Wasavi – Vi editor for any webpage | Hacker News Reader

Wasavi – Vi editor for any webpage

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130 pointsnonbirithm46 comments

If you like Vim, you should also check out Vimium - an extension, that enables Vim-like navigation in the browser. Never take your fingers off the home row!

https://github.com/philc/vimium

Also https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl

Tridactyl's key feature is "native messaging".

A further alternative is https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys. Its key feature is a javascript configuration - allowing you to bind arbitrary javascript to a key.

"Key feature", it is a great feature but it is "only" for editing with your editor of choice (vim,neovim,helix, etc.) right? Or am i missing something?

I think you've misunderstood, "native messaging" allows the tridactyl extension to interact with the filesystem and native applications: https://github.com/tridactyl/native_messenger

Oh okay i just installed native messenger today to use helix as my editor for textareas. Will look a bit more into it.

Tridcatyl is the reason I keep coming back to firefox, I don't even think the level of customizability it offers is even possible on chromium browsers

If only this would work in Safari. :/

I remember switching to Firefox for it and loving it. But Safari gives me like 3-4 extra hours on an M1.

When I'm using Safari I've found myself using Vimari: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vimari/id1480933944?mt=12

It's also available on GitHub if you're not interested in the Mac App Store: https://github.com/televator-apps/vimari

It works pretty well, but I've strayed away from using Vim & Vim bindings for everything after getting into using Emacs on my Linux box at work.

evil mode!

https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil

If you like Vimium, try qutebrowsers or Luakit, where keyboard is a first-class citizen that works everywhere and is not dependent on JS injection. May have a learning curve (took me about 3 days to get functional.)

https://www.qutebrowser.org/

https://luakit.github.io/

Just to share my own experience of trying to make this my daily web driver, both these solutions are using webkit, and webkit behaviour is not exactly perfect and can be a real pain to update. Same issue with Nyxt, which I very much wanted to use. In the end I went for Trydactyl which give the best of both world: a web browser that works, with a decent ecosystem for extensions (lack of ublock is very quickly felt, even if yes there are some alternatives but... not as good and simple) and a powerful interface that you can mod to your needs, vim or emacs shortcut can be used.

They do use Blink (Chromium) internally, but it's my understanding that it is just bundled inside. I've run qutebrowser both as compiled and from source and not had any issues updating.

Qutebrowser includes its own adblocker, which must be activated once after install and works well enough.

It also supports both userscripts and python scripting. Although that takes more fiddling, there's a pretty healthy support community for it.

There's also the nyxt browser which can be setup to vi or emacs bindings https://github.com/atlas-engineer/nyxt

I wanted to like qutebrowser, also for the minimalist interface. But not supporting ublock is a showstopper for me. Is that still the case?

I don't think it supports ublock but it does have an integrated AdBlock now. It's based on the library Brave used and supported ABP style block lists.

It has an integrated ad blocker, which is good enough for me.

You have to run :adblock-update once to enable it.

Also firenvim while you’re at it to have neovim embedded in your browser.

https://github.com/glacambre/firenvim

Especially since apparently Wasavi is not a firefox plugin anymore apparently. There's no anchor to "Firefox add-on" on the page and the firefox plugin search turns up nothing.

Firenvim works in both Chrome and Firefox and you can harness the power of neovim, so that's a plus. Typing this from a neovim instance in firefox

Actually, the releases page on GitHub does provide an .xpi file for Firefox, and it seems to be working fine. I guess the missing link on the website/README is a mistake.

I can confirm this. However, I constantly get a "View saved logins" to the top of the input field after I start typing.

Did you experience the same? I'm on Firefox 108.0.2.

I don't see that, also on Firefox 108.0.2 (I'm using it to reply this comment.)

I made Homerow, it's the same idea as Vimium, but for the entire macOS user interface.

https://homerow.app

This looks very similar to shortcat https://shortcat.app/, can you tell me what your program offers that the other one (free, but also not OS) does not?

On an unrelated note, I made the same thing (barebones), but for Linux and theoretically also Windows: https://github.com/phil294/vimium-everywhere

Major differences are that (1) Homerow does not show search results in a command palette fashion. YMMV but I prefer the UI to be minimalist. (2) you can disable search and have it work almost exactly like Vimium.

I would also like to note that the Shortcat dev plans on adding licensing. Homerow has licensing, but there's no blocks on features. So they are both "free" in the same way.

Oh, How I wish this for pesky Windows 11!

Check out win-vind! It also comes with a tiling window manager but I've never used that.

https://github.com/pit-ray/win-vind

Highly recommend Vimium too. It’s also a great way to test for accessibility as you’ll need good navigation attributes for it to work well.

Vimium-C and 'Vimium-C for PDF' gives more functionality that Vimium couldn't.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/user/14732745/

Looks interesting but I have different approach:

I use GhostText + NeoVim. This way I get real neovim backend and all my functinality.

I've been using FireNvim for quite a while now to turn textareas into editors. I like that this extension doesn't actually require vim/nvim to be installed on the system, but that also makes it a bit weaker. If everything happens in the browser then we're left only with a subset of what's possible with a full vim experience (plus, the user's vim configuration won't apply)

Does anyone else us Tridactyl for firefox?

I was using it but I stopped for some reason, I might give it another go. I think it had a few annoying bugs so I stopped using it.

Come to think about it, I don't think it works as an "editor" in HTML text fields?

If you have Tridactyl's native messenger installed you can launch an external text editor with Ctrl+I when inside a text box.

There is also Firenvim which embeds real neovim instances inside text boxes.

> Come to think about it, I don't think it works as an "editor" in HTML text fields?

There was "itsalltext"[1] (sadly defunct) - but there's an alternative (i just discovered - so I've yet to try it) : ghosttext https://github.com/fregante/GhostText

[1] https://github.com/docwhat/itsalltext

Ed: wasavi does enhance the text-area widget (wasavi is a browser extension) - so it does turn text fields into a vi-like editor. I can't imagine it plays well with vimperator-style extensions, though.

See also Vime, which is Vim as an Input Method Editor, supposedly works with any X11 app. I haven't used it though. https://github.com/algon-320/vime

Would love to try this, however it seems like the Firefox add-on is not available unfortunately. I've already tried the alternatives (tridactyl, vimium), but did not really like them enough to keep them installed. Seems like with wasavi, you can selectively launch vim interface for a text field whenever you feel like it, which was something I missed with the other solutions (or I haven't looked deep enough back then). Anyone managed to run wasavi on firefox by any chance?

I just did. There's an .xpi file in the releases page: https://github.com/akahuku/wasavi/releases/tag/v0.7.737

Wasavi – a browser extension that transforms TEXTAREA elements into a VI editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11023428 - Feb 2016 (42 comments)

Did anyone try this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tridactyl-vim... ?

Interesting project idea for productivity. To be clear, the extension implements the editor features when it identifies a valid markup tag is supports? So the effectiveness is dependent on if the site uses the TEXTAREA tag for input.

Random tidbit: Wasavi sounds like Swedish for "what did we say".

It also sounds like a spin-off from the creator of the Wasa ship.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)

“From the creators of the ship that wouldn’t float, now comes the editor that won’t edit!”

No wait, that’s not a great slogan. Hmm.

Perhaps from the makers of Wasa knäckebröd

https://www.wasa.com/global/

“You become what you code. Crunchy!”

Sounds like a weird slogan also heh

Chuckled at the "How to quit wasavi" section.

I am wandering if something like that exists but for text areas/boxes inside windows desktop applications.

This does not work in teh query editor text box/field in the google console. :(

works fine in the gmail editor though!

This is great; vertical editing is not supported it seems...

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