nEXT Browser User Manual

Next Browser is the ultimate nEXT generation browsing experience designed for power users. 100% of the functions and classes are exposed to the end-user allowing for infinite customization.

Basics
Customization
- Keybinding

Basics

History

History is represented as a tree that you can traverse. More complex than the “forwards-backwards” abstraction found in other browsers, the tree makes sure you never lose track of where you’ve been.

In the example below, the User performs the following actions:

Starts page Athens
Visits page Ancient Greek
Returns to page Athens
Visits page Classical Athens
Returns to page Athens
Executes forwards keybind in history

It is at this point that a normal browser would NOT be able to navigate you forwards to your visit of Ancient Greek. Instead of erasing your history, nEXT offers smart navigation and prompts the user. Do you wish to go forwards to Ancient Greek or to Classical Athens?

The standard keybindings for forward-backward navigation are:

C-f: Navigate Forward
C-b: Navigate Backward
S-f: Navigate Forward Tree
S-b: Navigate Backward

By using navigate forward tree you will be prompted for which branch you’d like to visit as in the example above. The simple navigate forward command will simply visit the first child of the current node in the tree.

Tabs (Buffers)

Tabs are represented by a concept known as “buffers”. Buffers are known in other GUIs as Views. Unlike in other GUI systems, the controller for a view can dynamically change. Given a buffer composed of a web-view and a document-mode model, one can dynamically set the controller to any other mode. This enables run-time specialization and modification of widget behavior.

The standard keybindings for tab management (within document-mode) are:

C-x b: Switch tab
C-x k: Kill tab
S-l: New document-mode tab
C-l: Change URL of current document

Bookmarks

Bookmarks are located in a database located in ~/.next.d/bookmark.db. This directory and database will be created automatically for you. The bookmark database is a SQLITE database that contains one table with two columns: id, url. In order to navigate and manage your bookmarks, a few functions are provided:

S-s k: Delete Bookmark
S-s o: Open Bookmark
S-s s: Bookmark Current Page

Customization

All customization begins by creating a ~/.next.d/init.lisp file. Within your init file you can write your own keybindings and customizations.

The first line of an init file should contain the following package declaration in order to modify nEXT specific variables and functions:

(in-package :next)

Following the package declaration, you can write or override any functions and variables.

Keybinding

Keys are defined with the following syntax:

(define-key global-map (kbd "C-x o") #'function-example)

in the previous example, the sequence of keys: control+x, lift hands off control key, o would invoke the “function-example”. Additionally important to note is that the key sequence control+x is now registered as a special type keybinding, a prefix. A prefix key can, but should not be mapped. If a subsequent mapping was to bind control+x, it would be unclear to nEXT what keybinding invocation the user is trying to type.

The following keys exist as special keys:

C: Control
S: Super (Windows key, Command Key)
M: Meta (Alt key, Option Key)

Swapping the Modifier Keys

nEXT is built with QT, and on Mac OS, QT will automatically modify what control, meta and caps lock as keycodes sent to the key-capturing system. In order to maintain consistency with other programs that you are familiar with, you may want to switch to the default emacs style keybindings; to do so; simply copy the snippet below into your init.lisp file.

(let ((original_control *control-key*)
      (original_meta *meta-key*)
      (original_alt *alt-key*))
  (setf *control-key* original_meta)
  (setf *meta-key* original_alt)
  (setf *super-key* original_control))

nEXT-Browser/nEXT