Firefox with vi(m) keybindings

Posted by Scott_Ruecker on Apr 13, 2006 10:10 AM EDT
Linux DevCenter; By Juliet Kemp
Mail this story
Print this story

Browsing through other blogs on here recently, I came across a piece explaining how to set Firefox to use vi key bindings. Which sounded great; unfortunately, the method as advertised no longer works (Firefox 1.5.0.1).

A bit more digging revealed a more up-to-date version. More complicated, as well - you have to unzip [firefox_dir]/chrome/toolkit.jar, edit the platformHTMLBindings.xml file to include the lines



<handler event="keypress" key="h" command="cmd_scrollLeft"/>
<handler event="keypress" key="j" command="cmd_scrollLineDown"/>
<handler event="keypress" key="k" command="cmd_scrollLineUp"/>
<handler event="keypress" key="l" command="cmd_scrollRight"/>
<handler event="keypress" key="u" command="cmd_scrollPageUp" />



and then zip it back up again (keeping the old version for reference is probably wise).



Restarting Firefox and still no joy - any typing still went straight to the 'find ahead' toolbar. Final step, then: open about:config (type 'about:config' in the address bar) and set accessibility:typeaheadfind to false. This does mean you have to type / to start searching but personally my fingers do that automatically anyway so it's not much of a disincentive; and scrolling without needing to move to either arrow keypad or mouse is a definite plus. Now I just need to retrain my hands to do so!

Full Story

  Nav
» Read more about: Story Type: News Story, Tutorial; Groups: Fedora, Mozilla

« Return to the newswire homepage

Subject Topic Starter Replies Views Last Post
Links from keyboard? gds 2 1,242 Apr 13, 2006 9:10 PM

You cannot post until you login.