Vimium and VimFx : Use your browser without mouse or touchpad

If you're like me, you hate taking your fingers off the keyboard and use the mouse or touchpad. Be relieved, 'coz I've got just the right thing for you.

Before I start let me introduce you to Vim. Vim is a terminal-based text editor on *nix which uses just key combinations for everything you need to do. Find out more and get the windows version at Vim's site.

Vim has inspired several browser extensions that let you do everything on your browser just by pressing the right keys. Chrome and Chromium have Vimium, while Firefox has VimFx, along with several others like Vimperator and Vimium for Firefox.

I'll be covering Vimium for Chromium, which is quite cool and the developer describes it as the "The Hacker's Browser".

First things first, here is an overview of the shortcuts, which can be accessed by pressing Shift+? .

Those who have used Vim before, just go on treating the webpage as if it was a text file in Vim and you won't be disappointed.

For others, this is to get you going :

j : Up
k : Down
h : Left
l : Right

For opening a link in the same tab, just press f and the links on the whole page get highlighted.

Now you can press the keys for the link you desire to open. See, no mouse required ever.

To do this for opeing a link in a new tab, just use capital F or capital keys for the link.

There are may more key bindings in Vimium which make your life easier.

But everything has its cons, and so does this.

• Vimium doesn't work for websites having there own shortcuts, like GMail. Well this is good infact as GMail has very nice shortcuts by itself.
• Vimium is always running, which may slow down your browser. Not much though.
• Unintentional commands. It always listens, even if you don't want it too.

But the advantages are surely more than the disadvantages.

Do try "The Hackers' Browser" and tell us what you think. Thanks for reading !!