pages/blog/mnml-browsing.md (view raw)
1---
2template:
3title: Vimb: my Firefox replacement
4subtitle: Web browsing, suckless style
5date: 2020-01-16
6slug: mnml-browsing
7---
8
9
10After having recently installed [KISS](https://getkiss.org), and
11building Firefox from source, I was exposed to the true monstrosity that
12Firefox -- and web browsers in general -- is. It took all of 9 hours to
13build the dependencies and then Firefox itself.
14
15Sure, KISS now ships Firefox binaries in the
16[firefox-bin](https://github.com/kisslinux/repo/tree/master/extra/firefox-bin)
17package; I decided to get rid of that slow mess anyway.
18
19## Enter vimb
20
21[vimb](https://fanglingsu.github.io/vimb/) is a browser based on
22[webkit2gtk](https://webkitgtk.org/), with a Vim-like interface.
23`webkit2gtk` builds in less than a minute -- it blows Firefox out of
24the water, on that front.
25
26There isn't much of a UI to it -- if you've used Vimperator/Pentadactyl
27(Firefox plugins), vimb should look familiar to you.
28It can be configured via a `config.h` or a text based config file at
29`~/.config/vimb/config`.
30Each "tab" opens a new instance of vimb, in a new window but this can
31get messy really fast if you have a lot of tabs open.
32
33## Enter tabbed
34
35[tabbed](https://tools.suckless.org/tabbed/) is a tool to _embed_ X apps
36which support xembed into a tabbed UI. This can be used in conjunction
37with vimb, like so:
38
39```
40tabbed vimb -e
41```
42
43Where the `-e` flag is populated with the `XID`, by tabbed. Configuring
44Firefox-esque keybinds in tabbed's `config.h` is relatively easy. Once
45that's done -- voilà! A fairly sane, Vim-like browsing experience that's
46faster and has a smaller footprint than Firefox.
47
48## Ad blocking
49
50Ad blocking support isn't built-in and there is no plugin system
51available. There are two options for ad blocking:
52
531. [wyebadblock](https://github.com/jun7/wyebadblock)
542. `/etc/hosts`
55
56## Caveats
57
58_Some_ websites tend to not work because they detect vimb as an older
59version of Safari (same web engine). This is a minor inconvenience, and
60not a dealbreaker for me. I also cannot login to Google's services for
61some reason, which is mildly annoying, but it's good in a way -- I am now
62further incentivised to dispose of my Google account.
63
64And here's the screenshot y'all were waiting for:
65
66