Tip #317: Mozilla Vim Keybindings

created:		August 21, 2002 21:23		complexity:		basic
author:		Matthew J. Stott		as of Vim:		5.7

If you use VIM you like the h, j, k, and l movement keys.  I found myself annoyed at not having these movement keys available when browsing web pages.  Moving to the arrow keys on a laptop is annoying to just scroll the page.  

Locate your mozilla/res/builtin directory (varies by platform). You could search for htmlBindings.xml to find it. (ie. locate htmlBindings.xml.  

On Mac OS X it's inside the Mozilla application bundle.  /Applications/Mozilla/Mozilla.app/Contents/MacOS/res/builtin.

Create a new XML file called userHTMLBindings.xml, making it executable for all users and making sure the CRLF format is the same as htmlBindings.xml.  i.e. on Mac OS X most files use \r but Vim writes \n instead. You can either save the file with Vim as a Mac formatted file or use tr '\n' '\r' < input.xml > output.xml to convert the file.

Place the following XML into the userHTMLBindings.xml file.

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<bindings id="htmlBindings"
   xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/xbl";
   xmlns:xul="http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul">;

  <binding id="browserUser">
    <handlers>
      <handler event="keypress" key="h" command="cmd_scrollLeft"/>
      <handler event="keypress" key="j" command="cmd_scrollLineDown"/>
      <handler event="keypress" key="k" command="cmd_scrollLineUp"/>
      <handler event="keypress" key="l" command="cmd_scrollRight"/>
    </handlers>
  </binding>
    </bindings>


There are many more bindings one could configure to get Vim like keybindings.  You can read http://www.mozilla.org/unix/customizing.html#keys for more information.

PS.  I love the keymaster/gatekeeper xul reference in the xul URL above.  It's from the original GhostBusters movie.  ;-)




  

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