My vimperator settings

Update (20110502): This post was updated for Vimperator 3.1. Copy/paste is corrected in this new version, thus the plugin mswin.vimp is not needed anymore. I removed that part from the post.

“Vimperator is a Firefox browser extension with strong inspiration from the Vim text editor, with a mind towards faster and more efficient browsing. It has similar key bindings and you could call it a modal web browser, as key bindings differ according to which mode you are in. For example, it has a special Hint mode, where you can follow links easily with the keyboard only. Also most functionality is available as commands, typing :back will go back within the current page history, just like hitting the back button in the toolbar.” (source)

Vimperator is a very useful Firefox add-on. When I reinstall a system, this is one of the first add-ons that I need to install in order to be able to work efficiently :)

Here are my config files:

• for Linux
• for Windows

Useful commands:

To tell the truth, I only use a very small subset of the features offered by Vimperator. Here are my favourites:

• ESC (hitting the ESC key => enter command mode)
• j, k (Scroll down and up. To memorize: j looks like a down arrow.)
• r (reload the page)
• o URL (open URL in the current tab)
• t URL (open URL in a focused new tab)
• T URL (Open URL in an unfocused new tab. This is a custom feature added to my config file.)
• / SEARCH_TERM (Vim-like, case-insensitive incremental search. Pressing n you can jump to the next the search hit.)
• d (close the current tab)
• u (Restore a closed tab. Can be used repeatedly to restore several closed tabs.)
• :res (Restart the browser. It’ll restore the tab set.)
• gu (From the current URL, remove the part after the last ‘/’. Example: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/central/ becomes http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/)
• gU (In the current URL, leave the host name only. Example: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/central/ becomes http://www.mozilla.com/)
• gg (jump to the top of the page)
• G (jump to the end of the page)
• y (copy the current URL to the clipboard)
• ALT+y (Copy page title to the clipboard. This is a custom feature added to my config file.)
• Shortcuts; I just love them. You have a favourite site, say http://slashdot.org/, and you want to assign an alias to this site, for instance “sd”. Then, you’d like to open this site by using the command “:o sd“. To this end, visit the site (here http://slashdot.org/), and assign a bookamark to it by “:bma -k=sd“. From now on, “sd” is associated to http://slashdot.org/. You can type “sd” in the address bar too.

If you know some cool tips, please share with us in the comments.