[rudedogg]

> It's the reason I don't use safari despite its better performance on a MacBook.

I've been working on a Safari Vim-inspired Extension for macOS 10.15+ for many months now. It'll be paid, something like $5 or less. I would have liked to open source it, but I don't have a way to get enough eyes on a KickStarter or something to gather donations.

It is close to ready, I'm hoping to release it this month. I'll do a Show HN when I do. Here are some screenshots if you'd like to take a look. I'd love some feedback!

Preferences UI: https://i.imgur.com/r8WOrHb.png

Follow Link UI: https://i.imgur.com/RpGxdh6.png

Help Menu UI (needs some work!): https://i.imgur.com/OmMe9LK.png

[blotter_paper]

I'm not telling you how to monetise your project, but here's a thought I've had in the past regarding a hybrid of these schemes: simply make a written commitment to open source the project after X amount of purchases.

[rudedogg]

I was thinking about this too. I just want to recoup some of my time investment. My only concern is that it'll make some people not buy in hopes that they can wait for others to pay - but I suppose those people would probably just use Chrome/Firefox with free plugins anyway.

Thanks, I'll think more about this. I think it'd also give people confidence in the security of the code - running browser extensions is a little scary since they technically have access to everything. As a customer, knowing that it'd be open sourced would give me some peace of mind that it's not doing anything malicious.

[_jal]

A different consideration is people's motivation to pay, and longevity is one aspect of that - buyer's confidence.

I paid money for an extension that promptly became unsupported and then died in an upgrade. Which is fine, whatever, but it did put a big question mark over the category of "paid browser extension" for me.

Knowing the source will be out there would fix that part for me - I may not be able to take over dev, but I could at least try to fix things that break until I find a replacement.

[rudedogg]

Thanks for explaining that. I forget the exact history, but I know they've changed up the extension types/APIs multiple times in the past few years. I think a lot of developers/companies gave up on them after being forced to rewrite.

To confirm, is the model you and the parent would like:

"After x units are sold, or after 12 months (whichever comes first), the project will be open sourced and changed to free in the App Store. It will then be supported with an optional in-app-purchase donation - with no nagging or feature differences."

[_jal]

I'm personally not super picky about the particular terms, those would work for me.

Yeah, writing extensions for browsers appears to be increasingly unpleasant.

[nikivi]

I am interested and am also rebuilding vim from https://github.com/flippidippi/sVim for new Safari.

Yours looks great assuming it has all features of sVim and smooth scrolling with jk

Also the link hinting, can you please make it same as sVim with yellow background so it's easier to read.

Like this: https://i.imgur.com/I5orbAQ.png

Thank you. Looking forward to the release.

[rudedogg]

> I am interested and am also rebuilding vim from https://github.com/flippidippi/sVim for new Safari.

Good luck with the rebuild! I figured someone must be working on it but there weren't any GitHub issues last time I looked. Has it been hard to convert it to use the new App Extension API? There are quite a few things where I have to ask Swift to do things for me - since JS apis don't exist (creating new safari windows, etc.).

I didn't mention above but I started from scratch rather than using sVim/Vimium as a base (which would be okay since they are MIT licensed). I think there are some pros/cons to this. The main pro is that since I only have to worry about Safari 13+ I can use the latest features on the JS side. I am curious how my approach to various things compares to sVim/Vimium. I haven't looked at the source for them yet - but plan to once I'm done to check out the design differences.

> Yours looks great assuming it has all features of sVim and smooth scrolling with jk

It should be close - I still need to write the smooth scrolling polyfill - that's one of the trickier things left. I found some libraries but want to try doing it myself. I'm going to try and match the Safari pageUp/pageDn behavior as close as possible.

> Also the link hinting, can you please make it same as sVim with yellow background so it's easier to read.

Thanks for bringing that up. I intended to allow increasing the font size. I was hoping people liked my color choices, but you're right, it should be configurable. I'll add it to my todo list.

> Thank you. Looking forward to the release.

Thank you! Your feedback is really helpful!