Questions and Suggestions

[AeliusSaionji]

Pentadactyl has been slowly dying over the last year or so, and I'm looking for a simpler replacement; vimperator seems to be working well, but by it's nature, if the devs ever lose interest, it will break within a firefox release or two. VimFx is the most promising replacement, but there are two aspects that really aren't working for me.

1 modal interface without [enough] visual feedback. I know the icon changes color for insert mode and bypass, but it would be much better if you had a text indicator for all modes (excluding perhaps normal).

Why not print the current mode in the bottom right popup you use to show the current keypress and messages?

2 Filtering through tabs. Currently, there is no interface by which we can navigate tabs. I don't know how you might implement this without breaking your mantra "don't change the interface", but if you could implement a floating window like the chrome extension Vimium, that would be fantastic.

Alternatively, should you know of an existing extension that accomplishes this, or an about:config entry to get the awesome bar work in this way under a specific context, I'd be happy to try that out.

Thanks!

[AeliusSaionji]

Vimium's floating tab-switching bar

[lydell]

I'm looking for a simpler replacement [for Pentadactyl]

Coming from Pentadactyl, I'm afraid that VimFx will always disappoint you, since it is different by design (as you've also noticed). But since you said simpler, things might work out for you :)

1) modal interface without [enough] visual feedback. I know the icon changes color for insert mode and bypass, but it would be much better if you had a text indicator for all modes (excluding perhaps normal).

Why not print the current mode in the bottom right popup you use to show the current keypress and messages?

I think that would annoy many users more than it would help. So for now I suggest writing a config file and make use of:

• The modeDisplayChange event.
• The focusTypeChange event.
• The .notify() method of Vim objects.

You can also you custom styling to some extent to highlight the current mode.

2) Filtering through tabs. Currently, there is no interface by which we can navigate tabs. I don't know how you might implement this without breaking your mantra "don't change the interface", but if you could implement a floating window like the chrome extension Vimium, that would be fantastic.

Alternatively, should you know of an existing extension that accomplishes this, or an about:config entry to get the awesome bar work in this way under a specific context, I'd be happy to try that out.

See #420, #540, https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx/blob/master/documentation/handy-standard-firefox-features.md#the-location-bar and https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx/wiki/Custom-Commands#search-bookmarks.

Feel free to ask more questions here if needed.

[seekM]

For people who cannot type but use a dictation program to enter text, it would very helpful if one could select open tabs the same way you can select links now - let the characters for selection either be displayed directly in the tabs or inside a floating window like in the screenshot above. The problem is that after having entered o -> % -> search term for me there are tabs whose URLs / titles are made from different langauges or other non natural word strings which are not recognizable by the speech engine. Therefore I have to spell or repeatedly dictate the arrow down key to move to the desired tab which is cumbersome. I hope I could shed some light on this from a different perspective. Thanks for the addon which is a great help!

[lydell]

@seekM You’re looking for the zF command.

[seekM]

Oh boy, I guess I should have done more research. Thanks a lot!