1---
 2template:
 3title: Vimb: my Firefox replacement
 4subtitle: Web browsing, suckless style
 5date: 2020-01-16
 6---
 7
 8After having recently installed [KISS](https://getkiss.org), and
 9building Firefox from source, I was exposed to the true monstrosity that
10Firefox---and web browsers in general---is. It took all of 9 hours to
11build the dependencies and then Firefox itself.
12
13Sure, KISS now ships Firefox binaries in the
14[firefox-bin](https://github.com/kisslinux/repo/tree/master/extra/firefox-bin)
15package; I decided to get rid of that slow mess anyway.
16
17## Enter vimb
18
19[vimb](https://fanglingsu.github.io/vimb/) is a browser based on
20[webkit2gtk](https://webkitgtk.org/), with a Vim-like interface. 
21`webkit2gtk` builds in less than a minute---it blows Firefox out of
22the water, on that front.
23
24There isn't much of a UI to it---if you've used Vimperator/Pentadactyl
25(Firefox plugins), vimb should look familiar to you.
26It can be configured via a `config.h` or a text based config file at
27`~/.config/vimb/config`.
28Each "tab" opens a new instance of vimb, in a new window but this can
29get messy really fast if you have a lot of tabs open.
30
31## Enter tabbed
32
33[tabbed](https://tools.suckless.org/tabbed/) is a tool to _embed_ X apps
34which support xembed into a tabbed UI. This can be used in conjunction
35with vimb, like so:
36
37```
38tabbed vimb -e
39```
40
41Where the `-e` flag is populated with the `XID`, by tabbed. Configuring
42Firefox-esque keybinds in tabbed's `config.h` is relatively easy. Once
43that's done---voilà! A fairly sane, Vim-like browsing experience that's
44faster and has a smaller footprint than Firefox.
45
46## Ad blocking
47
48Ad blocking support isn't built-in and there is no plugin system
49available. There are two options for ad blocking:
50
511. [wyebadblock](https://github.com/jun7/wyebadblock)
522. `/etc/hosts`
53
54## Caveats
55
56_Some_ websites tend to not work because they detect vimb as an older
57version of Safari (same web engine). This is a minor inconvenience, and
58not a dealbreaker for me. I also cannot login to Google's services for
59some reason, which is mildly annoying, but it's good in a way---I am now
60further incentivised to dispose of my Google account.
61
62And here's the screenshot y'all were waiting for:
63
64![vimb](/static/img/vimb.png)