Reviews for Tridactyl
Tridactyl by Colin Caine, Oliver Blanthorn
Review by Firefox user 14048265
Rated 4 out of 5
by Firefox user 14048265, 7 years agoI've been a long time pentadactyl user and like other reviewers here have been evaluating a few alternatives to replace it . So far it seems like tridactyl is the only current one that approaches and has the best potential in trying to provide a pentadactyl/vimperator experience.
Being used to the maturity of pentadactyl, using tridactyl does leave me feeling a bit disabled
- tridactyl sometimes stop working on some pages and I have to switch tabs and back to get it working again
- mapping like 'gh/GH' appear to be documented but do not seem to work.
- things feel slower, e.g. my muscle memory from pentadactyl has a T + Enter to open a newtab but in tridactyl opening the commandline takes about half a second - making a few things no-ops and I have to attempt again albeit slower. :)
- tab-completion at the command line is missing. I hope this gets added.
- searching still uses the firefox native search interface (i.e. `ctrl-f`) but a feature to support this appears to be under development.
- some keybindings are different from pentadactyl - e.g. `yy` as opposed to `y` to yank the url - arguably tridactyl is doing the right thing but it does mean some investment in unlearning/remapping things.
- a lot of my custom plugins for pentdactyl don't work but as javascript support improves, things could be ported over but the docs/examples on this front are few and far between.
tridactyl is still young but has an active community/code-base and I'm sure most of my pains will go away in time. So far it looks like this is the contender I will stick with.
Being used to the maturity of pentadactyl, using tridactyl does leave me feeling a bit disabled
- tridactyl sometimes stop working on some pages and I have to switch tabs and back to get it working again
- mapping like 'gh/GH' appear to be documented but do not seem to work.
- things feel slower, e.g. my muscle memory from pentadactyl has a T + Enter to open a newtab but in tridactyl opening the commandline takes about half a second - making a few things no-ops and I have to attempt again albeit slower. :)
- tab-completion at the command line is missing. I hope this gets added.
- searching still uses the firefox native search interface (i.e. `ctrl-f`) but a feature to support this appears to be under development.
- some keybindings are different from pentadactyl - e.g. `yy` as opposed to `y` to yank the url - arguably tridactyl is doing the right thing but it does mean some investment in unlearning/remapping things.
- a lot of my custom plugins for pentdactyl don't work but as javascript support improves, things could be ported over but the docs/examples on this front are few and far between.
tridactyl is still young but has an active community/code-base and I'm sure most of my pains will go away in time. So far it looks like this is the contender I will stick with.
Developer response
posted 7 years agoHi, thanks for such a detailed review.
> mapping like 'gh/GH' appear to be documented but do not seem to work
I've just added documentation in the betas to explain this better: you need to first set some homepages via `set home url1 url2 url3`. We don't get access to the Firefox ones.
> things feel slower, e.g. my muscle memory from pentadactyl has a T + Enter to open a newtab but in tridactyl opening the commandline takes about half a second - making a few things no-ops and I have to attempt again albeit slower. :)
At least some of that is our fault, and we're looking into it, albeit slowly :)
> tridactyl sometimes stop working on some pages and I have to switch tabs and back to get it working again
That's usually because focus has gone into an iframe, which are pretty fenced off. There's not much we can do about it :(
> tab-completion at the command line is missing. I hope this gets added.
> searching still uses the firefox native search interface (i.e. `ctrl-f`) but a feature to support this appears to be under development.
> a lot of my custom plugins for pentdactyl don't work but as javascript support improves, things could be ported over but the docs/examples on this front are few and far between.
These are all in progress. `js` is in the beta branch but is a bit janky.
If you need any help, don't hesitate to come into the Matrix channel or IRC advertised on the new tab page and the help page.
> mapping like 'gh/GH' appear to be documented but do not seem to work
I've just added documentation in the betas to explain this better: you need to first set some homepages via `set home url1 url2 url3`. We don't get access to the Firefox ones.
> things feel slower, e.g. my muscle memory from pentadactyl has a T + Enter to open a newtab but in tridactyl opening the commandline takes about half a second - making a few things no-ops and I have to attempt again albeit slower. :)
At least some of that is our fault, and we're looking into it, albeit slowly :)
> tridactyl sometimes stop working on some pages and I have to switch tabs and back to get it working again
That's usually because focus has gone into an iframe, which are pretty fenced off. There's not much we can do about it :(
> tab-completion at the command line is missing. I hope this gets added.
> searching still uses the firefox native search interface (i.e. `ctrl-f`) but a feature to support this appears to be under development.
> a lot of my custom plugins for pentdactyl don't work but as javascript support improves, things could be ported over but the docs/examples on this front are few and far between.
These are all in progress. `js` is in the beta branch but is a bit janky.
If you need any help, don't hesitate to come into the Matrix channel or IRC advertised on the new tab page and the help page.