If you are a keyboard ninja or you just find it annoying to switch to your mouse while surfing, there is a Chrome/Firefox extension that makes mouse-free surfing possible: vimium - vi mode for your browser.
This nice extension allows you to navigate through websites using only your keyboard. The core functionality is that by pressing the f button you see key combinations, which then can be used to navigate to the corresponding link. In practice it looks like the following:
Those yellow boxes mark the keyboard shortcuts. Typing them will navigate to the corresponding link in the same tab, typing them in capital letters opens the link in a new tab.
As a fellow peasant vim user I find this a super nice thing to have. Especially on my laptop, where I don’t want to attach an external mouse. The trackpad is nice, but not as nice as staying keyboard only. Since it aims to be a vim-extension for the web-browser of course the h, j, k and l key bindings are present as well. Nice!
# Shortcuts
Here’s a list of commands that I find useful to have at hand
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
? |
Show help dialog |
H |
Go back one page |
L |
Go forward one page |
t |
New tab |
x |
Close current tab |
X |
Restore last tab |
r |
Reload page |
f |
Open a link in current tab |
yy |
Copy current URL to clipboard |
Navigation
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
h,j,k,l |
Vim navigation (move left, down, up, right) |
gg |
Go to the top of the page |
G |
Go to the bottom of the page |
/ |
Enter find mode on page |
n |
Find next |
N |
Previous find |
o |
Open URL (shows a input dialog for URL) |
O |
Open URL in new tab (shows a input dialog for URL) |
# Installation
You find vimium as a Firefox Add-On or in the Chrome web store (works also for Chromium).