ViHN: Vim for Hacker News

https://qsantos.fr/2024/02/24/vihn-vim-for-hacker-news/

by qsantos • 2 years ago

124 57 2 years ago

qsantos5• 2 years ago

tl;dr: I made ViHN [1] to read Hacker News without having to move my hands away from the keyboard. It’s freely available on Firefox [2] and Chrome [3].

[1] https://github.com/qsantos/ViHN/

[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/vihn/

[3] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/vihn/cfmccoefeojndm...

HL33tibCe7• 2 years ago

I just use vimium, basically never have to use my mouse when browsing HN

geniium• 2 years ago

And Vimium C

ptrhvns2• 2 years ago

I think Vimium C works better than Vimium. It's been so long since I switched that I can't remember exactly why, though.

surprisetalk3• 2 years ago

Vimlike also works exceptionally well in Safari on Mac and iOS:

[1] https://www.jasminestudios.net/vimlike/

letmeinhere• 2 years ago

Anyone know how this compares to Vimari?

t0mislav• 2 years ago

Same here!

moelf• 2 years ago

when I hit `F` the url density is too high that it's difficult to tell which is which, how do you navigate differently?

dj_mc_merlin• 2 years ago

It's not that high on HN? The left most column is upvote. Then the next button immediately to the right is the link. Next row buttons from left to right are username, comments (via hours link), hide, and comments again (normal link).

keithnz2• 2 years ago

Can be overwhelming at first, but you quickly get used to it.

yungtriggz• 2 years ago

I love the 'vim for this' trend. does vimium just take care of that for everything?

jquaint• 2 years ago

Yeah! You click links similar as you would with a "fingers" style plugin. i.e. f (letter combo).

I use Vimium C and haven't looked back.

SilasX• 2 years ago

The only problem I have is when I use the search (which, I know, is not HN itself but a separate service), it won't pick up the dropdown options as clickable.

imwally• 2 years ago

There’s Vimari for the dozens of us that use Safari.

qsantos5• 2 years ago

I use Vimium as well! It's very frustrating when I need to reach for the mouse to navigate a website.

fp64• 2 years ago

There should be a couple command line tools to read HN, this way you can even stay in the terminal and don't need to switch to the browser

Switching to my browser, navigating to HN, and checking the first page (and going back if nothing interests me) already does not require me to touch my mouse and can be done with very few keystrokes. Typically, I visit HN when I'm waiting for something to complete or similar, though, in which case I anyways happily move my hand to the mouse, as I'll be _browsing_ for a bit

mrusme• 2 years ago

I don't often comment on HN, but when I do, it's a shameless plug[1]. :-)

[1] http://neonmodem.com

funks_• 2 years ago

There is HNTerm [1], which also has an online demo [2].

[1] https://github.com/ggerganov/hnterm

[2] https://hnterm.ggerganov.com

doix2• 2 years ago

Is it really vim if you don't have modes and can't combine operations ;p. Everything is pretty much single keystrokes that don't combine in any meaningful way. The only "vim" thing about it is h/j/k/l. Thing like collapsing don't use vim keys z(a|o|c), going to different places doesn't use g<thing>.

There's some weird scroll into view code as well, holding j to just scroll down buffers up a bunch of scrolls and then scrolls all at once. I'm guessing it's a side effect of smooth scrolling or something.

To avoid being a typical grumpy HN commentator, nice work :).

qsantos5• 2 years ago

Thanks!

And I agreed that this is not “pure” Vim.

But I did need to find a compromise. There is little point in having an “insert” mode, like Vimium does, since I am targeting a very specific website and not overriding any existing shortcut (AFAICT). If you think it's important to you, I might consider implementing custom key bindings so that you can use with “pure” Vim shortcuts!

Regarding the scrolling, it could be two things:

1. I do not update the address bar on every key press, to avoid some kind of rate limitation I encountered when I did so initially. Instead, there is a very short delay so before it happens. But the viewport should still scroll immediately. 2. If it's smooth scrolling, there is actually a toggle you can change in the extension settings. If you still have the behavior without smooth scrolling, I would be curious to know more, to see if I can make the experience more pleasant.

doix2• 2 years ago

I can confirm it was indeed caused by smooth scrolling. I didn't realize there was a setting.

surprisetalk3• 2 years ago

Y'all may be interested in my HNTV script:

  curl -s 'https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=youtube.com' \
  | egrep -o 'https?://www.youtube.com[^"]+' \
  | mpv --playlist=- \
    --speed=1.5 \
    --ytdl-format='bestvideo[height<=?720]+bestaudio/best'

[1] https://taylor.town/hntv

tra3• 2 years ago

Is there a YouTube API tool? Would love to create a YouTube playlist so that I can watch this on the TV.

surprisetalk3• 2 years ago

I think you can stream stuff from VLC on the TV. My guess is that you could set up a proxy sort of thing to generate the stream on the fly.

Alternatively, you could create a bot to throw every YouTube link posted to HN in a playlist, which you could open up in the YouTube app!

yaj54• 2 years ago

Nice. Reminds me of a project I built a long time ago: https://yahnd.com/theater/?t=week. Makes me want to update it to have all the urls on the listing page so I can use your player technique on it. Or throw em in a yt playlist.

0x008• 2 years ago

I use https://haxplore.com which has a very nice way to navigate the nested conversations in my opinion.

qsantos5• 2 years ago

I did not know of Haxplore, thanks!

gloosx3• 2 years ago

But... You can use $> lynx -vikeys from a terminal emulator inside the vim itself! That way you dont even have to invent anything or leave vim! (posted from vim btw)

k3vinw2• 2 years ago

Interesting. Are you running lynx inside a vim terminal buffer?

ykonstant3• 2 years ago

To wit: https://i.redd.it/p5h7ongm51541.jpg

The rightmost buffer is `w3m` browsing arXiv.

gloosx3• 2 years ago

Yeah, the most interesting part is that lynx is in a vim terminal buffer, and then the same vim is opened from lynx inside the almighty vim terminal buffer to edit this post textarea ;)

ykonstant3• 2 years ago

w3m which I am using also seems able to browse HN; however, usually people want seamless navigation between HN and various links, so a graphical browser is a must. Qutebrowser is a good choice for those who enjoy keyboard navigation.

gloosx3• 2 years ago

I would say not graphical but a javascript browser is a must if you want _various_ links, I know one for the terminal capable of this called browsh

ascagnel_• 2 years ago

You don't even need to drop down to a terminal -- there's https://github.com/dansomething/vim-hackernews (although it hasn't been updated since 2018) that interfaces with the API directly.

every• 2 years ago

Interestingly enough, I'm reading this and posting in lynx. I have both vikeys and numbered links set...

projektfu• 2 years ago

HN reads easily on eww-mode and with evil-mode you get Vim keys. There's also eww-lnum with quick link numbering.

_emacsomancer_• 2 years ago

there's also: https://github.com/clarete/hackernews.el

k3vinw2• 2 years ago

As a fan of vi/vim keyboard navigation everywhere, I’m always intrigued to see how other people solve this. But if you’re looking for a more generalized approach, I can recommend a mix of vimium and w3m with vim key bindings.

komali2• 2 years ago

Simple man: I see a screen with a window manager with gaps, I scream.

We're paying thousands of dollars for machines with high resolution displays, why don't people use the whole display???

amelius• 2 years ago

Because we want to enjoy our wallpapers too.

karolist• 2 years ago

I like my windows (contexts really) to have more visual separation so all my Amethyst windows have 5px margins.

whackx• 2 years ago

Why not using keyboard controls for web pages in general? I tried multiple solutions for browsing the web and using vim binding to do so over the years. Some of them for extended periods of time, including Tridactyl, Vimium and others. My favorite by far is Qutebrowser because of its default commands and integration of them, for example moving between tabs, editing or copying URLs or configuration is pretty easy.

qsantos5• 2 years ago

I do! I use Vimium C for general browsing. But, considering the time I spend on Hacker News, I needed something to optimize my procrastination even further!

Ringz3• 2 years ago

I use Surfingkeys [1] with Firefox (also for Chrome) for this. Last time I looked it was by far the best solution and superior to vimium.

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

ptrhvns2• 2 years ago

In what ways is it superior to Vimium?

Ringz3• 2 years ago

Surfingkeys has much more keyboard shortcuts, implemented vimedit for input fields, better search, sessions...

phaedrix• 2 years ago

You haven't used Tridactyl then. https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl

Ringz3• 2 years ago

I have! And I liked it! But Surfingkeys has 95% of the functionality of Tridactyl, but but does not need a troubleshoot guide like Tridactyl. Moreover, Surfingkeys implements a better search function on websites. With Surfingkeys, you also don't need to install an external application to work in input masks with Vim, as Surfingkeys has a Vim implementation on board that is completely sufficient for filling out input masks. I also like Surfingkeys' visual mode.

throwaway_08932• 2 years ago

When GNOME Shell happened, I was forced to go looking for a new window manager. I ended up installing Ratpoison.

Wow, I used Ratpoison around 20 years ago. SunOS labs in school used some window manager I couldn't stand (don't remember which) and I saw a classmate with basically no window chrome on their display, and was intrigued.

They helped me compile it (no small feat given our resource constraints) and off I went, until my hand started to cramp a year later from hitting ctrl-t so much. I switched to ion for awhile, and then ended up scavenging a linux box to do assignments from home.

I'm happy to see some folks still holding firm on the "no-pointer" front.

arnorhs• 2 years ago

Re >I never quite liked the idea of trying to remember what comments the user might have seen.

One way to do this by simply storing the latest comment's timestamp, and then you know that all the comments with a greater timestamp are newer

anthk• 2 years ago

     lynx -vikeys gopher://hngopher.com

igorguerrero• 2 years ago

Switched to this immediately, great HN tv too hah

ViHN: Vim for Hacker News

Related Stories