Vim Vixen

Vim Vixen is a Firefox add-on which allows you to easily navigate the web by keyboard. Since version 57, Firefox has migrated to the WebExtensions API and has dropped support for legacy add-ons. Vim Vixen is a new choice for Vim users since it uses the WebExtensions API.

Basic usage

Keymaps

Keymaps are configurable in the add-on's preferences by navigating to about:addons and selecting "Extensions". The default mappings are as follows:

Console

• :: open the console
• o, t, w: open a page in the current tab, a new tab, or new window
• O, T, W: similar to o, t, w, but using the current URL
• b: select tabs by URL or title
• a: add the current page to your bookmarks

See the console commands section for a more detailed description.

Tabs

• d: delete the current tab and select the tab to its right
• D: delete the current tab and select the tab to its left
• !d: delete a pinned tab
• u: reopen a close tab
• r: reload the current tab
• R: reload the current tab, bypassing the cache
• K or gT: select the previous tab
• J or gt: select the next tab
• g0: select the first tab
• g$: select the last tab
• Ctrl+6: open the previously-selected tab
• zp: pin the curent tab tab
• zd: duplicate the current tab

Scrolling

• k: scroll up
• j: scroll down
• h: scroll left
• l: scroll right
• Ctrl+U: scroll up half a page
• Ctrl+D: scroll down half a page
• Ctrl+B: scroll up a page
• Ctrl+F: scroll down a page
• gg: scroll to the top of a page
• G: scroll to the bottom of a page
• 0: scroll to the leftmost part of a page
• $: scroll to the rightmost part of a page
• m: set a mark for the current position
• ': jump to a marked position

Lowercase marks ([a-z]) store the position of the current tab. Uppercase and numeric marks ([A-Z0-9]) store the position and the tab.

Zoom

• zi: zoom in
• zo: zoom out
• zz: zoom neutral (reset)

Navigation

• f: follow links in the page in the current tab
• F: follow links in the page in a new tab
• H: go back in history
• L: go forward in history
• [[, ]]: find a link to the previous/next page and open it
• gu: go to the parent directory
• gU: go to the root directory
• gi: focus the first input field

Vim Vixen can be configured to follow links opened in tabs in the background instead of switching to a new tab immediately. To do this, you'll need to update the config file: change the "background" property of the "follow.start" action to true, e.g.:

{
    "keymaps": {
        "F": { "type": "follow.start", "newTab": true, "background": true }
    }
}

Misc

• y: copy the URL of the current tab to the clipboard
• p: open the clipboard's URL in the current tab
• P: open the clipboard's URL in new tab
• Shift+Esc: enable or disable the add-on in the current tab
• /: start searching for text in the page
• n: find the next search result in the page
• N: find the previous search result in the page
• gf: view the source of the current tab

Console commands

Vim Vixen provides a console for ex-style commands, similar to Vimperator.

Open the console with :. Or populate it with initial values using o/O, t/T, or w/W.

:open

The :open command operates two different ways, depending on the parameter. When the parameter is a URL, it's opened in the current tab.

:open http://github.com/ueokande

Otherwise, the current tab opens a search page with the supplied string (defaults to Google).

:open How to contribute to Vim-Vixen

To use a search engine other than the default, specify the search engine to use as the first parameter.

:open yahoo How to contribute to Vim-Vixen

To adjust the default search-engine and add/remove search engines, see the search engines section.

:tabopen

Open a URL or search-engine query in a new tab.

:quit or :q

Close the current tab.

:quitall or :qa

Close all tabs.

:bdelete

Close a certain tab.

You can add ! to the end of the command to close a tab even if it is pinned:

:bdelete!

:bdeletes

Close tabs matching the specified keywords.

You can add ! to the end of the command to close pinned tabs:

:bdeletes!

:winopen

Open a URL or search-engine query in a new window.

:buffer

Select tabs by URL or title keywords.

:addbookmark

Create a bookmark from the current URL.

:addbookmark My bookmark title

The keymap a is a convenient way to create a bookmark for the current page. It populates the console with :addbookmark and the title of the current page.

:set

The :set command can be used to temporarily override properties in the console. See the properties section for more details on the available properties.

Properties

Vim Vixen can be configured by defining settings in a JSON document, e.g.:

{
   "properties": {
       "complete": "sbh"
   }
}

Properties can be temporarily overridden by using the :set command in the console.

The following properties are available:

smoothscroll

Enable/disable smooth scrolling.

:set smoothscroll   " enable smooth scrolling
:set nosmoothscroll " disable smooth scrolling

hintchars

Set hint characters.

:set hintchars=0123456789

complete

Set completion items on open, tabopen, and winopen commands. The allowed value is character sequence of s, b, or h. Hit Tab or Shift+Tab to select an item from the completion list. Each character represents the following:

• s: search engines
• b: bookmark items
• h: history items.

:set complete=sbh

Search engines

Vim Vixen supports searching with search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

You can configure search engines, including the default search engine, in the add-on's preferences. The URLs specified in "engines" must contain a {}-placeholder, which will be replaced with the search keyword parameters of the command.

{
  "search": {
    "default": "google",
    "engines": {
      "google": "https://google.com/search?q={}",
      "yahoo": "https://search.yahoo.com/search?p={}",
      "bing": "https://www.bing.com/search?q={}",
      "duckduckgo": "https://duckduckgo.com/?q={}",
      "twitter": "https://twitter.com/search?q={}",
      "wikipedia": "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search={}"
    }
  }
}

Blacklist

The blacklist allows you to disable the plugin for certain pages by URL patterns. For instance, you could use "*.slack.com" to disable the plugin on all Slack channels. In addition, you can also specify path patterns, such as "example.com/mail/*".

{
  "blacklist": [
    "*.slack.com",
    "example.com/mail/*"
  ]
}

You can toggle Vim Vixen between disabled and enabled with shift+Esc.

Compatibility

• Firefox 52+
• Firefox for Android
• Waterfox 56

Copyright

Copyright © 2017-2019 by Shin'ya Ueoka

Licence

MIT