Mouseless Browsing in Firefox with Pentadactyl | Hacker News Reader

Mouseless Browsing in Firefox with Pentadactyl

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71 pointsgarfield50 comments

Vimium for Chrome is great: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/dbepggeogbaibhgn...

up until 3 days ago, i would have agreed. but after using pentadactyl since then, there pretty much is no comparison. the whole browser is pretty much accessible and configurable. it feels a hella lot more liberating.

being able to search your bookmarks, history, and even your files on you hard drive QUICKLY and from within the browser is just a completely different world.

and that's just one example....

It is - the way you enter passthrough mode for domains in Vimium vs. passkeys for Pentadactyl is what makes the difference for me. Being able to still use the plugin when I'd like to and when I don't is perfect.

Some activity in the vimperator project (even if it's a fork) is great. I've been using it for years, but some annoying bugs (that I've learned to live with) continue to persist, such as the state reverting on page load. On most sites, this is after you're able to interact with the page. You could be typing something in a form, then the state resets, and you press r only to have it reload the entire page.

Edit: Just installed Pentadactyl, it's also much faster.

Is there anything like this but with Emacs bindings, for Chrome or FF?

Yes, I know of Conkeror, but leaving behind every other extension I depend on (or wasting my time supporting hacks to make them work) just doesn't work for me.

keysnail https://github.com/mooz/keysnail/wiki

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

i'm an emacs user, but i still recommend pentadactyl. you don't need that many keyboard chords for browsing the porn.

Can anyone who's moved from Vimperator to Pentadactyl comment on how hard it is to port your .vimperatorrc to a corresponding .pentadactylrc? I've got a bunch of bookmarklets set up in my .vimperatorrc with custom shortcuts (Readability, QR code generator, add to InstaPaper, etc.), plus a lot of custom shortcuts.

One of the big things I like about Vimium is that it allows for lettered hinting, which I prefer to numbered hinting (which is the only option in Vimperator). Also, very annoyingly, you can't use "[" or "]" as shortcuts in Vimperator - I'd like to use them to switch tabs to the left & right, but I'm stuck using "{" and "}" instead. This is just a bug, but the low activity level in Vimperator means there's no one around to fix it.

You'll rarely run into any errors from the switch but if you do, go ahead and ask about it in the IRC channel (#pentadactyl on irc.oftc.net)

Also - if you'd like lettered keys, try setting the following option in your .pentadactylrc:

set hintkeys='ASDFGHJLK;"

You'll lose the ability to type the hints' text to hit them.

Actually, any key that you don't use as a hintkey can still be used to narrow down the hints. I use lowercase hint keys, and I can hold shift and type the link text (as the matching is case-insensitive, but the labels are not). It works very well.

For aesthetic reasons I like to render the hint labels in uppercase. It can be done by adding text-transform: uppercase; to the Hint selector with :highlight

I switched without changing anything. It's a fork, and they have not changed much of the bindings yet.

the "let" assignments have been deprecated, but i believe should still work nonetheless.

So this article prompted me to upggrade to Firefox 4 and from Vimperator to this. I've noticed one annoying bug:

If I start typing the first few letters of a site I want to visit then hit tab to complete it the highlight jumps to the first item in the list just before the tab completion kicks in. So the site I want to visit is highlighted, but the command line at the bottom shows a different site (the top entry if I tab complete from nothing) so it keeps sending me to the wrong site. Am I doing something wrong?

I tried this and was very impressed. However, I'm primarily an emacs user and switching back and forth is jarring. Can anyone recommend a similar Firefox add-on patterned after emacs?

Looks nice. However I much prefer LOL (http://elder-gods.org/lol/) which brings up numbers next to all links. Pentadactyl does this too and much more.

Never got a hang of VIM but there's been a lot of writing about it lately. Perhaps I should give it a try soon.

I suggest you start with vimtutor. It's a great introduction.

vimperator/pentadactyl is what taught me vim.

also, vimgolf.com is apparently good too.

My .pentadactylrc file is linked at the bottom of the post but if you missed it - https://github.com/mattsacks/dotfiles/blob/master/pentadacty...

Just curious about that Shortcuts section in there - what's that for?

It almost looks like it's doing the same thing as the quickmarks (:he quickmarks).

where? the "command...." entries? those are basically javascript bookmarklets that are typically installed in your bookmarklets bar, but have now been assigned their own command. e.g., just type

:postToPinboard

when you want to bookmark the current page.

Sorry, should have been more specific. In your .pentadactylrc, under the Shortcuts section, where the first line is `map <Leader>r :o read<CR>`.

It looks like this is so that when you type <Leader>r, you go to google reader or something. Is that right?

With quickmarks, you press `Mr` or `M<buffer>` while you're on a page to set it, then `mr` or `m<buffer>` to go back there. It's pretty sweet :)

If you are using Pentadactyl on OS X, my pentadactyl-files (https://github.com/remiprev/pentadactyl-files) include a "feline" colorscheme which is more Mac-like.

How does this extension behave with Gmail shortcuts? I love keyboard navigation in Gmail and would hate to lose it.

If you read the post, I detail how to allow keyboard shortcuts per website to pass through the addon and go to the website.

Look for ":set passkeys"

Whoops. Read right over it. Thanks for clarifying.

hey cool! i created my rc files primarily from yours just the other day!

Instructions are missing a ./penta.... in the symlink step.

I’ve fixed the typo, thanks! :)

The Firefox extension "Mouseless Browsing" should really be mentioned here! http://www.mouseless.de/index.php?/content/view/14/26/

it is mentioned.

"pentadactyl".

This is a great alternative to vimperator, just switched to pentadactyl and really like numbered hinting.

I'm planning to switch from Vimperator to this when I install Firefox 4, however, I already have numbered hinting when I hit f. Is it different in some way?

It's still f. It just looks a lot nicer.

>It just looks a lot nicer.

Maybe I'm just not used to it yet, but I liked the way Vimperator did it: having the hinting number also be in yellow made it easier to see.

It's possible there are ways to configure this; I haven't checked thoroughly yet.

…It looks pretty much exactly the same.

I had continuous problems with Vimperator on FF4, thus far Pentadactyl's been a bit more stable although occasionally it seems to get deactivated altogether and I need to restart the browser.

Actually, I just realized that the nicer look is only is in the nightlies right now.

I've found that binding J and K to switching tabs makes things much easier.

That's one of the few things Safari actually does (somewhat) well. ⌘-] , while not single key, makes tabbing fairly easy.

I actually find that to be more awkward than ctrl+tab, which is Firefox's default. I just find J and K to be less of stretch for my pinky.

Actually, I tried it and ctrl+tab is on by default in Safari as well.

However, thanks for letting me know it exists in FF.

⌘-} in Chrome and Firefox. ⌘-] navigates history in those 2 browsers, which works more consistently than backspace too.

no, that's something i'm actually starting to get sick of with most native mac apps: it's mandatory to use modifier keys.

single key has been my new favorite "minimalist" feature to use on the mac.

Gmail has nice single-key shortcuts. "A" is for "archive".

Like vimperator, too slow to feel usable. The delay in hitting F to getting links is way too deep into human perceptibility to be anything other than irritating.

The highlighting drives me mad too, and no I don't care if it can be shut off. The slowness already killed my enthusiasm.

Is there something about how Firefox interacts with plugins that vimperator and now Pentadactyl can't seem to get the performance down?

are you using something else that is faster (for comparison)?

are you on a netbook? low on RAM? everything feels fairly responsive on my end.

I've got a macbook pro with 4 gb of ram, a linux laptop with quad-core + 6gb of ram, and a CR-48.

On the mac and the linux machine, it was too slow to be usable.

I would have gone with the default gamer movement keys (w,s,a,d) for scrolling up, down, left and right; respectively.

Vimperator and Pentadactyl are inspired by Vim, so that wouldn't make any sense. (w is move forward by a word, s is delete char under point and enter insert mode, a is insert after point, and d is the delete action)

I did say I rather then They. I wasn't attempting to criticize; just giving my opinion is all fella.

It is trivial to configure Pentadactyl to do this :) The built-in help system is fantastic.

cool, cheers. I didn't pay it enough attention; as obviously I wasn't aware it was Vim inspired.

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