This weekend, I read Bill Clementson's post titled "Firefox for Emacs users". Bill talks about a new Firefox extension called Conkeror. Conkeror's stated mission is:
Conkeror is a mozilla based web browser designed to be completely keyboard driven, no compromises. It also strives to behave as much like Emacs as possible. This means all the key bindings and to-die-for features of Emacs that can be imitated by a javascript/XUL web browser Just Work.
Of course, I about jammed a finger trying to get to the Conkeror install site at warp speed. The install was typical - just an XPI file that installs itself like any other extension. However, it doesn't just show up like any other extension. You have to type a special command line to get Conkeror to fire up the first time (this is on the Conkeror "install" page):
firefox -chrome chrome://conkeror/content
Once you start it up, you see the Conkeror help page. You can't resize the window - pretty annoying. However, if you go down the page and hit the button that says "Set Chrome", restart Firefox normally, then you'll be in full time Conkeror mode and you can resize the window any way you wish.
Aside from the bizarre start-up, Conkeror rocks! It's sure to tickle your Emacs fancy because it binds many of the common Emacs keys to browser functions. They've also made it easy to "click" links on a page by numbering each link; you simply type the number of the link and BLAMO - you're navigating.
The only drawback I've seen on Windows is that Conkeror interferes with some AJAX/DHTML sites like... Blogger! But, as little as I interact with some of those hardcore sites, I can fire up IE as a work-around.
Give Conkeror a try and experience the beauty of mouse-less browsing. It really is quite cool.
Update 05-30-2006 10:38:26 CST:
It seems that Gmail attachments are causing problems for me in Conkeror. Yikes! This draw back may really cramp my style.
