Vimperator

Switching tasks from editing code to browsing the web to look for documentation on that new API I just started using (or have been using for a year) usually required me to move my hands off of the sacred home row to the mouse just so I could click a link. Wasting time and focus.

I need my internet browser to be completely mouse-free. Thankfully I am not the only one with this aspiration. A Firefox plugin called Vimperator adds Vim-like keybindings to almost every common browser action.

The main feature of Vimperator is the way in which you navigate links. First you press 'f' and every clickable link on the page is highlighted yellow. Next you start to type the text inside a link and links which do not contain that text are un-highlighted. If only one highlighted link remains, then it is 'clicked' and you follow that link. Next to every highlighted link is a unique number. This number can be typed out as well, and used in cases where there are multiple links with matching text, or links with no text at all (clickable images for example).

Some other features which I use quite often are:

• y - Copy the current url
• ; y - Copy a link
• gf - Toggle between page and page source
• / - Highlight all occurrences of a word
• o google cats - Use Google (instead of my default DuckDuckGo) to search for cats
• O - Edit the current url and then open it (Supports C-w to backspace over words)

If you don't like using the mouse, or want to impress your hacker friends, I highly recommend trying out vimperator.