Vimperator - kickass Firefox add-on
 

So I see some people around here talking about how to make their Firefoxes maximally Firefoxy. In particular, people seem to like having a minimal UI, allowing maximum window space for content. Hay guyz, let me show you what my browser window looks like.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...mperator-1.png
(click for full size)

Vimperator, bitches.

Now, the point of this isn't to let content have as much room as possible; that's just a side effect. Vimperator completely changes your browsing experience. Hell, it changes the text in your window title from "Mozilla Firefox" to "Vimperator." It's not like that in mine because I changed it. You can customize the fuck out of Vimperator, much like Firefox itself.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. Here's what it does actually do: it makes Firefox control like vim. Vim's a text editor. It's good for editing texts. It's controlled entirely with the keyboard! And yes, you do a lot more than just type. If you've never used it, it's scary and confusing at first, but fuck if it doesn't get fast and comfortable. Same with using it to control a browser. Scroll up and down with J/K. Space bar, Ctrl+U and Ctrl+B for more scrolling action. Need a tab? Clicking a button or something? You don't need a mouse. Just hit T. To follow links, hit F to highlight and number them, then type the number or text of the link you want. These are just the basics.

Anyway, so basically, it's just fucking awesome, and completely prevents me from switching browsers ever. As far as I know, I can't get anything like this anywhere else. Maybe Links, kinda, but uh... yeah, no. So, like, maybe you wanna try it out. I dunno, just a cool obscure thing I wanted to share.

Alas, letting down CS grads everywhere, I prefer other editors.
 

Link for those of us what be... Google challenged.

I just started using it... And it's damn confusing. I'm not sure if I'm going to hang onto it, but I'm too tired to try and learn it now.

This does sound cool, but it would put to waste my 24" monitor and stupidly high precision mouse! I may try this on the backup compy that has a terrible monitor, though.

This sounds like the sexiest thing to happen to netbooks since 6-cell batteries.

I feel comfortable with let us say an expansionist definition of the thread topic so as to generally include kickass Firefox addons.

Eh. It only saves about a half inch of space, and I'd have to learn all those keyboard commands.

Not worth it, especially considering my monitor size.

You know what is worth it, though? Adblocker.

Right, yeah, I forgot to mention. It's great for laptops.

Any streamlining and slimming down of the interface is great for netbooks, though. This one isn't special. Unless the keyboard shortcuts are what you're saying make it great.


In that case, I'd recommend Firesomething, Fission, Flashblock, and FireFTP (if you don't already use a stronger FTP client / terminal for this). The first gives me amusing names (Sunviper right now), the second uses the URL bar as the progress bar for loading pages (a Safari feature I've grown accustomed to; little additional benefit), the third makes it so that flash only plays when I want it to (oh man so many annoying ads and stupid page menus/"features" stopped because of it <3), and the last saves me the need to install another program on this machine since all I do is upload a picture or page once in a while (my development or other work is done in other platforms).

That's more addons than I ever thought I'd run (I assumed I'd run 0-1).

I may suggest WikiLook. A neat little add on that shows you the first few paragraphs (which are usually the ones summarizing something) of any Wiki upon [ctrl]+right clicking on a word, or sentence without opening a new window or tab. In fact you can also assign two additional wikis to Shift and Alt. By default those are wiktionary and uncyclopedia. Though, you could also have nuklearpedia or sardapedia or whatever.

WikiLook is totally rad and changed my life forever.

You don't seem to appreciate just how much fun there is to be had trying to manipulate anything on a desktop using a trackpad roughly the same size as a postage stamp, so I will go ahead and tell you.

None. There is absolutely no fun whatsoever to be had trying to do that.

Also it's true that anything that slims the interface is great for netbooks, and this does that, ergo in that way as well it is great for netbooks.

I mean I have actually been choosing to use Google Chrome as my main browser on my netbooks; that is how much more important a streamlined interface is than pretty much anything else on a netbook.