Vimium: Support for Firefox

[mrmr1993]

Firefox now supports WebExtensions. It would be nice to tweak Vimium to work on Firefox.

This is related to #2076.

So far, I've developed some basic support in my fork:

• branch no-depreciated-apis changes code using depreciated APIs (which FF will not implement) to use their replacements.
• branch firefox-compat makes some changes to support Firefox, where the current code does not run correctly.
• branch firefox-51-compat works around some unimplemented features in FF51, the current release. They are fixed in FF52.

You can use branch firefox-merger to test, which is simply all of these merged into master.

[smblott-github]

Thanks, @mrmr1993. Reviewing the final branch mentioned above, it looks like the required changes aren't really that disruptive. How complete is this? (I don't have the setup to test this.) I know @philc is interested in adding Firefox support.

[mrmr1993]

I probably still need to look at non-normal mode key handling. Other than that, it seems complete, but Firefox isn't.

Some example problem Firefox bugs:

• disabling a element while it is focused doesn't blur it, and results in (nearly) all key events being suppressed.
  
  
  
  • in practice, this means that we get stuck on the save button in the options page. A .blur() before disabling should fix that, but we can still get stuck on other pages.
  
  
  • general escape strategy is [tab][esc], but still bad UX.
  
  
• no support for the clipboard API, which stops several commands working
• all simulated mouse clicks with modifiers (think opening tabs in foreground/background) do not trigger the default option
  
  
  
  • combined with the clipboard issues, this means that it is difficult to open a link in a new window. (Suggested nasty workaround is fytJH)
  
  
• keypress always fires, so we can't distinguish printing and non-printing keys.

[philc]

This is really cool; great start @mrmr1993. I would love to get a viable Firefox version out onto the store since the current crop of Vim-style extensions are going to stop working once the classic extension APIs are fully deprecated. Hopefully Firefox support won't incur a large QA/maintenance burden.

I haven't stressed tested it with days of usage, but I will try to. However, there were a couple of things I noticed right away:

1. Link hints on this bing page appear much slower than on Chrome. It takes between 250ms-1000ms, whereas with Chrome, it's instant. Not sure if that's just poor performance from Firefox, or some bad interaction between our link hints code and Firefox.
2. I was able to get into a state where I had link hints showing, but ESC didn't dismiss them, and other keys were being registered (e.g. you can use j/k to scroll the page, even though hints are showing). I got here by very quickly toggling between the f and esc keys, although it's not easy to reproduce.

Have you used it much in practice @mrmr1993?

[mrmr1993]

Have you used it much in practice @mrmr1993?

I've completely switched from Chrome to Firefox, so I'm using it a lot. There's plenty that isn't working, but my barely-patched version works well enough for my current day to day.

I would love to get a viable Firefox version out onto the store

Is anybody else (interested in) working on this at the moment? I can start actively working on the project again, if not / if it would help.

[gloomy-ghost]

FYI:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/vimfx/
There is an addon on amo which is similar with Vimium for Chrome [EDIT: Still using old Addon-SDK though]

https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/vimium/
And a deprecated addon which is also called vimium...

[AnshulMalik]

I wish to contribute to this project, making vimium work with firefox :)

[pvinis]

how can i actually install from the firefox-merger branch? i would also like to try it out and test it.

[mrmr1993]

• Clone the branch.
• Install Coffeescript.
• Run cake build to build.
• Add the extension temporarily (you'll have to do this each time you start your browser; it's a PITA) from the URL about:debugging, by selecting any file in the folder containing your clone.

[smblott-github]

@mrmr1993 What's the status of this?

[philc]

We should probably merge firefox-merger and create a TODO list of gaps between the chrome and firefox version. Once we get to the point where it's ready for wide adoption, we'll get it onto the Firefox addons site.

[mrmr1993]

We should probably merge firefox-merger

I've rebased firefox-compat onto master. To get Vimium working with Firefox, it should be enough to merge firefox-compat-rb (the rebase branch).

@mrmr1993 What's the status of this?

Other things that need fixing, either on our side or on Firefox's:

• showing the HUD in find mode throws an error (fixed in dfddd54)
• window.find throws an error on page wrap. (needs more investigation, but e46a369 stops the errors. Also stops the find mode HUD losing focus after calling window.find).
• open in foreground/background/etc. doesn't work (FF issue 1356309)
• clipboard API is unsupported (FF issues 1344410)
• new tab page doesn't open with Chrome-specific URL (2f9beb73f24b698795a160f85cfe62f00406594d fixes this to support Chrome and FF edit: can't currently find a way to open new tab in FF at all, but about:newtab seems like a more likely candidate going forward. FF issue 1275209.)

This is everything that springs to mind for now.. I'll tidy this up and push a PR.

[mcomella]

FYI: it was announced that legacy extensions will stop working in tomorrow's Firefox Nightly so presumably VimFx, Firefox's Vimium counterpart, will also stop working in 57. With a brief skim, it doesn't look like their initiative to switch to WebExtensions is progressing (https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx/issues/860).

[ronjouch]

Thanks for the FYI @mcomella. In case it's not clear to passersby, Vimium does work in Firefox 57, see Vimium-FF. I, for one, and coming from VimFx, am happy with its feature set. Thanks Vimium folks 🙂.