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I used to use Firefox on a daily basis but have switched to Google Chrome, and have been using it for 2+ years now. The one plugin that I miss is this one, It's All Text!. This plugin allowed for the textarea to be opened into a separate vim or gvim window where I could do editing and then save the contents when done, back to Firefox.

The closes thing I've found is this plugin is TextAid, but I find it a bit of kludge since it requires a separate web server to be kept up.

I'd really prefer not having to use TextAid, does anyone know of any alternative methods to achieving this using Chrome?

slm
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  • Wouldn't this be more appropriate for superuser? – phemmer Nov 08 '13 at 19:35
  • @Patrick - possibly, but I run this entirely on Linux and wanted a Linux slant to it, not windows. Also I know Jasonwryan uses [vimprobable](http://jasonwryan.com/blog/2012/11/20/vimprobable/) and I wanted to get feedback as to possible alternatives from other powerusers of this site. If others agree that it's way off topic I'll be happy to move it over to SU, but I frequent that site enough that I wasn't as interested in their take on this at this time. – slm Nov 08 '13 at 19:37

6 Answers6

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There is a chrome extension named Surfingkeys, which includes ACE vim editor(a vim editor implemented with Javascript).

With the extension, you could press Ctrl-i to call the vim editor out when you're in a input or textarea element. Then you could edit your text with the vim editor, and :wq to write text in vim editor back to the element on page.

You could also use the vim editor to select option for a select element, which is useful when there are tons of options within the select element.

More info could be found -- vim editor with ACE . edit input element

edit select element

brook hong
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Wasavi opens text areas in a vi-like editor, which is configurable via an rc file.

Videos and download links on the GitHub page. Chrome, Opera and Firefox are supported.

Here's an example of me editing this answer:

enter image description here

Tom Hale
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Update Oct 18:

Try following plugin:

https://github.com/pandysong/ghost-text.vim

enter image description here

pandy.song
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It's more difficult with (by design), but you can try textaid.

See https://superuser.com/questions/261689/its-all-text-for-chrome

Community
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Gilles Quénot
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    https://github.com/epeli/TextareaConnect is broken so that doesn't look to be a viable option. As I already stated, I'm aware of textaid, wanted alternatives, if any. – slm Nov 08 '13 at 20:02
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Update May 2021:

I know this is an old thread, but for those searching right now, there is a project called firenvim that exploits the fact that neovim can act as a remote backend to change your textareas to nvim frontends.

In practice it opens nvim directly in your text area like this (image from their page on github):

enter image description here

tbrugere
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  • This solution is powerful as it opens a full-fledged vim editor/variant, enabiling use of your system vim config, with some conditionals to load specific config for browser use cases. – rfabbri Jul 26 '21 at 19:07
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In general you have to have a backend. Though, it does not need to be a web server. If you are comfortable with having a script running locally each time you open an edit or have a service running (Though that would be close to the issue at hand) it can be done trough using the API to communication with local scripts over pipes.

In short how it works is by using Ajax in the browser. An extension can call a local script which in turn open desired editor and keeps the communication going. The local script prints data to stdout and the extension receive what is pushed.

Another choice is to use local storage but have not found a way to nicely combine it with actually launching local applications.

I have a project on ice using python as backend and primarily Vim as editor, but have also tested it with things like Emacs and Gedit. I had a working version, but mangled it up and have not looked at it for some time.

This is not an answer per se but added it as a note. I might work on the plugin and come back to it ;), but if local script is a non starter I'm afraid it won't help much for your request.

Runium
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  • I'd be interested in where this went if you decide to do something. Please keep me in the loop, I'd be interested in pitching in too if you wanted an extra set of hands. – slm Mar 01 '14 at 19:44