Mouseless Browsing in Firefox with Pentadactyl

http://mshared.tumblr.com/post/2856324781/pentadactyl

by garfield • 16 years ago

71 50 16 years ago

mshared.tumblr.com

kilian• 16 years ago

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.

husted• 16 years ago

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.

garfield5• 16 years ago

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

babeKnuth9• 16 years ago

vimperator/pentadactyl is what taught me vim.

also, vimgolf.com is apparently good too.

nphase• 16 years ago

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

garfield5• 16 years ago

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.

babeKnuth9• 16 years ago

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....

remi2• 16 years ago

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.

spiffworks2• 16 years ago

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

garfield5• 16 years ago

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"

babeKnuth9• 16 years ago

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

dedward• 16 years ago

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

remi2• 16 years ago

I’ve fixed the typo, thanks! :)

dataminer• 16 years ago

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

ZeroGravitas2• 16 years ago

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?

BCM433• 16 years ago

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

garfield5• 16 years ago

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

nickknw2• 16 years ago

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).

babeKnuth9• 16 years ago

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.

xd3• 16 years ago

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

spacemanaki• 16 years ago

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)

xd3• 16 years ago

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

chousuke2• 16 years ago

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

xd3• 16 years ago

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

w1ntermute• 16 years ago

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.

BCM433• 16 years ago

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

garfield5• 16 years ago

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.

chousuke2• 16 years ago

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

babeKnuth9• 16 years ago

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

jokermatt9992• 16 years ago

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

sudont2• 16 years ago

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

babeKnuth9• 16 years ago

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.

wahnfrieden• 16 years ago

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

jokermatt9992• 16 years ago

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.

tumba• 16 years ago

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?

bretthoerner• 16 years ago

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.

babeKnuth9• 16 years ago

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.

unicornporn• 16 years ago

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

babeKnuth9• 16 years ago

it is mentioned.

"pentadactyl".

alnayyir2• 16 years ago

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?

babeKnuth9• 16 years ago

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.

alnayyir2• 16 years ago

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.

ZeroGravitas2• 16 years ago

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?

Mouseless Browsing in Firefox with Pentadactyl

Related Stories