Sunday, October 14, 2007

Vimperator -- vimified browsing (at last)

I have found the coolest productivity tool since vim. Vimperator! This allows you to do modal browsing much in the same way that vim does. The greatest thing is that it allows you to write maps (keybindings) that can dramatically improve your productivity on the web. What is so great about modal editing and browsing? You don't have to use that pesky mouse as much anymore. Your fingers stay near home row more often and allow you to control almost everything from they keyboard.

Here is a link from linux.com that has a somewhat decent discussion about it. I am sure there will be many more articles written bout this great tool. Here is the offical wiki.


It is only at version 0.52 as of this writing so I am sure there are improvements to come but it already has vastly sped up my surfing. One vim like feature I would like to see is the visual mode for selecting things. Your mappings and customizations (like vimrc file) are stored in a file named vimperator. Here is what my vimperatorrc file looks like so far:


set activate=quickmark,paste
set nobeep
set complete=sbfh
set defsearch=google
set guioptions=
set maxhints=1000
set preload
set previewheight=20
set showmode
set showstatuslinks
set showtabline=2
set titlestring=Vimperator Dev
set verbose=9
set wildmode=list:full

" start MozRepl
js < :restart

" select next/previous tab
map gt
map gT
map ,src :source ~/.vimperatorrc

" move current tab left/right
map :tabmove! +1
map :tabmove! -1

" move up and down one page
map
map

" Tab maps
map :tabopen
map :tabnext
map :tabprevious

" backward and forward
map gk :back
map gj :forward

map :quit

echo .vimperatorrc sourced

" vim: ft=vimperator sw=2 sts=2