Arch Linux

archuser38013

Member

Registered: 2024-01-27

Posts: 19

Keyboard web browsing

This has been an interest of mine for a long time generally for efficiency's sake (ratpoison dm, vim and vimlike text editing for most applications) however moving to a laptop as my main work machine, with only a couple of usb slots and very limited space, made it come up on my list of priorities again.

Being a new contender to the mouseless browser arena, I have installed nyxt and have mucked around a little on it and it seems really powerful however I have not been bothered to take the learning curve to learn it properly yet so it has fallen by the wayside. I did make a dent in it when I was without internet for a short spell so went through a little of the inbuilt tutorial while offline but as soon as my connection was back I went back to using firefox with keyboard shortcuts.

While this (ff) does not provide full non mouse functionality I have found, with carat browsing, it does the job about 80-90% of the time. The remainder is for cases when I just haven't been able to find a way around it when there are some context menus that are probably js and do not yield to tabbing or the search (C-f) function. Yes there is a context menu button on keyboards which has given me a resolution in some rare cases like form filling but the element must be highlighted for that and so was useful just when I wanted to right click or sucklike, not when I wasn't able to find the element to interact with.

Vimb I tried in the past and found it lacking. The hints I found very unreliable. Nyxt seems to have picked up where vimb left off, very reliable hinting on the little I tried, and so far looks very solid however just due to apathy and having found a groove with ff I have not been motivated to really get to grips with it.

I do want to crack nyxt though so is on the list of to-dos. Just waiting for a gust of inspiration.

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 29,575

Website

Re: Keyboard web browsing

And ... is there a question here?

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"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

archuser38013

Member

Registered: 2024-01-27

Posts: 19

Re: Keyboard web browsing

And ... is there a question here?

Oh I had to heavily cut the original title due to character constraints. Didn't realize the gist wasn't in the body itself.

I am asking what keyboard focused browser setup works for others, if they are using it.

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 29,575

Website

Re: Keyboard web browsing

Ah.  Thanks.  I suspected that may be the goal, but then you listed several of the good options and seemed to be expressing a clear preference.

For a while I used qutebrowser which I'd strongly recommend if you haven't tried it yet.  There are many firefox add-ons that come and go for these purposes: I think pentadactyl is dead, though is has resurrected a few times over the years; tridactyl seems to be the current popular option there.

For my own browser I designed it to be primarily keyboard driven, though actual hinting was achieved through a userscript.  The same (or similar) userscript could be used on firefox, or any browser that allows loading greasemonkey or similar user scripts.  If you'd like, you can check out that script here.  I doubt that'd meet all your needs as-is, but it may be a useful starting point if you wanted to go that route.

---

"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

archuser38013

Member

Registered: 2024-01-27

Posts: 19

Re: Keyboard web browsing

Ah.  Thanks.  I suspected that may be the goal, but then you listed several of the good options and seemed to be expressing a clear preference.

For a while I used qutebrowser which I'd strongly recommend if you haven't tried it yet.  There are many firefox add-ons that come and go for these purposes: I think pentadactyl is dead, though is has resurrected a few times over the years; tridactyl seems to be the current popular option there.

For my own browser I designed it to be primarily keyboard driven, though actual hinting was achieved through a userscript.  The same (or similar) userscript could be used on firefox, or any browser that allows loading greasemonkey or similar user scripts.  If you'd like, you can check out that script here.  I doubt that'd meet all your needs as-is, but it may be a useful starting point if you wanted to go that route.

Indeed, I have my preferences so far and was opening up for discussion to see what others are using.

Thanks for your input. Hmm making my own scripts seems unnecessary given there are many options on the table. Perhaps it could fill the gaps in vanilla firefox keyboard shortcuts but I would be interested to exhaust the ready made alternatives first.

I do remember using qute some years ago but was not satisfied with it at the time. Don't recall why.

I remember coming across the 'dactyls which were in various stages of abandonment and as such never tried them. I think that is how I found out about vimb, being the logical successor at the time.