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.

8 comments

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.
from a quick check, i have C-p and C-S-B working, but C-n and C-s and (many i think) others not working. ff 114 on linux.
- C-s requires the "Enable experimental features" setting to be checked as it's currently just a proof of concept.
  
  C-g I'm not sure if it currently works - but I'll remap that to "stop loading the page" anyway as I think the current binding isn't that useful. I'll need to implement that as browser action shortcut, though.
  
  Would be useful to get a complete list of keys not working. Also relevant is X or Wayland (and there native or XWayland)
Oh, hell yeah.

I'll be trying this tomorrow when I get back to the computer. I mostly live in emacs and Firefox and I've been annoyed enough by having to mentally codeswitch to non-emacs bindings when I'm in FF that I've started using eww a lot more.

8 comments