Firefox for Android Vim keyboard shortcuts

Talk about Mozilla browsers for small devices such as PDAs and cellphones.
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chaanakya
Posts: 18
Joined: June 15th, 2017, 9:40 pm

Firefox for Android Vim keyboard shortcuts

Post by chaanakya »

Hi all,

I recently acquired a hardware keyboard for my phone (it's actually a bluetooth keyboard that I use across all my devices now) and I was itching to try out keyboard control of Firefox for Android. Unfortunately, the default keyboard shortcuts seem to be pretty limited (for example, Ctrl-l won't even open the location bar! I need to tab to it manually).

In an effort to correct this, I tried installing the various Vim keybinding addons. I use VimFx on my laptop with great results. But installing any of the ones that are marked compatible with Firefox for Android (e.g. QuantumVim, ElectroVim, etc) changed absolutely nothing. That is, no additional keybindings were available.

So my question is: what do I need to do to be able to use Vim keybindings (or Emacs keybindings - I'm not that picky) on Firefox for Android? Is this even possible?

Thanks!
JanH
Posts: 111
Joined: March 23rd, 2011, 1:19 pm

Re: Firefox for Android Vim keyboard shortcuts

Post by JanH »

1. There have been a few cases recently where add-ons were marked as compatible with Firefox on Android even though they really weren't - apparently a new (?) AMO interface makes it easy to mistakenly declare an add-on as compatible when you didn't want to. So you'd have to ask the extension authors whether those add-ons really are supposed to work on Android as well.
2. Firefox on Android shares the rendering engine (Gecko) with its Desktop brethren, but unlike Desktop, the UI is implemented as a native application. Add-ons have only limited control over the latter, so adding additional keybindings might have to be done differently or might not even be possible at all. If you're really determined, the most reliable way would be to propose some patches yourself for adding additional keyboard shortcuts by default.
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chaanakya
Posts: 18
Joined: June 15th, 2017, 9:40 pm

Re: Firefox for Android Vim keyboard shortcuts

Post by chaanakya »

JanH wrote:1. There have been a few cases recently where add-ons were marked as compatible with Firefox on Android even though they really weren't - apparently a new (?) AMO interface makes it easy to mistakenly declare an add-on as compatible when you didn't want to. So you'd have to ask the extension authors whether those add-ons really are supposed to work on Android as well.
That's what I figured.
JanH wrote:2. Firefox on Android shares the rendering engine (Gecko) with its Desktop brethren, but unlike Desktop, the UI is implemented as a native application. Add-ons have only limited control over the latter, so adding additional keybindings might have to be done differently or might not even be possible at all. If you're really determined, the most reliable way would be to propose some patches yourself for adding additional keyboard shortcuts by default.
Huh...interesting. Would it be possible to use userscripts to provide a limited set of keybindings?
n0s3
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Posts: 1
Joined: August 3rd, 2017, 4:31 pm

Re: Firefox for Android Vim keyboard shortcuts

Post by n0s3 »

Hey,
Anything new regarding keyboard shortcuts in android?
I got a BlackBerry KEYone and would love to use any Vim addon.
I am used to Vimmparator for all my desktop setups.

Regards
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