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by corank 563 days ago
For text editors or IDEs, basically contexts where we expect a lot of typing, I get why sticking to the keyboard is desirable. I don't get how it's better to browse the web without using the mouse. Most of the time on the web I just read, not type.
2 comments
opan 563 days ago
>Most of the time on the web I just read, not type.

This is kind of why it works. In vim you spend most of your time in normal mode, reading, moving around, making quick edits. It takes good advantage of the whole keyboard even when you're not writing new text. I use qutebrowser, which has default vim-style bindings for everything and an emphasis on the keyboard. It works very well.

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corank 562 days ago
I think an important difference between how I use vim and how I use a web browser is that in vim I need to type frequently. Though I may spend most time in normal mode in vim, I still need to switch to insert mode to make edits very frequently. With my normal web browsing it's not the case, so I'm more comfortable with a mouse for that. But I realise that this depends largely on the specific use case for web browsing. Reading blog posts is quite different from reading some documentation where one needs to search and backtrack frequently, for example, although both are done on a web browser. The latter involves the keyboard more frequently so would benefit from a keyboard-centric interface more.
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paulryanrogers 562 days ago
I wonder how much of that is how and when one comes up in the industry. I learned a little vi at uni only by necessity after years of DOS and Windows 3/9x. It felt so awkward. Decades later I only use vi on servers, but slowly its macro ('normal') mode has grown on me.
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christophilus 563 days ago
For me, I’m often using the web as a reference while programming. It’s nice to be able to flip over to it (using the keyboard) and use the same familiar key bindings I’m using while in my workflow.
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corank 562 days ago
That's indeed a nice use case. In general keeping to the keyboard can be helpful in the context of typing, but if I'm just reading news or blog posts or watching videos I'd go with a mouse.
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