pages/txt/mnml-browsing.txt (view raw)
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After having recently installed [KISS](https://getkiss.org), and
building Firefox from source, I was exposed to the true monstrosity that
Firefox---and web browsers in general---is. It took all of 9 hours to
build the dependencies and then Firefox itself.
Sure, KISS now ships Firefox binaries in the
[firefox-bin](https://github.com/kisslinux/repo/tree/master/extra/firefox-bin)
package; I decided to get rid of that slow mess anyway.
Enter vimb
----------
[vimb](https://fanglingsu.github.io/vimb/) is a browser based on
[webkit2gtk](https://webkitgtk.org/), with a Vim-like interface.
`webkit2gtk` builds in less than a minute---it blows Firefox out of the
water, on that front.
There isn't much of a UI to it---if you've used Vimperator/Pentadactyl
(Firefox plugins), vimb should look familiar to you. It can be
configured via a `config.h` or a text based config file at
`~/.config/vimb/config`. Each "tab" opens a new instance of vimb, in a
new window but this can get messy really fast if you have a lot of tabs
open.
Enter tabbed
------------
[tabbed](https://tools.suckless.org/tabbed/) is a tool to *embed* X apps
which support xembed into a tabbed UI. This can be used in conjunction
with vimb, like so:
tabbed vimb -e
Where the `-e` flag is populated with the `XID`, by tabbed. Configuring
Firefox-esque keybinds in tabbed's `config.h` is relatively easy. Once
that's done---voilà! A fairly sane, Vim-like browsing experience that's
faster and has a smaller footprint than Firefox.
Ad blocking
-----------
Ad blocking support isn't built-in and there is no plugin system
available. There are two options for ad blocking:
1. [wyebadblock](https://github.com/jun7/wyebadblock)
2. `/etc/hosts`
Caveats
-------
*Some* websites tend to not work because they detect vimb as an older
version of Safari (same web engine). This is a minor inconvenience, and
not a dealbreaker for me. I also cannot login to Google's services for
some reason, which is mildly annoying, but it's good in a way---I am now
further incentivised to dispose of my Google account.
And here's the screenshot y'all were waiting for:
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