Tridactyl: A Vim-like interface for Firefox

by RMPR • 6 years ago

128 64 6 years ago

Coming from vim-vixen, I must say this is dope, some people complain about the new tab default change after installing this extension, but I find it fine tbh.

bovine3dom11• 6 years ago

Enough people complained + someone cared enough to help out, so we now offer a build without a new tab page [1]. Migration between the builds is much the same as the process documented here [2].

[1] https://tridactyl.cmcaine.co.uk/betas/nonewtab/tridactyl_no_...

[2] https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl/wiki/Migration-from-s...

JoshMcguigan• 6 years ago

I’ve never used Tridactyl, but I switched from vim vixen to qutebrowser and found the full browser allows a much deeper vim integration and customization than a plugin ever could.

I’d highly recommend checking out qutebrowser if you are interested in this type of thing.

RMPR9• 6 years ago

One thing that made me stick to tridactyl is the lack of addon support in qutebrowser, and I don't use that much addons: privacy badger, multi containers (especially this one), cookie auto delete and unlock origin ...

The-Compiler8• 6 years ago

For at least some of those, there are plans to add support natively to qutebrowser:

Containers: https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser/issues/4102

Better adblocker: https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser/pull/5317

I'm still not sure what exactly Privacy Badger really does under the hood, but I suspect much of it won't be possible with QtWebEngine's API.

Not sure about Cookie Auto Delete - I fear it's not possible to implement either, but I'm not entirely sure, I've always found the QtWebEngine cookie APIs quite confusing so I'd need to take a closer look.

ChrisClark• 6 years ago

Only kind of on topic, but a few weeks ago I read a comment here (but can't find it again). I think it's worth repeating though.

You don't need to love or use Vim to benefit from it. Just learning the keybinds is a great thing, because you can most likely find Vim bindings for any popular system.

So though you never use Vim, whatever you pick up next can use the same bindings you're used to.

zoltar• 6 years ago

I looked at a few things including tridactyl when web extensions took out vimperator. After seeing the demos, I settled on giving https://krabby.netlify.app/ a try.

Copying all the links from a table in a go without doing some console fiddling is kinda nice when you need it.

randompwd• 6 years ago

Anybody know how this differs from Vimium extension?

RMPR9• 6 years ago

Before tridactyl, I used vimium and vim-vixen, this is the best one hands down. In terms of integration with Firefox and links recognition.

ziftface2• 6 years ago

I'm trying it out just now after having used vimium for the longest time, and I like it, but it randomly doesn't support upvotes on this site. I'm sure there will be other cases it doesn't support for some reason. But it definitely has more features than vimium.

justaguy88• 6 years ago

I really want to use things like this, but the permissions model is scary, it wants access to everything.

I'm sure most plugins are benign, but it might not be

ssivark• 6 years ago

I felt/feel the same, but I am greatly comforted by the add-on making an attempt to clearly communicate what it uses/needs each of those permissions for: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tridactyl-vim...

Even though there’s no guarantee that the explanation corresponds exactly to what is implemented behind the scenes, this unusual pattern of user respect and consideration makes the add-on/developers feel more trustworthy than other sketchier ones.

renewiltord2• 6 years ago

It's open source, just read it and use the source-code release https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl

lajawfe• 6 years ago

Is it possible to validate what I am running in browser is an unaltered version of what is there in Github?

Otherwise, I will have to trust the package author to not be malicious.

Another option might be to personally package and sideload the extension which I don't know how.

dotancohen2• 6 years ago

I'm really glad that other people feel that permissions over-reach is a problem.

Specifically in the case of Tridactyl, as an interface to the entire webbrowser is needs access to the entire web browser. It does manage bookmarks, it does modify webpages (by adding link hints).

lrem• 6 years ago

This is about the only type of addon that genuinely needs full access to everything - the type that replaces your browsing interface. It needs to be able to interact in all the possible ways with every single element on the page. There's no way around it having scary powers, because using them is its base purpose.

darau1• 6 years ago

There's also SurfingKeys[1].

[1] https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys/

Izkata• 6 years ago

And another, I use Vim Vixen:

https://github.com/ueokande/vim-vixen

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vim-vixen/

RMPR9• 6 years ago

If you use vim-vixen, consider giving tridactyl a try, it is one level above in terms of browser integration, I say this as an ex Vim-vixen user.

One example is using a custom search engine, with vim-vixen it'll just continue to use Google while tridactyl works fine, I also like how it highlights the elements targeted by the letters when you press 'f'

The-Compiler8• 6 years ago

And a handful more: https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser#active (Vimium-FF, Vim Vixen, VVimpulation, Krabby)

zaltekk• 6 years ago

I was an avid user of Pentadactyl[1], but the project died when the Firefox plugin changes[2] happened. From what I could tell at the time, all of the similar plugins like Vimium[3] suffered from severe limitations. For example, if your focus ended up on browser chrome you needed mouse clicks to escape.

Is this actually getting us back to something similar to Pentadactyl? I had assumed the plugin changes were preventing such control from being granted to plugins. Was I wrong, and it was just that the authors didn't port to the new framework?

[1] bug.5digits.org/pentadactyl

[2] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-add-technology-...

[3] https://vimium.github.io/

ve55• 6 years ago

There are a lot of limitations and the addon class will never be as good as it used to be. Solutions are to either use an old FF, different version, or fork that supports them. I still have an okay time doing this, but it probably won't work forever.

jmiskovic• 6 years ago

This seems a common sentiment for Firefox users: enjoying the amazing productivity of custom tailored environment with carefully chosen extensions, but knowing our days are numbered.

yegle• 6 years ago

There are multiple XUL based Firefox forks, e.g. Pale Moon, Waterfox, Basilisk. They should all work well with Pantadactyl.

But note their security patch is maintained by volunteers outside of Firefox team, and may not be the best of state.

bovine3dom11• 6 years ago

I think the main limitation is not being able to accept key presses from browser chrome. Mozilla in principle was prepared to accept a patch that added a new API that did that [1] but people have repeatedly lost interest in developing it - the reward for getting it working being a months-long negotiation with Mozilla to get it merged probably doesn't make it appealing to many. The API would also fix some but not all instances of not being able to use Tridactyl until the page has loaded.

Recently, we have added an escape hatch where if you press ctrl-, focus returns to the page even from browser chrome. This works even on special pages like "we could not load this page" where it returns you to a page where Tridactyl can run. I've trained myself to use it instead of escape and it feels quite natural. On every platform except Windows ctrl-6 now takes you to the previous tab everywhere, even on pages to which we don't normally have access. Users can add their own octopus-style binds which are accessible everywhere but the criteria for what works are unfortunately quite opaque.

I personally think the biggest problems for Tridactyl are in the future. Manifest v3 proposes heavily restricting the use of `eval` which our users use a lot for writing their own little scripts. I don't think it would be insurmountable, but Tridactyl already has its own little DSL, so we would probably run afoul of the spirit of the new rules and risk getting delisted or banned. We might have to take most of the coolest features of Tridactyl out (and maybe have a contrib/ part of the source where anyone can have their own scripts merged without too much review).

The other problem is that new web extension APIs tend be gated behind a very narrow definition of "user intent" - essentially, the user clicks on your extension button or presses an octopus-style keybind (like ctrl-,) - that excludes about 99% of the intent of Tridactyl users. A recent example of this is the new "optional permissions" where an extension can ask for permissions as it needs them; Firefox requires you can convince it that you have user intent or it will not allow you to ask for more permissions. (Incidentally, the keyboard API I mentioned above would allow us to prove user intent to Firefox in some limited circumstances).

So in summary: yeah, there are limitations. Lots of them could be fixed by working with Mozilla but no one has yet been motivated enough. In practice it's not as bad as it sounds.

[1] https://github.com/tridactyl/keyboard-api

bardan• 6 years ago

Tridactyl worked for me better than any alternatives, but qutebrowser (https://qutebrowser.org/) was built for this kind of browsing and is more configurable. Unfortunately it doesn't have good plugin support, although I believe it does have an inbuilt ad blocker.

RMPR9• 6 years ago

Imho tridactyl's hint mode is better than qutebrowser's

The-Compiler8• 6 years ago

Can you elaborate? Maybe there's something to learn for qutebrowser's hint implementation :)

clktmr• 6 years ago

I hesitated long to make qutebrowser my main browser because of lacking password management and device synchronization. Eventually I switched and started using dedicated applications for these tasks.

Qutebrowser is especially great for browsing documentation while coding. Besides it's main point of being keyboard driven, the lack of plugins makes it also absolutely distraction free.

The-Compiler8• 6 years ago

FWIW there are userscripts to integrate password management with qutebrowser: https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser/tree/master/misc/...

What are you using for device synchronization? Something like Syncthing/Nextcloud?

The-Compiler8• 6 years ago

Yup - note the built-in adblocker is very basic at the moment (just a list of blocked hosts which doesn't block e.g. YouTube ads or ads served from the main domain of a page).

This is going to change soon, however, with a new adblocker based on Brave's: https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser/pull/5317

nkrisc• 6 years ago

I'm a novice vim user, so it's a learning curve to be sure (I mean, perhaps it is anyway since it's applied to a browser instead of a text editor). But I love this addon for the same reason I learned to love vim: it really is just faster to do all kinds of manipulation with just the keyboard. I'm not a developer by trade but I found writing and editing prose documents (typically usability reports and documentation) faster and easier with vim. This makes browsing similarly easier and the hints mode is fantastic for websites with shit UI.

Now whenever I use something like discord to talk with my gaming friends I find myself wanting the same keybindings.

RMPR9• 6 years ago

Tbh you don't really need to know Vim to get the most out of this extension, sure already knowing Vim keybindings is advantageous, and it provides a kind of homogeneity, but it's not needed plus you can even learn new keybindings.

cozzyd2• 6 years ago

I've used Tridactyl (as well as similar other plugins) in the past, but eventually I found myself having to disable it on a lot of websites due to poor interaction with web site keybindings.

RMPR9• 6 years ago

Have you tried qutebrowser? Also I suggest you to give tridactyl another try, it vastly improved, especially the hint mode, plus you don't really have to disable the extension if it gets in your way, just switch to "ignore mode" and voilà

dotancohen2• 6 years ago

Then why stop using it?

The only website keybinding that really frustrates me is /, which many sites bind to their search feature. I don't understand why they do that. Don't web browsers already have page navigation features? Either the user is a mouse maid and can click the search field themselves, or they have a keyboard navigation tool such as Tridactyl and the binding just overrides the tool.

cozzyd2• 6 years ago

Because once it's disabled on some sites, I get annoyed by the inconsistent interface.

hibbelig• 6 years ago

I think page-specific keyboard-driven navigation has advantages. For example, in Gmail j/k navigates between email threads. I can't see that Tridactyl provides this functionality.

For the search functionality specifically, I guess it's possible to find a solution. The page-specific search shortcut will just focus a specific element on the page, and maybe that could be provided on a different shortcut in addition to /.

approxim8ion2• 6 years ago

Tridactyl user for the last few months, it has made my browsing experience so much more pleasurable.

I pair it with a custom userChrome.css which removes the tab bar (I use 'b' to view and access tabs whenever I need them), affording me more vertical real-estate.

My only gripe was that the search navigation with C-g(?) was very clunky and painful so I unbound C-f and it works just fine now. I'm sure that's a matter of personal preference, though.

leonixyz• 6 years ago

can you please share details about your setup?

for example, can you share the content of the userChrome.css and the trydactyl configuration needed to bind 'b' with the toggle action?

bovine3dom11• 6 years ago

b is the default bind for filtering and selecting tabs, so no configuration is needed there.

We offer some help with userchrome via `:guiset` which I personally use, but you should beware that Mozilla break it fairly often (maybe once every 6 months) with updates.

approxim8ion2• 6 years ago

As bovine3dom has mentioned already, b is the default keybind.

For userChrome, I use https://github.com/MrOtherGuy/firefox-csshacks/blob/master/c...

Not my GitHub, but incredibly useful repo for all kinds of userChrome shenanigans. Personally I keep it to a minimum (literally just this hack) so that I have less stuff to look at if an update breaks something.

binaryapparatus• 6 years ago

Huge Tridactyl fan here, it works beautifully. I am using it for over a year, ever since I spotted its mention at Suckless 'rocks' page: https://suckless.org/rocks/

blackbear_2• 6 years ago

Hint mode is a great idea! I wish it was supported at the OS level...

bovine3dom11• 6 years ago

There is a young project that does this for macOS [1]. I think I remember seeing a similar project for GTK but I might have imagined it.

[1] https://github.com/dexterleng/vimac

blackbear_2• 6 years ago

Oh thank you, that's quite nice actually! Will keep it in mind next time I get my hands on a mac.

ziftface2• 6 years ago

There is actually an app like this for macos that supports hint mode and is made for navigating everything with your mouse.

honkycat• 6 years ago

Nice extension. For the love of GOD do not hijack my "new tab" page and focus on the page instead of the URL bar.

That is SUPER ANNOYING. There should be a button to disable this behaviour very clearly on the page.

bovine3dom11• 6 years ago

I addressed this preemptively earlier today [1]. As it happens, I would also like to enable or disable new tab pages without disabling an extension entirely. Perhaps you could file an issue with Mozilla asking for this functionality? I'd integrate it into Tridactyl in an instant if I could.

Regarding the focus stealing: having focus on the page was one of our most requested features. Unfortunately it isn't trivial to have it be optional.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24615963

Tridactyl: A Vim-like interface for Firefox

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