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Emacs @lemmy.ml aard @kyu.de

Emacs keybindings addon for Firefox

I'm currently in the process of taking over as maintainer for the emacs-keybindings addon for Firefox.

I've just published the first update in years, with changes including:

  • tested on Windows and Linux now
  • some functionality is now configurable: debug logging, custom new tab page, experimental features, modifier-less high level bindings
  • all keybindings are listed in the options settings page
  • M- keybindings are now also reachable via ESC
  • M-< and M-> was added for scrolling to top/bottom
  • introducing prefix key, currently only used for opening/closing of windows (C-u C-x C-f or C-u C-k)
  • search is introduced as experimental feature - currently it just highlights all matches
  • the extension now registers as browser action in preparation for additional features

Unfortunately a lot of things that used to work with the old XUL plugins few years back just don't work with the new APIs - and Firefox developers have been sitting on relevant bugs for 8 years or more without anything happening now - so this is probably close to the best we can have for now. In combination with setting editing keybindings either via Gnome settings or AHK it makes browsing almost bearable again.

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  • Wish it would work for me. It's a good idea, but C-n and C-p just bring up a new page and print dialog respectively.

    • Can you check if some of the other bindings work? There seems to be different behaviour between different Firefox versions which keybindings it allows you to shadow.

      The troubleshooting guide - linked in the extension preferences - also has some info on how to change the access key, which would free all keybindings by moving internal Firefox bindings to a different key.

      • I'll see what I can do when I get an opportunity. I installed it and tried it, but since I didn't have time to really dig in, I uninstalled it after the first sanity pass failed. This was Firefox 115.02 (64-bit) Windows 10.

        • I did some more testing (not using C-n/C-p much myself, mainly care about the other bindings) - C-p reliably works for me, C-n is sometimes weird. Which is a bit weird, as some of the other keybindings are also masking Firefox keybindings - like C-f, which reliably works.

          Main problem is that they still don't have an API for doing keybindings after all those years, so as a result of that we have to run in the context of a website for each tab, which limits what is possible. There are a bunch of workarounds to make it useable - but also a bunch of things which just keep breaking.

        • I just pushed an update mainly trying to make the documentation on troubleshooting / changing access keys more visible.

8 comments