Hacker News Reader

Comment by chimeracoder | Hacker News Reader

This looks pretty neat.

I've been a happy Vimium[0] user for a few years now - it's an extension that adds Vim keybindings to Chrome (just like Vimperator for Firefox).

My main gripe with it, though, is that it doesn't work on many Google properties, like Google Groups. Because Google Groups insists on supplying its own keybindings (which, for the life of me, I can't figure out how to turn off), I always end up accidentally collapsing a thread every time I want to go back to the previous page ("H").

Disabling Javascript doesn't help, because Google Groups refuses to load without Javascript enabled.

I wonder if Ferro suffers from this same problem - I imagine it must, because I believe this has to do with the way that Chrome separates (or doesn't separate) the scripts run by extensions and the scripts run by the website.

[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogba...

View on HN

Another feature I would want and I really feel handicapped about in vimium is that I cannot use the vim bindings when typing stuff in a textbox like this one.

Vimperator has a limited normal mode for textboxes, called "textarea mode". Press ctrl+t when in a textbox, and you can then use the usual vim movement/editing commands on the text. However it's far from a full implementation of vim editing, and is a bit buggy.

edit: It looks like the maintainer has sort of abandoned that feature, though, at least as of 2010, http://www.mozdev.org/pipermail/vimperator/2010-May/005475.h...

ctrl-I should open the text box in a proper editor.

You can set the editor with

    :set editor

For more details see

    :help editor

Did you try the wasavi extension?

Vimium is mainly for in-page keyboard interactions (like opening a link or scrolling down). Ferro is for interacting with Chrome itself, for instance pinning a tab, saving/opening sessions, extension management, deleting bookmarks, etc.

Ferro does not suffer from the same keyboard shortcut problem as Vimium. Vimium injects code into every tab you have open (called "content scripts" in Chrome extensions) and uses javascript key listeners. Ferro uses the recently-introduced Chrome keyboard shortcut API. To manage your keyboard shortcuts for all extensions that use the API, go to "chrome://extensions" and click the "Keyboard shortcuts" link on the bottom-right.

>just like Vimperator for Firefox

Vimperator is far more full-featured.

Exactly the reason why I switched from Chrome to Firefox. Chrome just does not allow extensions do certain things (like running in browser's special pages).

check vimium options - google.com subdomains come preinstalled as excluded URL's. I've removed them and happily use Vimium on google apps.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com