Vim movement on other programs

Question

I'm learning Vim and with it came the urge to use 'hjkl' and friends on every other program, including mouse operated programs like browsers.

How can I use these keyboard shortcuts, or something similar?

I'm using Linux.

Answer 1

Gmail and several of the other Google apps natively support Vi-like motions.

Also, you might want to try Vimperator and, most definitely, Nethack!

Answer 2

I used Ion as a window manager on Linux for a while. It uses keybindings similar to Vim to move between windows, if I recall correctly. It won't make your apps support hjkl movement, but the window manager is a place to start.

Answer 3

Give scrotwm a try. It's a tiling window manager with vim-like bindings by default, written by coders who use vim!

And vimperator for Firefox makes my life much, much easier.

For Bourne-like shells (ksh, bash, ...) try set -o vi to make your command line use vi keys.

Answer 4

Off the top of my head...

• Vimperator for Firefox.
• Awesome, WMII, Xmonad or ion3 window manager.
• Evince supports hjkl.
• vifm filemanager
• there are vi keybindings for readline, which enables them for many terminal apps
• xzgv image viewer

Answer 5

Apart from the already mentioned, you could also bind those keys to left... nd so on (with ahk). I've also noticed that several web apps use that movement keys (gmail, greader, ....)

Answer 6

If you use Eclipse, then viPlugin is the best vi-like editor for it.

I always stick the following two lines in my /etc/inputrc (or ~/.inputrc if I don't have root access):

set editing-mode vi
set keymap vi

Answer 7

Try keynav, for controlling the mouse pointer using your keyboard.

http://www.semicomplete.com/projects/keynav/

Answer 8

Others:

• ViEmu: plugin for Visual Studio, Word, Outlook, SQL Server
• KomodoEdit: developer's editor
• AbiWord: word processor
• Editra: developer's editor
• VimPlugin: plug Vim into Eclipse. I couldn't get it working under Windows or Mac OS X.
• Eclim: another Vim plugin for Eclipse.
• Viper: Vi emulator for Emacs

Answer 9

Viper works, but if you're used to Vim, it is lacking a lot of keybindings that will end up messing you up. Theres also jvi for Netbeans, which I find more complete than the Eclipse plugins. Kate also recently added Vi-emulation mode

I also consider xmonad, to be superior to Awesome, Ion etc.

Answer 10

VisVim for Visual Studio
CubicleVim for outlook

Answer 11

If you use mpd for listening to music, then I strongly recommend PIM

Answer 12

Vimium for Google Chrome.

Answer 13

Google Reader respects jk keybindings. I'm sure there are more that they support - feel free to edit my answer.

Answer 14

Okular, the PDF reader of KDE 4 supports HJKL.