firefox-controller: An Improved Firefox Controller for Emacs!

Installation

Firefox Extension

Install MozRepl in Firefox.

Emacs Extensions

This package is now on melpa. You can install directly from melpa using package.el.

Or use the following steps to install manually:

1. Install moz.el and popwin-el.
2. Install this package and add it to your load path

   (add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/firefox-controller.el")
   (require 'firefox-controller)
       

Introduction

This project started as a fork of Wenshan’s moz-controller, but I ended up rewriting most of the code and chose a quite different way to use it.

In firefox-controller, we have two different modes:

1. firefox-controller-remote-mode: This is based on the original moz-controller, but the number of available commands increases from 11 to more than 30, and simpler key bindings and a better UI are also provided.
2. firefox-controller-direct-mode: In this mode, you can send the keys directly to firefox.

firefox-controller-remote-mode

Use M-x firefox-controller-remote-mode to enter firefox-controller-remote-mode. It is called remote-mode because the keys that you pressed are handled by Emacs and Emacs will send control commands to firefox.

Here is the screeshot when using firefox-controller-remote-mode:

As we can see in the screenshot, we have defined most of the commonly used commands in firefox. For example, n to scroll down by one page, and t to open a new tab and switch to it. You can exit the firefox-controller-remote-mode by q.

To search the web page, press s. Here is the screenshot for the search mode in firefox-controller-remote-mode (we are searching “bibtex” in the current web page):

However, you don’t necessarily need to call firefox-controller-remote-mode to use these commands. You can bind your own key to a specific command. Look at the firefox-controller--remote-mode-keymap-alist variable to find out the commands that can be bound to. For example, you can use C-c m L to copy the current tab’ URL by:

(global-set-key (kbd "C-c m L")
                #'firefox-controller-get-current-url)

firefox-controller-direct-mode

The limitation of firefox-controller-remote-mode is that under that mode, the web page is non-interactive. We can only view, scroll, switch tab, search and open another tab for a new URL. However, if you want to jump to a link or enter some text in the input box, these functions are not implemented. Here comes firefox-controller-direct-mode, which can be combined with some powerful firefox extensions such as KeySnail to build emacs-like mouseless browsing experience for firefox. We don’t have to recreate some firefox extensions in firefox-controller-remote-mode.

The use of firefox-controller-direct-mode is quite straightforward. M-x firefox-controller-direct-mode, then you can use all the key bindings as if you are in firefox instead of Emacs, except for four special key bindings:

1. C-M-g: Move the current focus to the content window. This is useful when you want to move out of the address bar or search bar to perform some page navigation(scroll up/down, open some link, etc.).
2. M-g: This is bound to firefox-controller-highlight-focus, which can show a temporary background color in the current focused element. This command is useful since the foreground application is Emacs, firefox won’t show the current focused element(at least, we can’t see it in Plasma 5 in Linux, which is my test environment). You can use M-g to give you a visual hint about the location of the cursor.
3. C-z: This command switches from the current mode to firefox-controller-remote-mode.
4. C-g: Exit firefox-controller-direct-mode.

Here is the screenshot to use firefox-controller-direct-mode:

Explanation: After I invoke firefox-controller-direct-mode, I type C-l to go to the address bar, and use M-g to highlight my current location(which is the address bar of course). Then go to google.com, and use M-g again to confirm the current focused element in firefox is the search box. After I type and search “emacs”, I use KeySnail’s plugin hok to jump to a link and open it.

Define Your Own Key Sequences to Be Sent

You can use firefox-controller-send-key-sequence function to define your own key sequences which can be sent directly to firefox.

For example, we define C-c m g to open a new tab and go to www.google.com:

(global-set-key (kbd "C-c m g")
                (lambda ()
                  (interactive)
                  (firefox-controller-send-key-sequence
                   "C-t C-l www.google.com <return>")))

Make sure your key sequence can be read by the kbd function.

Customization

• firefox-controller-zoom-step: Zoom step. Default value is 0.1.
• firefox-controller-highlight-focus-background: The background color used by firefox-controller-highlight-focus command. Default value is “yellow”.

Acknowledgment

• RenWenshan for the original moz-controller.