Firemacs: Emacs keybindings for FireFox | Hacker News Reader

Firemacs: Emacs keybindings for FireFox

mew.org

47 pointsbrudgers39 comments

I've been using Keysnail and it seems to provide Emacs keybindings for pretty much any task. It also seems to be actively maintained.

http://blog.binchen.org/posts/use-firefox-in-emacs-way-3.htm...

https://github.com/mooz/keysnail

elisp : emacs :: javascript : firefox+keysnail

Conkeror is a standalone browser (not to be confused with KDE's Konqueror) I've been using with a similar mission, though I look forward to trying this out and take advantage of FireFox's technologies (debug, pdf.js integration, etc.)

Boy, do I have good news for you: http://conkeror.org/PDFViewer

Conkeror is so much Firefox, that you can easily fit the former with most things that work with the latter, including the built-in PDF extension. As a matter of fact, the Conkeror "binary" is just a shell script that launches Firefox or xul-runner with the proper config (something like: firefox -app /usr/share/conkeror/application.ini).

Also worth noting is that Conkeror was the original inspiration for vimperator (and thus for uzbl, dwb, luakit and the likes - all very splendid and worthwhile projects), and that this message is written on an editor spawned by conkeror (which, surprisingly enough, happens to be vim).

Btw you can easily connect the Firefox debugger to a Conkeror instance.

http://conkeror.org/Debugging?highlight=%28debugging%29#Debu...

+1 for Conkeror - close enough to emacs on the browser for me!

I much prefer Keysnail: https://github.com/mooz/keysnail

I tried these for a while.

It confused my muscle memory more to have almost but not quite emacs behavior in the browser vs standard browser keyboard shortcuts.

That's been my biggest problem with every wannabe Emacs keybinding I've ever tried.

Even in OS X, I love that I can use the Emacs cursor movement keys everywhere, but even after years of using it, I still occasionally start using other Emacs shortcuts before realizing it's not doing what I expect.

I actually think it's easier to just add more to Emacs and use the keybindings there, than it is to add proper Emacs bindings to other software :-)

What would be really nice is a Firefox/Chrome window hosted inside an Emacs frame, which would be controllable via an elisp api so I can bind hotkeys to control it.

Would make web development easier by keeping web based documentation look ups right there in Emacs, plus could have a window dedicated to viewing your work as you edit, especially when working on frontend stuff.

I've wanted this for just about forever as well. There is one project I've noticed on the EmacsWiki - http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/WebKit . I haven't tried getting it up and running yet, would be curious if anyone here has.

Installing dependencies... will take some time but will report back if I get it working.

If any Vim users are feeling generous, fret not - Vim bindings for Firefox exist as well!

Vimperator has been the go-to for a long time, with VimFX and Pentadactyl as alternatives. However, none of these support e10s (multiprocess Firefox), and the migration path and timeline is unclear.

I wrote a very slimmed down alternative that does support e10s Firefox, named Electrovim[0]. It has far fewer features than Vimperator, but it includes the minimum subset that my workflow required before I could enable e10s on my own machine.

[0] https://github.com/ChimeraCoder/electrovim

Oooh, thanks!

I would prefer Conkeror since it allows me to programagically extend it. I can do nearly anything that I can do in xulrunner with conkeror, not just the emacs key bindings

I tried these things but I found that when I'm working on Emacs and have to use a browser(Stack overflow etc ) M-x eww is less disruptive.

Yeah that's nice for specific cases where you just need to see the text (and the site doesn't require JavaScript for that).

But beyond that, I can see it being really nice for the muscle memory keystrokes for cursor movement, marking text, copy/paste, etc. being the same. I'm definitely going to give these a try.

StackOverflow? There's a mode for that.

https://github.com/vermiculus/sx.el

for me, firefox is under control (I use keysnail) anybody succeeded in sanitizing google spreadsheets and skype?

I really should be doing this, now that I'm on Linux a lot. Way less print dialogs to dismiss…

I can't imagine using Chrome without Vimium anymore. Even if it's just for the f key, to open links without using the mouse. That's the only key binding that matters

Why cant we have this for chrome?

Lack of APIs, maybe?

Why this over vimperator?

Because, (unlike what reading HN could lead you to believe), not everyone uses VI or Vim – some, even many, prefer Emacs.

Of the people I know who prefer Emacs, what they like is the extensibility and customisation, and not necessarily the keybindings.

In fact I'm almost willing to bet that if it was initially designed so as not to require pressing simultaneous keys but only in sequence (like the mechanism used for navigating menus in Windows with the Alt key), Emacs would become even more popular. For example, in many applications I find it much easier and faster to type Alt,F,S to save instead of Ctrl+S.

As a Vim user, I wonder, is Emacs superior in any way for non-lispy languages? Say JavaScript?

As an Emacs user, I can tell you that Emacs is superior in every way, except perhaps for emulating VI, but even there it's doing a good job. Next question?

It's a shame that the truth sounds so much like bullshit, that it's off putting.

We could all do a little to reduce the image of Emacs users (and Lisp people in general) as dicks and weenies.

Yep, as a 5+ year vim (then nvi) user...emacs was a eye opening text editor and gets way too much hate for no reason...people say emacs is not modal...but everytime you press control, alt, meta, hyper or super, you enter a mode...then every other subsequent key could put you into another mode. It doesnt make sense to vi users at first, but after you swap control with caos lock and a few other adjustments it really is better.

I, as a Vim user myself, recently saw this and decided to give emacs a try. I still have a long way to go but I have to say that it really does look like it might be the best of both worlds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWD1Fpdd4Pc

Caveat Emptor: I used Vim for a long time, but switched to Emacs about 7 years ago. I still miss Vim, but would not give up Emacs for it.

Many consider Emacs' extension language, Emacs Lisp, to be significantly better than Vim's extension language, VimL. This makes it easier to develop better packages, and also to develop personal extensions/modifications.

This problem has lead to a number of attempts at fixing this:

1. "Evil" is an attempt to port Vim to Emacs, sans VimL. You should see it here: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil. Note: there have been a number of these in the past, and Evil is the latest project successor.

2. "Spacemacs" is an Emacs "distribution" of sorts that is trying to make the entire experience with Evil better: https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs

3. There are attempts to make VimL better, Neovim being the most notable: https://github.com/neovim/neovim

I use emacs, and prefer its keybindings (probably just due to habit, but I have tried vi[m] a few times and could never get used to the separate modes for text entry and commands). I know enough vi to do simple editing, because emacs isn't always installed on servers, but have used emacs for more than two decades and at this point it's just what I know.

But at the same time, they do become something like second nature, having them mean something different in another application can be annoying. That is what I like about Firemacs.

You do know that you can type ESC instead of using the Meta/Alt key, right? So Meta-x can just as well be typed as ESC x, and Meta-Control-s can be typed as ESC Control-s.

This is a backwards-compatible binding for ASCII-only terminals, since ASCII only has control characters, and lacks a Meta or Alt key definition.

(Additionally, if the ESC key is far off, it can usually also be typed by using Control-3. This does not work in a window of a proper graphical Emacs, though, only in a terminal.)

In all seriousness, I was under the impression Emacs was more popular, hence us VIM users being a bit more vocal. It's like the Ron Paul of text editors.

Have you tried VimFx? It's one of the first addons I download (other than uBlock, HTTPS Everywhere, and RES). I like that it's lighter than Pentadactyl/Vimperator and it doesn't break Firefox's default behavior.

Chrome users can download Viumium[1] which does the exact same thing for Chrome.

0: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/vimfx/ 1: https://vimium.github.io/

I'd rather have them for thunderbird.

It looks like keysnail has a plugin for Thunderbird.

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