Bill Powell Is Alive [The Den]
{ Three Acres and a Penguin }

Firefox is not my favorite browser. I don't have one; I still dream of a browser that is fast over featured, lets you whip around with single-letter key commands (vi-style), is free in every sense, and yet doesn't look horrid.

Firefox doesn't quite meet these goals (mostly in the fast department), but lately it's my tool of choice. And if you're going to use Firefox, I've found the following essential:

Necessary plugins:

AdBlock: Freedom from advertising, wherever you go

You can right-click on an ad, and block

• that ad forever
• all ads in that directory
• all ads on that server
• or any other simple regex you can think of
• forever

Can you do that with TV? Can you do that with magazines? Maybe the Internet will change the world.

Get AdBlock: http://adblock.mozdev.org/

Note: In searching for the download address (I've had this plugin for awhile), I found this note that this "original" plugin hasn't been updated in awhile, and, worse, has a memory leak. I've no idea whether this is true--it certainly could be, but I get the impression Firefox in general isn't exactly lean and mean. I have learned the hard way that tabs, like all good things, must be had in moderation. Like, oh, 5.

Anyhow, there's now an AdBlockPlus, which you can check out. I haven't tried it yet.

Fuzzy Time: A fuzzy clock for Firefox

The Fuzzy Time addon puts a "fuzzy clock" in your status bar. Instead of the usual relentless march of minutes, you get pleasant phrases like "quarter to three" or "twenty after ten". You can set the fuzziness level, and even learn a little bit of Spanish or Hebrew by choosing a different locale.

Get Fuzzy Time: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1742

You can also add "fuzzy time" to the bash prompt and Vim.

Vimperator: Firefox with a command line

Like Vim? How would you like your browser to have "normal mode"?

Press Esc, and suddenly you can interact with Firefox using a single letter.

• o to open a web site
• t to open a web site in a new tab
• y to yank the current URL to the clipboard
• gt to go to the next tab to the right
• or gT to move to the tab to left
• or b1 for the first tab (buffer), b2 for the second, etc.
• H and L to move back and forward in the history
• m and ' to mark and jump to places on this web page, or other pages you've already marked.
• gi to go an input field
• f to open hints; a number appears beside each link. Just type the number to open the link!
• [[ and ]] to follow "previous" and "next" links.

Many other features come too, including tab completion of URLs or their titles in your history. You can also preface many commands with a count number, e.g., 3H goes back 3 pages.

Press F1 to read the extensive help. It's fascinating to see Firefox reimagined with a Vim interface.

Ironically, my one complaint is that it remaps ', which in normal Firefox is an extremely quick way to jump to any link on the page. You press ' and start typing the link name. But you can still access this by escaping the ' with Ctrl-V, that is: Ctrl-V-'. Or, if you press I, all keys are passed directly to Firefox until you press Esc and return to Vimperator mode.

But it's faster to simply remap ' in your personal configuration file, as I show below.

A few necessary Vimperator tweaks:

Update: 2008-08-27 When I upgraded to Firefox 3, I found a new version of Vimperator, 1.2. So some of the lines below may be ignored if you're using this newer version. Specifically, I know that 'hintcharacters' doesn't work anymore, since hints are now numbers, not letters. [End update.]

From my personal configuration file, ~/.vimperatorrc:

"Get that 'quick find' for links that comes with Firefox.
map a <C-v>'

"Adjust look of hints! The default 'tiny white on red' is pretty gross.
"Must all be one line!
"hs: hint
se hs=z-index:5000; font-family:monospace; 
font-weight:bold; font-size:16px; color:white; 
background-color:gray; border-color:ButtonShadow; 
border-width:0px; border-style:solid; 
padding:2px; position:absolute;

"fhs: focused hint
"Must all be one line!
se fhs=default: z-index:5000; font-family:monospace; 
font-size:16px; color:ButtonText; background-color:ButtonShadow; 
border-color:ButtonShadow; border-width:1px; border-style:solid; 
padding:2px; position:absolute;

"In any vi editor, you need an easy map for <Esc>.
map i <Esc>

"Reduce default 'maxhints' of 250 to speed up hints.
se mh=50

"-----------------------------------------------
"The rest is only for a Dvorak keyboard. 
"Don't use if you use a normal QWERTY.

"hint characters: much easier if you put Dvorak home row at beginning.
se hc=htnsaoeudigcrlpfymwvzqjkxb

"Make hints a bit easier to turn on.
map c f

Get Vimperator: http://vimperator.mozdev.org/

searchplugins.net: Make your own quick searches

Do you ever use that little search tool in the right corner of your navigation toolbar? You're not locked into Google; you can actually choose from a drop-down list of sites. And you can add custom "search plugins" to this list.

Of course, once you have Vimperator going, the last thing you'll want is to scrape the mouse up to a drop-down list. But Vimperator is integrated with this little system.

Usually, when you press o, you get the command line, and you can enter a URL, e.g.

:open bpalv.com

Or you can enter a few search terms:

:open vimperator download

You'll get a Google page (or whatever your default search engine is). Now, with a custom search, all you need to do is enter the name of the custom search plugin first:

:open ebay chesterton

This will search for Chesterton items on ebay.

But why waste time on ebay? What if you'd rather find free Chesterton titles on Project Gutenberg?

You go to http://www.searchplugins.net, and check the list to see if someone else has already made one. (Unfortunately, they don't prune the list for porn sites, but there aren't many.)

If no one else has made a plugin for your site, these friendly folks have also made a generator, so you can make your own custom plugin for almost any site. (Or maybe any site, if you're wrapping around a Google search with site: yoursite.com.)

But tweak these search plugins for Vimperator

You'll need to tweak these plugins. What looks great in a drop-down list ("Project Gutenberg") is a pain to type.

So after you install your new search plugin, edit it. It'll be in your personal Firefox directory, e.g., on a Linux or similar system: ~/.mozilla/firefox/9aoeu1234-sort-of-jumble.default/searchplugins/gutenberg.xml. You'll want to make 2 changes.

First, delete the line which begins with <Image ...>: this is a nifty little image that's stored as a very long line of text to bring you the cute icon in the drop-down list. Keep it if you like, but you won't need it in Vimperator.

Second, add an <Alias> that is one word that you want to type. For example, Gutenberg might be gut.

<Alias>gut</Alias>

These search plugin files are easy to understand and tweak. For instance, I have several Gutenberg plugins, gut for a title search, gutauth for an author search, and even guttxt for a full-text search, all modified from the full-text Gutenberg search plugin at the search plugins site. Looking for books by Chesterton on Gutenberg?

:open gutauth chesterton

Faster than a Google search, to be sure.

I first found out about custom search plugins (by another name) in elinks, the excellent text-only browser which I still use whenever I can. But it's delightful to be able to do this in Firefox.

And don't forget text-only browsers.

Speaking of elinks, don't underestimate text-only browsers! I've used them to roam sites for hours, but they're also great for a quick search. I prefer elinks (text-only with tabs!), but there are also the original links, w3m, and of course, the original lynx, which I will not link to, because if it's not included with your operating system, it should be. ;)

Text-only browsers cut the crud, and can make certain sites an order of magnitude faster.

If you must have images, you can run links in graphics mode, or try dillo, which is very fast and very ugly.

Okay, it's a lot less ugly if you copy /etc/dillorc to ~/.dillo/dillorc and change vw_fontname and bg_color. Here's some lines I changed (you'll need to find them, it's a big file).

vw_fontname="new century schoolbook"
font_factor=1.2
bg_color=white

And dillo is really fast.

Take back your browser.

How many hours a day do you spend in your browser? A little time sharpening the saw may be well worth it. While Firefox seems to dig its heels in the dirt and bray if you pile on the plugins, a few choice ones can work a wondrous transformation.

• What's a den? What is this place?
• Where do I post my comment?
• Where's the site map?
• Hey! That old post isn't under the same date/tag anymore!
• Full FAQ

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