VimNav - another vimperator-like navigation script for webkit browsers

Question

I wanted to use vimperator-like navigation for my Midori browser, so I did combine the functions of several scripts around, webkit user scripts and uzbl ones, and tweaked all to my liking. This turned out to a major rewrite and can be loaded from here.
Note: This is currently tested for Midori only. Basically it is a greasemonkey script and should be useable with other (e.g. gecko-based) browsers as well. This will require some rewrite, however.
To use the script with Midori, put it into ~/.local/share/midori/scripts/VimNav.user.js.
I implemented several additional features and configuration possibilities for (my) convenience, mainly:
- simple vim-like page scroll (defaults to "hjkl" row)
- key bindings fully configurable
- vimperator-like navigation by labeled hints
- define special collateral sequences for labels display, e.g. "abc" instead of "123" or even let the script select an optimally short collateral sequence for the given page
- use shortened labels for partially matched links (like uzbl "follow.js") or color-code remaing selection possibilities (like "KeyNav.user.js" from Userscripts.org)
- scroll the page during label navigation
- temporarily hide labels during label navigation
- switch to a new page automatically as soon as a match was found or let the user confirm the selection (allows for label correction with backspace)
- open new link in the current window or use another window (resp. tab) for it.
For details read the configuration section at the beginning of the script.
Have fun!
Edit: Download location altered to point to the most recent version.
Last edited by bernarcher (2010-05-29 14:18:15)

Answer 1

Andrwe wrote:There is just one question for me:
Is the leading 0 necessary for numeric hinting?
Not necessarily so, but I wanted to implement autoselection in a more consistent way. For instance, if there is a series of hints numbered 1 through 35, and you want to select, say, label number 2. So you press the "2" and have labels "2" and, possibly somewhere elsewhere far out of sight, "20" through "29" to select from. As you do want the "2" you need to explicitely confirm, e.g. by pressing return.
On the other hand, if there are leading zeros, you select each label in a consistent way starting at the most significant digit: "0", then only "0" trough "9", usually placed close together, remain. You press "2" and, voilá, (if autoselect is on) the browser navigates to where you want.
So you don't really save a keystroke but can remain consistent. In fact, if you additionally use the "optimal" collateral sequence, hints seldomly need more than two (alphanumeric) digits, which makes navigation fast and efficient. The only cost there is that pages with a changing number of links (as this forum) occasionally switch between pure numerical and alphanumerical hint labels on subsequent calls. But this is something I easily can live with.