bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 3 weeks ago
Awesome work!
I remember using Qutebrowser on my Pinephone as well. How tf does this cute little browser that is meant to be used exclusively with the keyboard manage to be so usable on devices that do not even have a keyboard?
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
Yeah, it is a pretty funny quirk. Qutebrowser was obviously made with the complete intention of using a keyboard but because it commits to that with such laser focus it actually ends up being paradoxically much more flexible than it was designed to be.
When I sat down and thought about trying to map emacs commands to my steam deck, my brain just broke. How do you manage key chords? What letter keys do you prioritize easy access to? Every solution feels obtuse.
Whereas with Vim keybindings it all just kind of fell in to place in my mind after I assigned the left joystick to hjkl. The result is a control scheme that easily blows any other steam deck onboard control scheme for navigating a web browser and entering text, clear out of the water, especially when you use hints (f). I didn’t set out to do anything other than see what would happen if I tried out a silly gimmick, but the power of vim turned my fools errand into a slick control scheme that puts basically every other method of navigating a web browser and entering text with a gamepad to shame, Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Steam…. None of their design teams can hold a candle to Vim I guess.