Ravings on CS, OSs, PLs, SF, and other things geeky...

Lately I have been trying to get used to Vim. Not really sure why, probably it has something to do with it’s universal availability, it’s pretty syntax highlighting or just the fact that it’s ridiculously steep learning curve defies me to to study it’s arcane and cryptic ways of efficient text editing. I’ll probably give it up as soon as I’ve gotten used to switching windows and pasting text here and there.

Still in researching these vimming ways I came across this really cool extension for Firefox called the Vimperator. Unlike extensions like mozless that just offer a few more keyboard shortcuts for using Firefox, this one goes all the way, even removes the title, search and bookmark bars from the window. Instead you get a vim like status bar at the bottom, and hitting ‘:’ gives you a place to enter commands to open new windows, tabs or searches. Aside from the standard ‘hjkl’ way of scrolling the page the simple search and hint systems are pretty cool. Hitting the ‘f’ key gets you hints for all links on a page and a two-key shortcut to open it in the current window or a new tab depending on whether you hit with shift pressed or not. This kind of navigation has been standard in the Konqueror browser and I’m happy to see it working in Firefox as well. All in all once you mastered the vimperator it can make mouse free navigation a breeze.

Here is an small screenshot to illustrate:

Note the hints for the links on top and the status bar at the bottom.

Also in Firefox related news there is now (and has been for a while) an Icelandic dictionary available for it and Thunderbird. It only took 10 years to show up but at last I can have my emails and blogglike blather spell checked up the wazoo. I’m sure my friends and family, much tired by my questionable grammar and spelling, are relieved to get one of those of those problems nicely tucked away. Wohoo! :)