1After having recently installed [KISS](https://getkiss.org), and
 2building Firefox from source, I was exposed to the true monstrosity that
 3Firefox---and web browsers in general---is. It took all of 9 hours to
 4build the dependencies and then Firefox itself.
 5
 6Sure, KISS now ships Firefox binaries in the
 7[firefox-bin](https://github.com/kisslinux/repo/tree/master/extra/firefox-bin)
 8package; I decided to get rid of that slow mess anyway.
 9
10Enter vimb
11----------
12
13[vimb](https://fanglingsu.github.io/vimb/) is a browser based on
14[webkit2gtk](https://webkitgtk.org/), with a Vim-like interface.
15`webkit2gtk` builds in less than a minute---it blows Firefox out of the
16water, on that front.
17
18There isn't much of a UI to it---if you've used Vimperator/Pentadactyl
19(Firefox plugins), vimb should look familiar to you. It can be
20configured via a `config.h` or a text based config file at
21`~/.config/vimb/config`. Each "tab" opens a new instance of vimb, in a
22new window but this can get messy really fast if you have a lot of tabs
23open.
24
25Enter tabbed
26------------
27
28[tabbed](https://tools.suckless.org/tabbed/) is a tool to *embed* X apps
29which support xembed into a tabbed UI. This can be used in conjunction
30with vimb, like so:
31
32    tabbed vimb -e
33
34Where the `-e` flag is populated with the `XID`, by tabbed. Configuring
35Firefox-esque keybinds in tabbed's `config.h` is relatively easy. Once
36that's done---voilà! A fairly sane, Vim-like browsing experience that's
37faster and has a smaller footprint than Firefox.
38
39Ad blocking
40-----------
41
42Ad blocking support isn't built-in and there is no plugin system
43available. There are two options for ad blocking:
44
451.  [wyebadblock](https://github.com/jun7/wyebadblock)
462.  `/etc/hosts`
47
48Caveats
49-------
50
51*Some* websites tend to not work because they detect vimb as an older
52version of Safari (same web engine). This is a minor inconvenience, and
53not a dealbreaker for me. I also cannot login to Google's services for
54some reason, which is mildly annoying, but it's good in a way---I am now
55further incentivised to dispose of my Google account.
56
57And here's the screenshot y'all were waiting for:
58
59![vimb](/static/img/vimb.png)