function keys you can press too but I can't remember them.

2. Yeah. The annoying thing is it used to but apparently that was an oversight and there is some security hole there that Mozilla fixed. Amusingly, they have a secret god-mode permission that they give to their own Screenshot extension that makes it work on PDFs. A chap from OneNote was complaining about lack of PDF access the other day so maybe Mozilla will find some sort of solution.

We could bundle pdf.js with Tridactyl, hijack requests to PDFs and send you to our own reader, but I haven't been annoyed enough to resort to that as I personally just use Okular which is far better at rendering anyway.

Happy to chat in this thread or on Riot.

> Firefox 52 ESR is no longer supported

That is a bummer. I have pinned FF to 52 ESR so that the extensions I use keep working. I am running out of viable browsers.

Your addons look quite impressive. I use vim all the time. I had no idea that addon existed.

I've been on vacation, but right before I left, I read news to the effect that Mozilla would be removing legacy extensions from their extension listings "by early October" (seemingly, at the latest).

Is anyone backing up these things, both for continued use, e.g. by Pale Moon users or whomever else, and for history / the public record / study / etc.?

I am not aware of any such endeavour.

Pale Moon already has its own extension page [1], so if you care particularly strongly you might want to talk to them about it.

[1] https://addons.palemoon.org/extensions/

Have you considered Pale Moon? Do you thing it's usable/dependable?

I actually keep it installed because it's the easiest way of using Pentadactyl; I use it to compare behaviour with Tridactyl (e.g, looking for prior art for what a bind should be). As such I literally run it side by side with new Firefox. Honestly, it's just kind of slow. Mozilla have done a fantastic job in the last few years.

Thanks!

Have you tried Waterfox? I find it to be as good as FF 52

I did but a) 57+ is much quicker than 52; b) I couldn't actually get Vimperator to work, so I gave up and used Pale Moon for all my idea stealing needs.

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