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Comment by davvid | Hacker News Reader

Quote: they might end up spending a lot of fruitless time trying to force Vim to follow the same model through its configuration.

Here's a fun little snippet from my .vimrc. Enjoy ;-)

  " tab navigation like firefox
  nmap <c-s-tab> :tabprevious<cr>
  nmap <c-tab> :tabnext<cr>
  map <c-s-tab> :tabprevious<cr>
  map <c-tab> :tabnext<cr>
  imap <c-s-tab> <esc>:tabprevious<cr>i
  imap <c-tab> <esc>:tabnext<cr>i
  nmap <c-t> :tabnew<cr>:e<space>
  imap <c-t> <esc>:tabnew<cr>:e<space>

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This not a configuration I would recommend as -

1. The mappings with TAB wont work in terminal.

2. <C-t> mapping is default map for ctags jump back.

And if you are going to be a long term Vim user, better configure Firefox like Vim than Vim like Firefox. I use Pentadectyle extension to get Vim like bindings in FF and I love it.

For switching tabs I use <c-n> and <c-p> for next/previous in command mode. Under insert mode, its default map for autocompletion which again I don't prefer remapping. Since I don't prefer to switch tabs in insert mode, that's ok.

Second Pentadactyl. There's also Vimium and Vrome for Chrome/ium. There are Vim plugins for everything these days (even Eclipse and Emacs), so that combined with a launcher like Synapse or Gnome-Do, you almost never have to use your mouse anymore.

Using Chrome and Vimium on sites like Reddit and Hacker News almost feels like cheating -- "I shouldn't be able to consume this amount of information without even having to move my wrists."

Try Pentadactyl on FF. Made me switch from Chrome to FF for regular browsing. Unfortunately Chrome's limited api makes it impossible to port Penta's robustness to Chrome.

Yes. I tried some Vim plugin for Chrome. It sucked. Pentadectyle is very robust and full-featured. Difference is considerable as compared to its Chrome counterpart. Completely transforms your FF experience.

The only thing I dislike about Vimium is it doesn't work on the "New Tab" window.

Author here. That's not quite what I meant; mapping keystrokes to Vim's tab commands is well and good, but it requires some serious kludges to make Vim behave the same way as, say, Notepad++, where one open tab equals one open file, and that's that.

"Window groups" would have been a far more accurate though potentially less familiar name for the feature, in my opinion.

I don't actually use tabs much, personally. I seldom have more than three or four files open at a time.

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