Entry tags:

productivity

I have discovered Vimperator

Or I should say, I have finally tried seriously to navigate with it(since I knew it from the start but was too intimided).
The secret to not be overwhelmed is to first display the help window in a tab, and learn the few commands to go back to it and search it whenever it is necessary.
This first step, once overcome, will let you learn any command when you need it.
If you organize your learning like that it will certainly take a little time but it will be rather fun, just search any command you need, would it be to open a search in a new window or close several tabs at once... You may have to search several times the same thing for it to be well remembered, just do it!

I still have an annoying problem with Gmail(it is in fact not related to Vimperator directly, more of a conflict between Gmail keyboard shortcuts and Firefox ones. But since I am trying to give up the mouse, I am now confronted to this problem). It is because the "Find as you type" feature of firefox. Even when disabled it pops up on the press of the slash key.
I often make searches in Gmail, and the shortcut is the same.
Bad luck : it is the firefox one that has the priority.
I can still enter whatever character then press ESC, then press again the slash to select the Gmail seach field but it is cumbersome, and doesn't seem to work all the time.
I have tried to disable the "typeahead" flags in the firefox preferences but it is not sufficient, I think I should find a way to completely delete this feature.

Back to Vimperator. Here are a few excerps stolen on some forum (certainly the Autohotkey forums, I didn't record the source), and with some additions of mine.

If you don't know much about vim, don't worry, just the basics of vimperator will have you mouse-free browsing in no time. j/k scroll the page, f to label links and just type the 1, maybe 2 letter sequence corresponding to the link you want to follow. Type the sequence in all caps to open in a new tab. And right after you install it, type :set guioptions=mTs to get your menu, Toolbar, and status bar back.

It’s an absolutely awesome extension, you use j and k to scroll down and up on a page, Ctrl-F and Ctrl-B are the equivalent of PageDown and PageUp, you can yank the current URL by pressing y and you can delete a tab with d. Go to any tab with b and the number of the tab, type gt to go to next tab or gT to go to the previous tab.
Of course type / to search on the page, and B to toggle the list of tabs.

Most important : type I to disable vimperator. Until you press ESC the browser will behave as "usual".

I use firefox portable on a USB drive and I can say it was pretty slow until I started using vimperator. I can delete tabs instantly with d, while it was taking minutes with the mouse...

With the combo WikidPad, Executor, and Vimperator I use right now I don't need the mouse very often. Oh and I also use some great script I discovered today :
"The incrementally switch windows" autohotkey script.
I defined the right control key as the hotkey, and I can switch windows when typing just a few letters of their name...
GREAT, and FREE! (and customizable).

There is also a great site that gathers the keyboard shortcuts of a lot of applications. It was very useful to retrieve the firefox and google apps shortcuts.

In the future.. (not so far, maybe just next month), executor and autohotkey may be replaced by Dash all at once... When it happens I may review it ^^