Pentadactyl is a free browser add-on for Firefox, designed to make browsing more efficient and especially more keyboard accessible. Largely inspired by the Vim text editor, the appearance and finger feel of Pentadactyl should be familiar to Vim users. Additional web-specific features, such as our ‘Hint’ mode, command interface, and key bindings to automatically follow back and forward links, make it easy to navigate without touching the mouse and give Pentadactyl a habit forming nature of its own.

But Pentadactyl is more than just a simple command interface to Firefox—it is completely customizable and scriptable to the core. Not only can you easily define new commands and key mappings, but Pentadactyl also makes it easy to write scripts as powerful as any Firefox extension, but orders of magnitude simpler. Combine this with powerful JavaScript completion and evaluation from the command line, and you have a complete extension and web development platform that can be customized in every particular.

Download

Note: Pentadactyl hides the menu bar and toolbar in its default configuration. If you want them back, simply type :set guioptions+=mT<Return>.

Features

• Vim-like key bindings (h, j, gg, ZZ, <C-f>, etc.)
• Ex commands for nearly all functionality (:quit, :open www.foo.com, …)
• Powerful tab completion for all commands and options, including,
  • ‘Auto-completion’ shows you available results as you type
  • Configurable URL and search keyword completion, including ‘awesome bar’ results
  • Context-sensitive, programmable JavaScript completion with paren matching and syntax error highlighting
  • Descriptions of commands and options, along with informational and error messages
• Powerful privacy features, including
  • Private mode (‘porn mode’) support, where no data is written to disk and all new private information is wiped on exit
  • Fine grained sanitizer to clear data like command-line history, cookies, and page history
  • Ability to sanitize specific hosts and for specific time periods (i.e., clear all references to google.com for the past 5 minutes)
• Page search with many fixes for long-standing Firefox annoyances, including,
  • Starts at the cursor position in the currently selected frame, unlike Firefox, which always starts at the beginning of the first frame for documents with more than one frame.
  • Returns the cursor and viewport to their original position on cancel.
  • Backtracks to the first successful match after pressing backspace, unlike Firefox, which will always continue from the last match.
  • Supports reverse incremental search.
• Keyboard macros, along with custom key mappings and commands
• Plugins and color schemes
• Quick and powerful keyboard navigation for links, input fields, etc.
• Vim-like status line
• Minimal GUI, along with commands to hide and toggle toolbars and menus
• Ability to :source JavaScript, CSS, and Pentadactyl command files.
• Visual bell for errors ('visualbell')
• Ability to mark the current page position and return to it
• QuickMarks for the sites you visit most
• Editing of text fields with an external editor
• AutoCommands to execute actions on certain events
• A comprehensive, online help system, explaining all commands, mappings, options, and plugins

Bugs

Support

Any questions you may have should be answered quickly on the mailing list, if they're not already answered in the archives. More timely support may be found in the #pentadactyl chat room on irc.oftc.net. See also the Frequently Asked Questions and Google Code project page.

Credits

Pentadactyl was once called Vimperator, initially written by Martin Stubenschrott, then developed and maintained by Doug Kearns, Kris Maglione, and several other invaluable contributors. Doug and Kris, the primary Vimperator developers for several years, have left the Vimperator project and now develop and maintain Pentadactyl in its stead.

In addition to our own users and developers, we of course owe great debts to the applications that have inspired and continue to inspire us, especially the Vim text editor and the Conkeror web browser. Without them, Pentadactyl would be a very different end product.