Allowing to activate a link directly when it gets a search hit

[lingnand]

Back in the day of vimperator there was one feature I used from day to day. I will search for some string on the page, hit n or N to get reach the link I want, and hit <Enter> to activate it directly. With vimb I have to hit f and type the number for the link. It's no big deal but it would be nice if we can add this feature.

[fanglingsu]

I don't know this feature.

1. Does vimperator use the normal search for that feature started by / or ?? If I search for 'foo' and there is a link with text 'foo' I use n or N to highlight this search match. If I hit <Enter> the link, containing the matching text is fired.
   This wouldn't be easy to implement in vimb, because search and hinting are totally different mechanisms.
2. Or is this a type of hinting?

[lingnand]

1. Yes, it does. Consider a link like this:

   A long sentence containing foo.

   In vimperator you can search for "foo" and when it hits the "foo"
   inside the link above you will notice that the link containing the
   text becomes focused (it's a bit hard to explain, but you will see
   the link surrounded by a dotted line just as when you press to
   focus it in a normal browser). And the you can just press to
   activate it.

2. Mhh, I'm thinking maybe it can be accomplished by adding some lines
   into the search logic? e.g., when a hit is found, check if the hit is
   inside a link, if yes, use javascript to focus that link e.g.
   $('...').focus()

On 23/10, Daniel Carl wrote:

I don't know this feature.

1. Does vimperator use the normal search for that feature started by / or ?? If I search for 'foo' and there is a link with text 'foo' I use n or N to highlight this search match. If I hit <Enter> the link, containing the matching text is fired.
   This wouldn't be easy to implement in vimb, because search and hinting are totally different mechanisms.
2. Or is this a type of hinting?

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#131 (comment)

Lingnan Dai

[fanglingsu]

Ok, I know what you mean. I think this works because vimperator focus the searched element/text. Firefox and webkit do not focus the searches elements, so the <Enter> does not work. I'll check if we can simulate the behaviour with vimb too.

[fanglingsu]

I looked over the pentadactyl sources. Pentadactyl implements the search completely in JavaScript and can therefore focus the current found item.

Vimb uses the built in webkit search and highlighting mechanism that provides no API to focus the found item. Your suggestion to search by webkit and to set the focus via JavaScript does not work. We get no information where in the page the current found item is located, neighter from c code nor by a changed property in the DOM. At the time the only way to get this working is to implement searching via JavaScript.

I don't think that we can built this into vimb. But as a workaround, you can enable Caret-Browsing via :set caret! and then the focus should be on the found item.

[antoyo]

We can have this feature with the following mapping:

nmap <CR> :eval! window.getSelection().anchorNode.parentNode.click()<CR>

[fanglingsu]

@antoyo Thank you for this hint. I'll try to implement this in vimb so that the <CR> does only do the click when a search is currently active.

[antoyo]

Cool.
If it is implemented in vimb, there is also a way to allow opening in a new tab with Ctrl+Enter (I don't think it is possible with only JavaScript).

[fanglingsu]

I've pushed a first attempt to get this working. But vimb does not have control about the link target. tat means if the link or otherwise JavaScript crafted element want to open into new window a new window will be opened. I assume we have to reuse some of the hinting JavaScript to let vimb control where to open the element.

[fanglingsu]

This is already implemented.