Firefox Vim



Get Firefox, a free web browser backed by Mozilla, a non-profit dedicated to internet health and privacy. Available now on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS. Setup is Windows XP, Firefox 0.8, Vim 6.2. Download & Install latest mozex from the url mentioned above (After it's installed, go to Tools, Options, Extensions.

  1. Firefox Vimeo Player Error
  2. Mozilla Firefox Free Download Latest Version

Vimperator is a free browser add-on for Firefox, which makes it look and behave like the Vim text editor. It has similar key bindings, and you could call it a modal web browser, as key bindings differ according to which mode you are in. Once you have the cursor in a text box, hit Ctrl - I to open in your editor, which defaults to gvim. Vimperator is a Firefox browser extension with strong inspiration from the Vim text editor, with a mind towards faster and more efficient browsing. It has similar key bindings and you could call it a modal web browser, as key bindings differ according to which mode you are in.

A caret flashing in a text entry box

You can do a lot with Firefox that a lot of people don't know about. Here's a video showing my Firefox setup. I use both the VimFX add on for vim shortcuts a.

In computing, caret navigation is a kind of keyboard navigation where a caret (also known as a ‘text cursor’, ‘text insertion cursor’, or ‘text selection cursor’) is used to navigate within a text document. It is a fundamental feature for applications that deal with text, for example text editors (e.g., Notepad, Emacs and Vim), word processors (e.g., Microsoft Word, WordPerfect and WordStar), desktop publishing programs (e.g., PageMaker, Microsoft Publisher), and spreadsheets (e.g., Excel, Lotus 123).

This kind of navigation is also supported by some web browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer, where it is referred to as ‘caret browsing’. Pale Moon also has this feature. This can be contrasted with the alternative and more usual control methods of using a mouse to point to links and select text for copying or editing, or using tabs to step through and highlight each link on the page in turn.

In this text navigation mode the ‘cursor’, often depicted as a blinking vertical line, appears within the text on-screen. The user can then navigate throughout the text by using the arrow navigation keys to cause the cursor to move; typically changing the cursor's location in increments of character position horizontally and of text line vertically.

Firefox Vim

Dsd docet-lector dac sound cards & media devices driver. Once the cursor has been positioned as desired, any text typed will appear at the location of the cursor, either inserting the text and pushing any subsequent text further downwards, or overwriting any existing text (a mode of operation typically toggled by the Insert Key on most computer keyboards/systems).

The user can also perform various actions to manipulate the text, such as:

  • selecting a block of text to e.g. change size/font or copy to the clipboard, by holding shift and pressing the arrow cursor or other navigation keys, which commonly extends a coloured or inverse-video highlight over the selected area
  • inserting and deleting text and control characters at or from an arbitrary point, including cut and paste functions
  • activating internet hyperlinks by pressing the Enter key whilst the caret is placed within them

Caret navigation usually also incorporates a form of viewport scrolling control where the caret moves freely within certain margins of a static display but triggers a scrolling event upon reaching one of the margins (either the edge of the screen/window/text field or a point a certain number of lines/characters within said edge).

The view within a WYSIWYG word processor, for example, may scroll the whole viewport a certain amount down the page as the caret nears the lower edge of the edit window. This keeps the text currently being entered or edited roughly centered without excessive, distracting, and potentially computationally expensive line-by-line scrolling.

A spreadsheet character-based word processor on a low-resolution screen may similarly scroll in all directions, character-by-character or line-by-line, maintaining a small margin which the caret never enters in order to show the user what text or cells lie directly ‘ahead’ of or ‘behind’ the edit point and prevent them from ‘working blind’.

A plain text text entry form, by contrast, may use a simpler method, setting a fixed and arbitrary display width within which the caret always ‘wraps around’, only scrolling up or down a line as the caret reaches the wrap point at the start/end of the current first/last line, in order to keep the edit point in view as it moves to the previous/next line of text. All other scrolling must be manually controlled by the user by use of scroll bars, mouse wheel, or Page Up/Page Down keys. Another alternate form of control is used in some spreadsheets when the Scroll Lock key is activated. In this case the caret is locked to the centre of the screen and the cursor keys instead move the worksheet itself ‘underneath’ the static caret, instead of the caret moving ‘over’ the sheet. The margins that trigger a scrolling action are effectively increased to their maximum possible size (vs the minimum possible with the web edit box), causing the caret to be re-centered any time it attempts to move.

See also[edit]

Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Caret_navigation&oldid=1005636742'


This article is part of the on-going Vi / Vim Tips and Tricks. Firefox is the best browser. Vim is the best editor. Wouldn’t be nice if we can combine the best browser (Firefox) with the best editor (Vim)?

In this article let us review how to use the powerful Vim navigation concepts inside Firefox Browser using the Vimperator Firefox add-on. Let us review how to install the vimperator plugin, and 8 Powerful features to make Firefox browser behave like Vim.

You may be also interested in the following article, Transfer the Power of Vim Editor to Thunderbird for Composing Email’.

2 Steps to Install and Use Vimperator firefox Plugin

Step 1: Vimperator Firefox Plugin Installation

  • Go to the vimperator.org, click on the icon ‘Download Vimperator’ to download the version 2.0, if you are using firefox 3.0+
  • Select and download the version 0.5.3, if you are using firefox 2.
Firenvim

After downloading, click on Install which will install the plugin. Restart the Firefox browser to start using the plugin.

Step 2: Don’t Panic. Get the Firefox Menus and Toolbars back.

As specified in the vimperator home page, Vimperator hides the Firefox menubar and toolbar by default. Until you get fully comfortable with Vimperator, you can display the menu-bar and toolbar by using the following set command.

Since the browser will behave like Vim editor, you can type the above :set command right in the browser, which will display the command at the bottom of the browser as shown in the Fig below.

Fig: Enable the Firefox menu and Toolbar buttons

8 Powerful features to make firefox behave like Vim editor

Feature 1: Navigate Web Page Using Vim Editor Keystrokes

Start browsing any website or webpage just like how you would browse a text file in Vim editor. For example,

  • gg – Go to the top of the web page.
  • G – Go to the bottom of the web page.
  • k – line scroll the web page downwards.
  • j – line scroll the web page upwards.

Refer to our earlier article about: 8 Essential Vim Editor Navigation Fundamentals. You can pretty much use all the Vim navigation commands inside the firefox.

Feature 2: Basic Firfox Browser Operations using Keyboard

In a typical Vim Editor, we don’t browse websites. So, just the basic Vim navigation commands is not enough while browsing a website. We need keystrokes to open a URL, page forward and page backwards etc. Following table illustrates the basic browser operations along with the shortcuts.

Table: Basic operations – Vimperator
KeyAction
o URLOpen the specified URL in the current tab.
t URLOpen the specified URL in the new tab.
Ctrl + OGo to the previous page.
Ctrl + iGo to next page.
Ctrl + ^Go to alternate tab.
:lsShow currently opened tabs and its details.
:qClose the current tab.


Fig: ls command displays all open Firefox TABs (click on image to enlarge)

Feature 3: Vim Like Status Bar for Firefox Browser

You will get a status line like Vim where you will be able to see the following among many other useful informations:

  • Progress of web page download while content is getting downloaded
  • Total number of tabs opened
  • Current Tab number
  • Percentage of the page you are in. i.e Top of the page is 0% and bottom of the page is 100%.

Feature 4: Search The Web page Content like Vim Editor

Firefox Vimeo Player Error

  • While browsing a webpage, you can use all the search facilities of vim such as ‘/’, ‘?’, ‘n’, ‘N’.
  • Forward Search: You can easily search inside the web page by ‘/searchtext’ forward. Press ‘n’ to go to the next match. Press ‘N’ to go to the previous match.
  • Backward Search: You can easily search inside the web page by ‘?searchtext’ backward. Press ‘n’ to go to the next match. Press ‘N’ to go to the previous match.

Feature 5: Follow a Link

If you want to click a link without touching the mouse, press ‘f’ which will highlight all the links on the page with a link-number in front of the link. Enter the link-number to start loading that specific link.

In the following webpage, when I pressed ‘f’, it highlighted all the links on the page in yellow and displays a number in front of it. So, if I want to open the “Ultimate Guide for Creating Strong Password”, I will press 7 (which is displayed in front of the link).


Fig: Press F to open Links on a webpage

Feature 6: Use Vim Editor Mark, Macro and Map Feature Inside Firefox

Mark:

You can do local and global bookmarks in web pages and you can return to the same location later. Read our previous article which explains about it How To Add Bookmarks Inside Vim Editor. The same concept works inside the Firefox browser using Vimperator plugin.

Macro:

You can record specific operations (for example, opening a website, entering your login information etc.) and associate it with a registry. After recording the sequence of actions/clicks inside the Firefox browser, you can play it again by typing @ followed by the register name.

This is exactly the same macros concept that works in Vim editor. For a detailed explanation of record and play, please refer to our previous article Vi and Vim Macro Tutorial: How To Record and Play.

Map:

You can map a job to a key. So, any time you type the key you will get the job done instantly as shown below.

  • :map – Vim command to create the map
  • gk – Name of the map (map-name).
  • o www.thegeekstuff.com – the command to be executed when the map name is called.

So by pressing gk, which will open this blog in the current page. To get to know about map in more detail, refer our previous article 3 Powerful Musketeers Of Vim Editor — Macro, Mark and Map

Feature 7: Vimperator Firefox Add-on Help and Tutorial

Similar to Vim help, you can access the help page for a specific topic directly from the browser by entering :help gt Download hex code usb devices driver.

For vimperator Tutorial press F1 in Firefox which will take you to the tutorial. Or type :help which will take you to the tutorial page.

Firefox vim

Feature 8: Handling Tabbed Browsing using Keystrokes

Firefox vimperator

Use the following keystrokes to navigate across the Firefox open tabs.

Table: Tabbed browsing – Navigations
KeyAction
g0Go to the first tab
g$Go to the last tab
gtGo to the next tab
gTGo to the previous tab

Other than tab navigation, you can also perform the following tab operations.
Duplicate Tab: Sometimes you may want to duplicate the current window. To open the same web page in another window, enter the following.

Reopen a Tab: Reopening a closed a tab, can be done using:

Go to Tab: Going to the Nth tab can be done using:

Mozilla Firefox Free Download Latest Version

If you have 10 tabs open in Firefox and would like to jump to tab number 5, type :tn 5

Recommended Reading

Vim 101 Hacks, by Ramesh Natarajan. I’m a command-line junkie. So, naturally I’m a huge fan of Vi and Vim editors. Several years back, when I wrote lot of C code on Linux, I used to read all available Vim editor tips and tricks. Based on my Vim editor experience, I’ve written Vim 101 Hacks eBook that contains 101 practical examples on various advanced Vim features that will make you fast and productive in the Vim editor. Even if you’ve been using Vi and Vim Editors for several years and have not read this book, please do yourself a favor and read this book. You’ll be amazed with the capabilities of Vim editor.

Awesome Vim Editor Articles

Following are few awesome Vi / Vim editor tutorials that you might find helpful.

Firefox vimeo

Advanced technical driver download for windows. Note: Please subscribe to The Geek Stuff and don’t miss any future Vi and Vim editor tips and tricks.