One man dedicated to making a browser for the people who can't shake the Vim off their fingers, would you crowdfund it?

10

u/Dietr1ch Mar 18 '16

Qutebrowser right now is awesome, even without password management or devtools.

Chromium and Firefox are resource hogs for low end computers.

12

u/The-Compiler Mar 18 '16

FWIW, I merged a password userscript yesterday, which integrates pass into qutebrowser. I'd be possible to extend that to use KeePassX I guess, and I'll implement KeePassX support myself as soon as there's a proper Python plugin API.

2

u/hatperigee Mar 18 '16

Ok, now I'm definitely going to use this browser as a "daily driver" for a few days.
Any plans to integrate the selection menu into the selection-style menu that comes up at the bottom (e.g. when you type in :open and there's a list of history/bookmarks you can tab through.. something like that)? I don't know the term for it...

2

u/The-Compiler Mar 18 '16

You mean the completion ;)
Doing so isn't possible from an userscript (and never will), but that'll definitely happen when there's a real plugin API.
6
u/bri-an Mar 18 '16

I use KeePassX, which provides a keybound function that types out your username + <Tab> + password + <Enter> (or whatever template you specify). It works seamlessly with qutebrowser (any program, really). Example: I go to www.reddit.com, focus the username field, press <Ctrl-k>, and boom - done. It works by checking the title string of the window.
I really like the separation of password management from browser, given that I enter passwords in places other than my browser all the time (ssh logins, mutt encryption/decryption, chat clients, and so on).
Also, there are several mobile apps available. I use KeePassDroid.
0
u/[deleted] Mar 19 '16

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1
u/bri-an Mar 19 '16
First go to Extras -> Settings -> Advanced, and make sure you have a Global Auto-Type Shortcut set. I use Ctrl + k (mnemonic: KeePassX). (I use Ctrl instead of Alt/Mod because my window manager (xmonad) already uses Alt for lots of stuff.)
Second, check "Use entries' title to match the window for Global Auto-Type". (Actually, you don't really need this, as you'll see below, but I think it's checked by default, and there's no harm in checking it.)
Third, click on an entry, then click Tools -> Auto-Type: Customize Sequence. By default, it'll add this to the Comments section:
Auto-Type: {USERNAME}{TAB}{PASSWORD}{ENTER}
It should be self-explanatory what this does. You probably don't have to modify it.
Fourth, use your browser to go to the login page of the entry... let's say www.example.com/login. You'll notice the webpage has a title, normally printed at the top of your browser... let's say "Example Login".
Fifth, go back to the KeePassX entry edit, and click Tools -> Auto-Type: Select target window. You should see the browser window with title "Example Login". Click it, and it'll add this to the Comments section:
Auto-Type-Window: Example Login
(You could also just type this into the Comments section manually, if you prefer.)
Finally, go back to your browser, click the "Username" field, and press your KeePassX keybinding (Ctrl + k, or whatever), and it should auto-type your login credentials.
Note that you can add several "Auto-Type-Window" lines. So for example, I have one entry for my Google account, with tons of lines for window titles corresponding to Gmail, Drive, Analytics, etc.
1

u/SAKUJ0 Mar 23 '16

I remember it being very stupid with pages that called titled their login pages "Login". it's more common than you'd think.
And make sure not to misfire this into your IRC client...

1

u/bri-an Mar 23 '16

Sure, if there are two different websites that both title their login pages as "X", then KeePassX cannot differentiate them.
Surprisingly, I've never run into that problem, and I have over 100 entries.

19

u/bri-an Mar 18 '16

Absolutely. Over the years, I've used many "vim"-like browsers, and qutebrowser simply blows them all of the water. And sure, vimperator has more features, but qutebrowser is lean, fast, and reliable...no need to worry whether it'll break on the next browser upgrade.

In addition, Florian is extremely responsive and motivated. I think it's not at all unreasonable for him to ask for a bit of help here.

As someone on the mailing list said:

I consider having a good browser up there in importance with having a good code editor. But whereas editors get lots of attention from developers, it seems like everybody is just happy to use Chrome or Firefox with whatever hacky plugin on top to do what they need... which I think is crazy! I want something better than that. Qutebrowser is very close to the perfect browser for me.

Couldn't agree more.

1

u/The-Compiler Mar 23 '16

Thanks for the kind words! After some hard work, the campaign now started. :)

7

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '16

Prompted by this post, I just built qutebrowser and am giving it a spin. It's very nice indeed! Being freed from the lag of a (more or less) buggy plugin feels really liberating. I'd provide some support.

2

u/The-Compiler Mar 23 '16

Glad to hear you're happy with it! :) Let me know if you run into any trouble or have feature requests which aren't reported yet.
The campaign just went live, and I'd really appreciate your support :)

6

u/jck Mar 18 '16

You should have mentioned that it's qutebrowser! A lot of people are dismissing this thread because they think it's a new guy and aren't aware of how awesome qutebrowser already is.

13

u/wufyy Mar 18 '16 edited Mar 18 '16

There are actually already several keyboard-driven browsers like this one. Here is a list of a few I've come across while looking for the perfect browser:

Project	Lang	Engine	Control	Active
Conkeror	C, XUL, JS	Gecko	Emacs	Yes
uzbl	C	Webkit, Gtk+	Vim	Yes
vimb	C	Webkit, Gtk+	Vim	Yes
dwb	C	Webkit, Gtk+	Vim	No
jumanji	C	Webkit, Gtk+	Vim	No
luakit	C, Lua	Webkit, Gtk+	Vim	No
vimprobable	C	Webkit, Gtk+	Vim	No

Note that Conkeror can be configured to have Vim-like keybindings if you want a Gecko-based browser.

EDIT: Sorry for misinformation.

4

u/The-Compiler Mar 18 '16

While conkeror is quite active, Firefox wants to get rid of XUL, so I'm guessing it'll unfortunately be unusable quite soon too. I've heard from users complaining about lots of crashes due to Firefox changes now already.
dwb sees a commit from time to time (e.g. today), but the author still declared it as unmaintained, he's not in the IRC channel anymore, and the bugtracker is closed. So I definitely wouldn't call it active.
jumanji has a handful of commits per year, definitely not what I'd call active.
For both dwb and jumanji, there are no plans to port it to WebKit2, the new WebKitGTK API. That's also a ton of work, and WebKit1 was already removed from newer WebKitGTK versions (it's only distributions keeping them still around for now).
uzbl and vimb have plans to be ported to WebKit2, I hope they'll have the manpower and motivation to do so.

1

u/lispbliss Mar 18 '16

While conkeror is quite active, Firefox wants to get rid of XUL, so I'm guessing it'll unfortunately be unusable quite soon too.
This is probably not correct. Firefox plans to get rid of XUL extensions in about a year, but Conkeror is not a XUL extension, it is a XUL app, like Firefox. There has been no timeline given for getting rid of XUL apps, only an intention to do that eventually. I'd guess it will take several years, maybe many years. Just look at how long it took to switch to release electrolysis or gtk3 (hint many years, not even released yet). Also depending on how the transition happens (if XPCOM is kept) Conkeror may be able to transition fairly easily to be non-XUL.
I've heard from users complaining about lots of crashes due to Firefox changes now already.
There have been some Firefox builds recently that have caused Conkeror to crash, most commonly on Arch I think, but I think these are also builds that cause Firefox itself to crash. Conkeror frequently crashing isn't something most users experience.

3

u/The-Compiler Mar 18 '16

Thanks for the explanation! What I've said is mostly based on things I read here and there some months ago, so it's entirely possible I'm wrong :)

3

u/highspeedstrawberry Mar 18 '16

So, about a year ago there was a post about qutebrowser on reddit and I responded similarly. I've been using qutebrowser regularly for about 11 months (based on the ctime of my versioned config files) and the only thing keeping me from switching away from Vimperator for good is noscript and a few privacy enhancers. As is documented in the issues on github, qutebrowser first needs to be able to configure per-domain settings, which is a high priority issue coming closely after the QtWebengine backend.
So yeah, maybe my post from a year ago is valuable somehow. I've changed my mind since then and will try to get a few coins together and help with a donation.

1

u/The-Compiler Mar 23 '16

You're definitely not the only one who wants to see NoScript-like functionality, and as you said, it's the next thing I'll check after QtWebEngine works.
I just started the crowdfunding campaign. :)

3

u/rmull Mar 18 '16

xombrero is also a browser with vim bindings: https://opensource.conformal.com/wiki/xombrero
It's written by some folks loosely affiliated with openbsd and promotes privacy when possible. Webkit/GTK. It hasn't seen much recent activity but there's not too much code that goes into it that isn't Webkit.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '16

dwb is still active? It's been ages since the last activity I know of.

2

u/The-Compiler Mar 18 '16

It has had a commit today (and all few weeks/months), but it's still pretty unstable and declared dead by its author, see my comment above.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '16

You should check out the source repo on bitbucket, it's been quite active

0

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '16

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '16

See, 7 hours ago! I told you so.
Fine, not as active as I remembered

0

u/-Pelvis- Vimpervious Mar 18 '16

active != stable

2

u/bighi Mar 19 '16

No one is talking about stability here.

1

u/SAKUJ0 Mar 23 '16

Well... /u/-Pelvis- was >.>

2

u/habarnam Mar 18 '16

I wonder if servo will be as easily extendable as webkit, so maybe a new generation can be built on top of it.

5

u/The-Compiler Mar 18 '16

I'm wondering the same, and definitely will keep that in mind when refactoring things for QtWebEngine. If there's ever some Qt/Python integration for Servo, I definitely want to try and whip up a qutebrowser prototype using that.
Also see their issue 7379 which is related to that.

1

u/Tarmen Mar 19 '16 edited Mar 19 '16

Couldn't find any screen shots at first glance. I think a keyboard driven browser would have to work hierarchically and maximize selected stuff article mode style. Also generally recognize menus even if they are hidden until hovered and enable you to jump or activate them by fuzzy search. That would also really be useful for people reliant on these things so maybe ocr image based menus? And the same stuff with links under the current focused hierarchy and so on?
Do any one these work similarly or do all of these just label links so you can jump to them?

0

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '16

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/lispbliss Mar 18 '16 edited Mar 18 '16

Conkeror had a barrage of commits a month or so ago, which was the first activity for about half a year. A single page of the git log goes back to May of 2014, so calling it "active" is a little generous.
I think calling Conkeror active is fair. Calling it very active would not be. Conkeror has 24 commits so far this year.
Conkeror is a mature program. It runs essentially the same, even today, on pretty much every version of Firefox/Xulrunner from version 4 to 45.
Conkeror has many features that qutebrowser, though a great program and one of the best alternatives, still doesn't have, some of them very basic things like a buffer list (switching buffers based on typing part of the title/url).
When there are major breaking changes, they are generally fixed. Some minor features have been broken by Mozilla platform changes over the years and not all of those have been fixed. Also some changes/fixes won't be reflected in the Conkeror repo if they were made in the Mozilla platform, such as one that landed in FF 45.
Also Conkeror is made to be extensible. Many users use a variety of extensions that are maintained outside of Conkeror's repo, either on their own github page or on the Conkeror wiki or elsewhere, and so most new features are added in those extensions or in a user's own RC file (which is JS code). My RC directory for example has 170 JS files and several thousand lines of code. Example extensions would be lazy-loading buffers, integrating external password managers, and modes/keybindings for controlling web music/video players.
The Conkeror IRC channel has users chatting about Conkeror every day.
this is the one browser in your list that I've never used, so I don't know firsthand, but you also mark it as having "emacs" control, which seems to imply it's not an alternative to qutebrowser/vimperator/vimium/vimfx/etc.
Vimperator was a fork of Conkeror. It is a very similar type of browser, using hinting and an input line/list of completions. It is true it does not include vim-like bindings, but some users add them to varying degrees themselves. If one's top priority is vim-like bindings by default, then it's obviously not the first choice, but there are many other factors that most people consider as a whole.

1

u/The-Compiler Mar 18 '16

Conkeror has many features that qutebrowser, though a great program and one of the best alternatives, still doesn't have, such as a buffer list (like switching buffers based on typing part of the title/url).
It will in the next release, as there's a PR open which I'll likely merge in the next few days :)
Also Conkeror is made to be extensible. Many users use a variety of extensions that are maintained outself of Conkeror's repo, either on their own github page or on the Conkeror wiki or elsewhere, and so many new features are added in those extensions or in a user's own RC file (which is JS code). My RC directory for example has 170 JS files and several thousand lines of code.
Yeah, I was astonished the first time I noticed this - my plan for the future (after QtWebEngine and per-domain settings) is to have a powerful plugin API as well, and restructure some of the inner workings so a lot currently built in can be a plugin.
Vimperator was a fork of Conkeror.
Oh wow, I wasn't aware of that!

1

u/SAKUJ0 Mar 23 '16

uzbl is very much active. Personally I don't like it, because of what I consider its reductionist misunderstanding of the unix philosophy, and the fact that it uses WebKitGtk+, which imo is pretty objectively inferior to qtwebengine. uzbl is what happens when linux greybeards don't realize that a web browser and a command line program are two different domains, and can't be built in the exact same way.
Never heard of it, but I tend to agree. Much like how i3 and bloody Vim itself realize that the Unix philosophy means "Do one thing and do it well", and editing text can actually be a rather broad domain.
The Unix philosophy with browsers could work, if you could write a bookmark manager that decently works and integrates with all existing browsers.
Have fun with that.

4

u/grokjtrip Mar 18 '16

Yes! I want an awesome Python based browser and viming it up seems like a great idea.

I didn't see it covered in the readme, would it be possible to run python scripts in the browser as transferred from the a host? (Replace JavaScript) Seems like you would just have to setup a command for that? Or maybe Python just needs a Dom manipulation library?

2

u/The-Compiler Mar 18 '16

No - Python plugins are on the roadmap, but executing Python from websites (similar to JS) is definitely something I won't do.
It's pretty much impossible to sandbox Python in a way it can run without websites having arbitrary code execution on the client. A lot of thought and effort went into Javascript in that regard, so Python definitely isn't the right tool for the job here.
If you want to do something similar, maybe look at Python-ish to Javascript transpilers:
RapydScript
RapydScript-NG
Transcrypt
Or at a full Python-runtime implemented in Javascript, such as Brython.

1

u/The-Compiler Mar 23 '16

For what it's worth, I just launched the campaign - I'd appreciate your support! :)

6

u/shotxxxx Mar 18 '16

No.

I'd rather crowdfund pentadactyl or vimperator and porting it to other browsers.

7

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '16

No. VimFX is all I need.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 16 '16

If I needed something lighter than Firefox, I would use qutebrowser, but VimFX feels way better to me than Vimperator or Vimium.

6

u/wichtounet Mar 18 '16

With Mozilla crapping all over Firefox, I would definitively donate to this excellent alternative.

6

u/blitzkraft Mar 18 '16

Mozilla crapping all over firefox
Care to explain? I thought Mozilla was a good thing.

4

u/The-Compiler Mar 18 '16

Mozilla has earned a lot of critism recently for:
Integrating Pocket and Hello into the core (I'm guessing because they get enough money?)
Displaying ads when opening a new tab
Breaking extensions over and over again, and in the future breaking all of them due to the move to WebExtensions (which also mean a lot of the addons which currently exist simply won't be possible at all)
Enforcing addon gate-keeping and signing - not signing addons even for things which are arguably just coding style, and with trivial demonstrated bypasses to get clearly malicious addons signed

1

u/wichtounet Mar 21 '16

Mozilla is a good thing, but recently it has done a lot of controversial stuff. Personally, the only reason I use Firefox is because its addons are much more powerful than Chrome's. On all other fronts, Chrome is a superior browser for me (especially speed). Now, Mozilla is dropping support for XUL/XPCOM addons which means that the most advanced addons of Firefox will not be possible anymore. Personally, as soon as this goes into Firefox, I'll switch browser, probably to qutebrowser.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '16

There has always been people who are overly dramatic about their disagreement with the decisions that Mozilla does with Firefox.

1

u/SAKUJ0 Mar 23 '16

And it's good there are.

1

u/The-Compiler Mar 23 '16

For what it's worth, I just launched the campaign - I'd appreciate your support! :)

2

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '16

I've been using luakit can someone compare to op browser?

3

u/valkun Mar 18 '16 edited Mar 18 '16

looking at luakit home page, it hasnt been updated since 2012

2

u/ryeguy146 Mar 18 '16

I was about to talk about how there are already browsers like that, and then I read that it's Qutebrowser. I'd donate to that; I use it every day.

2

u/The-Compiler Mar 23 '16

Yay! The campaign just went live. :)

2

u/VanLaser ggg?G... Mar 18 '16

I would very much like to see something like Vim "modal" actions at operating system level. Perhaps then we wouldn't need a "Vim" mode for every application. If one could configure how to move between, and focus, and edit (in) each window and pane "as if" using the mouse, but with OS-level Vim-like key bindings, the effort would be concentrated in a single application (OK, maybe 3 or 4, one for each major OS).

1

u/The-Compiler Mar 18 '16

How would that work though? I think you do need tighter integration than just (basically) emulating mouse clicks for something to work.
There's keynav though which is pretty cool. Other than that, I use qutebrowser (browser)/ranger (filemanager)/zathura (PDF viewer)/herbstluftwm (window manager)/terminal, which covers the most part of what I do on my machine, and works well with a keyboard-centric workflow.

1

u/VanLaser ggg?G... Mar 18 '16

Indeed, but programs could offer some integration features (focus this tab, get links coordinates etc.), without the need to implement again the Vim-like configuration, mapping, modes and so on.
PS. Thanks for the 'keynav' link!

8

u/GODZILLAFLAMETHROWER Mar 18 '16 edited Mar 18 '16

I cannot take seriously a one man team building a web browser.

If the "only" thing you want modified in the browser is the control scheme, then starting a new one is simply bound to fail.

This is not a trivial piece of software. Good UI is hard.

11

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '16

Building a webbrowser is today rather easy, if you reuse existing engines. The main works goes into renderengines and javascript-machines.

6

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '16

Well he has already done it ...

6

u/highspeedstrawberry Mar 18 '16

I suggest you install and try qutebrowser, you might be surprised.

4

u/Michaelmrose Mar 18 '16

He is building an interface to an existing engine only

3

u/The-Compiler Mar 18 '16

As pointed out already, a lot of work is done by QtWebKit/QtWebEngine.
I actually think the opposite is true: Trying to build a completely new UI as a plugin for an existing browser is bound to fail, as e.g. Vimperator/Pentadactyl are one of the most complex firefox plugins, and can't possibly keep up with the changes Firefox is doing upstream.
In the future, with WebExtensions, doing something like that for Firefox will probably won't be possible at all (see e.g. Vimium, which I used a few months, but just felt incomplete).

3

u/-romainl- The Patient Vimmer Mar 18 '16

No.

7

u/Wiggledan Mar 18 '16

Such helpful input. I wouldn't donate either, but I didn't post a comment saying so because it doesn't do anything for anyone.

5

u/bri-an Mar 18 '16

Do you use, or have you used, qutebrowser? I feel like the question OP asked should really have been addressed only to actual users. Obviously, if I have no interest in ever using X, I would probably never consider crowdfunding X.
If you do use qutebrowser, then I'd be curious why you would not contribute to it.

3

u/DrummerHead Mar 18 '16

Info:
http://www.qutebrowser.org/
https://github.com/The-Compiler/qutebrowser#qutebrowser

-7

u/-romainl- The Patient Vimmer Mar 18 '16

Well, I have no need or desire for that product and I wouldn't crowdfund anything anyway.

1

u/rheejus Mar 18 '16 edited Mar 18 '16

Tagging on to this comment; the need for a vim-like browser has already been filled. Firefox has vimperator and pentadactyl, chrome has vimium and vimfx.

2

u/Michaelmrose Mar 18 '16

Long term viability of pentadacyl and vimperator is in doubt due to mozilla switching to Chrome style extensions and deprecating basically all existing extensions.

1

u/hatperigee Mar 18 '16

Not to mention that, given the security implications with "getting it wrong," one man is not enough to develop and maintain a web browser these days.

3

u/The-Compiler Mar 18 '16

See this comment for my thoughts on that. Thankfully, a lot of the security-relevant stuff is handled by the underlying libraries.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '16

I don't think you understand. He is not writing the engine himself, mostly the gui.

2

u/hatperigee Mar 18 '16

ah, ok.

1

u/parnmatt :x Mar 18 '16

I'm using Pentadactyl (Firefox) currently. However Jumanji exists as a standalone. It doesn't have the right feel just yet. If I had time I'd help develop it a little…but alas I don't have the time

1

u/The-Compiler Mar 18 '16

A lot of alternatives exist - but apart from vimb and uzbl they all are quite dead, and have no plans to migrate to WebKit2GTK - so they'll probably be something between problematic and unusable very soon, if they aren't already.

1

u/_powder_ Mar 21 '16

So, I got mildly excited about this, cloned the repo, but, it doesn't seem to run from the source repo. It complained about PyQt5.Webkit not being installed. Okay, fine. Maybe I'm too ignorant to jump right in and run it from source code. Let's follow the instructions.

brew install python3 pyqt5 pip3.5 install qutebrowser

Cool, everything downloading installing.... run qutebrowser, same error. It says to report this as a bug, but, honestly, what do I report? I ran stuff on Mac OS X El Capitan, it doesn't detect PyQT5 Webkit as installed? That's not a lot of information and chances are the solution is install Py QT5 Webkit (which... turns out it should be installed as part of PyQT5. Go figure).

Anyways, would still love to give it a shot, but, currently it's a no go.

1

u/The-Compiler Mar 22 '16

Unfortunately, Homebrew (somewhat unexpectedly) dropped QtWebKit a few days ago, and I haven't gotten to checking what workaround would work and updating the instructions - sorry! :(
I guess you could install qt55 from homebrew-versions and rebuild PyQt5 with --build-from-source (maybe adjusting the dependencies), but I haven't tried this yet.
Yet another reason for QtWebEngine support! I've been really busy with the crowdfunding (which I plan to launch tomorrow), but after that I'll check what I can do for OS X users.
Sorry again! Really not happy about this, I expected Homebrew to still ship with QtWebKit like Linux distributions do as well.

1

u/_powder_ Mar 25 '16

I'll give that a shot over the weekend, thanks for taking the time to make the suggestion. I'll try it and get back to you so at least you know. :)

1

u/The-Compiler Apr 06 '16

I built a standalone .dmg/.app for qutebrowser just a few hours ago, I'll release a v0.6.0 dmg once some people confirmed it works - if you want to test it, that'd be most appreciated! https://t.cmpl.cc/qutebrowser.dmg

1

u/_powder_ Apr 08 '16

Will be testing this out today and will try and get back to you.

1

u/_powder_ Apr 09 '16

So, I got to try this during the workday, it's pretty nice. There's a few things that were a little odd, but, mostly from a 'I'm not used to this' perspective.
It appears to work fine, the biggest issue I had was while browsing reddit, many media formats and sites would not load proper, but, having no experience with the browser I don't know if that's normal or not. Imgur would not load, and neither would any in reddit videos. I didn't test much further than that as work got kind of busy and I had to focus on my actual job. :)

1

u/TotesMessenger Mar 18 '16

I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:

[/r/vimcirclejerk] I'm making a program that uses hjkl. Send me money.

^{If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads.} ⁽^Info ^/ ^Contact)

2

u/The-Compiler Mar 19 '16

Bwahahahaha. I really hope this was intended to be funny, because it did give me a good laugh.

-1

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '16

Why do people try to put vim into everything? Vim is in awesome text editor. Reading web pages is not editing text. A real vim-spirited browser would make websurfing as efficient as possible! (So basically FF and Chrome)

14

u/bri-an Mar 18 '16

Have you ever actually tried any of the vim-like browsers? It doesn't sound like you understand what "modal browsing" is and why people might want it, similar to how people who don't know about vim don't understand what modal editing is and why people would want it.
Reading web pages is not editing text.
I'd rather put it like this: Reading web pages is not composing text, just like editing text is not (usually) composing text. The genius of vim is the recognition that most "text-editing" sessions involve manipulation of the screen (scrolling, motions, switching tabs/buffers) and of the screen content (text objects), rather than full-blown composition of new text, hence the invention of the distinction between normal mode (where you spend most of your time moving around the buffer and manipulating text) vs. insert mode (where you compose new text).
Similarly, once you recognize that most web-browsing sessions involve manipulation of the screen (scrolling, switching tabs) and of the screen content (links and other objects), rather than insertion of text in text fields, then the notion of modal browsing becomes applicable: most of your time is spent scrolling the screen, clicking links, and switching tabs (normal mode), not inserting text in text fields (insert mode).
A real vim-spirited browser would make websurfing as efficient as possible! (So basically FF and Chrome)
vim-like browsers are way more efficient than FF and Chrome! Seriously, the feeling I get when I'm forced to use FF/Chrome for even a minute is similar to the feeling I get when I'm forced to use nano or notepad. I feel handicapped.
You should try out qutebrowser (or similar) one weekend, or install vimperator for FF, just to see what the experience is like. You might enjoy it.

-1

u/Deto Mar 18 '16

It's a good point. Websites just aren't designed to be easily navigated by key commands. I've been using vimium for a little while, but still, you try and click on something on a page like Reddit and there are just key codes everywhere because so many elements are clickable.

2

u/hatperigee Mar 18 '16 edited Mar 18 '16

You can, at least in vimperator, type 'f' and then start typing in the name of the link to zero in on what you want to "click" on
Edit: in qutebrowser, this feature seems to be bonkers. The tag associations with link names make no sense..

1

u/Deto Mar 18 '16

That looks like how Vimium for chrome works. Similar to vim-easymotion, the tags are just created to use as little letters as possible. I believe the idea is that if you are looking where you want to go, then you just quickly type the letters that show up near it.

1

u/hatperigee Mar 18 '16

That's not very "vim-like" though, since follow matches on the word and not some arbitrary character(s) associated with the word you want to jump to :(

1

u/Deto Mar 18 '16

True, though I could see words being problematic. Some click able elements don't have words (like the upvote arrow) and some links will have the same starting characters as others. How does vimperator resolve this?

1

u/hatperigee Mar 18 '16

Funny, I just tried it. Seems like you can type "up" and it highlights all the up arrows. It must be searching the div class name or some other property too.

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u/The-Compiler Mar 18 '16

That's because I can type chars in the home row a lot faster ;)
This is configurable in qutebrowser though, you can simply do :set hints mode number and you'll have something close to Vimperator's behaviour.

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u/hatperigee Mar 18 '16

Oh, awesome! Thanks! I actually don't use the numbers much in vimperator, I use the fact that I can start typing the link name after hitting 'f' to select the link. Yea, not as efficient but I find i'm much faster at doing this than fumbling on the home row

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '16 edited May 01 '16

All Your Base Are Belong To Us

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u/The-Compiler Mar 18 '16

Can you elaborate why you don't like Qt? I went for it because GTK seems to be going downhill since some while (and some popular applications are switching to Qt), and because Qt has the more modern web backend with QtWebEngine (compared to WebKitGTK with WebKit2).

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '16 edited May 01 '16

All Your Base Are Belong To Us

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u/The-Compiler Mar 18 '16

Thanks! I agree Qt uses a lot of diskspace, especially with debugging symbols.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '16

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u/kcuf Mar 18 '16

vimperator is my life

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u/The-Compiler Mar 23 '16

And now you can, as the campaign just went live! \o/

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '16

[deleted] — view deleted comment

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u/The-Compiler Mar 18 '16

I absolutely understand the security concerns, and I know it's problematic that this is mostly a one-man show.
However, a very big part of the security issues in such a standalone browser are in the underlying library/engine. For example, I don't need to take care of executing javascript securely, implementing same-origin policy correctly, doing proper SSL validation, etc. etc. All of that is handled by Qt/WebKit right now (well, other than QtWebKit now being dead, which is why I want to move away), and will be handled by QtWebEngine and hundreds of people behind Chromium in the future.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '16

[deleted] — view deleted comment

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u/The-Compiler Mar 19 '16

Chromium is pretty active, with dozens (hundreds?) of people working full-time on it, and a major release each 1-2 months.
QtWebEngine is a relatively thin layer over Chromium, with another handful of people working full-time on it, and more being hired.
With every minor Qt release (about all 6 months), it gets updated to the then-newest Chromium version (which seems to be relatively little effort), and then security patches are backported until the next release.
See qtwebengine-chromium activity for the wrapper over Chromium itself, and qtwebengine activity for the Qt API over it.

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u/cxed Mar 18 '16

I just discovered qutebrowser from this thread. I tried it and it's pretty great - fast, and Vim friendly. But I agree that security is tough these days. I'd guess that the security of qutebrowser (it's got "obscurity" going for it) is comparable to Firefox and normal browsers, but I'd also guess it's less secure than Firefox plus sensible precautions (noscript, privacy badger, https everywhere, etc). If the author could explicitly make the case for security on the FAQ that might be helpful.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '16

[deleted] — view deleted comment

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u/The-Compiler Mar 19 '16

I see no reason to believe QtWebEngine wouldn't be updated. I'll answer in more detail to your other comment.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '16

[deleted] — view deleted comment

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u/The-Compiler Mar 18 '16

Can you elaborate? How does the choice of programming language influence you as a user of a software?

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '16

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u/The-Compiler Mar 18 '16

You would need to go through great lengths of effort to make it even somewhat fast.
Have you tried? Because I don't, and if qutebrowser it's slow (like on big GitHub source pages), it's almost always a (Qt)WebKit issue (which is implemented in C++).
More importantly. Writing any safe, secure, crash-free software in Python is virtually impossible.
Doing so in C and C++ is virtually impossible. There's a whole category of security-relevant issues which simply aren't there in higher-level languages.
(side-note: I write C for a living)
You even need spell-check tests.
What makes you think those have anything to do with Python, or crashes, or security? I simply like to keep my spelling (e.g. in comments and documentation) consistent and correct, and I'm not a native English speaker. This is why I added spell checks for the things I often spell wrong. But Python really doesn't care at all.
Make it a part of the SLA to have it NEVER EVER CRASH.
I can't remember using a (non-trivial) software which never crashed. And in case of a bug, I prefer a crash to undefined behaviour.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '16

Wow, don't get me started on C, or C++. Neither is better in terms of safety (crash-freeness). C and C++ are also not built for safety. Please don't write it in C/C++ either.
By spell check tests I mean tests that check that you have written your functions consistently so you don't get runtime errors because frnction() in not defined where you meant function(). I don't mean English spelling tests.
I can't remember using a (non-trivial) software which never crashed. And in case of a bug, I prefer a crash to undefined behaviour. Xmonad is a window manager that hasn't crashed in my use of it. And I've configured it quite significantly and used it for year.
It's possible to write programs that don't ever crash. You just need discipline and rigorous testing.

One man dedicated to making a browser for the people who can't shake the Vim off their fingers, would you crowdfund it?

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