vimium not working for pdf files

[foobar-1024]

I cannot use j/k bindings for scrolling through pdfs, when open by the native pdf reader in chrome on ubuntu. The vimium icon shows blue (loaded).
Please help.
Vimium version : 1.45
Chrome Version : 37.0.2062.94

[smblott-github]

That's unfortunate, but possibly unavoidable (?). Vimium is indeed active (which is why the icon is blue). But the body of the document is an HTML5 <embed>. Which isn't something we can scroll currently.

Edit: See also #723.

[maximbaz]

I can see why scrolling is not working, but there is another issue, that prevents all shortcuts from working in PDF tab:

Vimium switches into the insert mode as soon as you click somewhere on the page with your mouse, and there is no way out -- Esc doesn't work.
This prevents from using shortcuts like ? or x once you clicked somewhere or selected a text, which is pretty annoying.

@smblott-github would you suggest to create a new issue or re-use this one?
It has quite generic title and still open, while #723 already exists for tracking the scrolling issue.

[mrmr1993]

@z0rch you may be interested in PR #1211. It needs rebasing onto master, I'll try to get around to that later.

[alcoheca]

Viumium 1.5.2 and Chrome 44.0.2403.155 (64-bit) also have this problem. Viumium doesn't play with the internal PDF viewer and tab navigation is rendered useless.

Is there a version permutation known working for PDF tabs? I open a lot of PDFs in chrome.

I've followed the path of all the related PRs and it looked like this should be fixed inside the beta/testing options page.. Is that true?

[dragonxlwang]

I am also having this problem but my expectation of vimium can be much easier satisfied --- I just want to be able to navigate across the PDF tabs --- now, when navigating using H/L to left and right tabs and if the current tab is a PDF tab, then it traps there ---- one can only use mouse or chrome default navigation key to move around.

[mrmr1993]

I believe (unless Chrome's PDF handling has changed) that you can press <esc> to defocus the pdf, anf then Vimium works correctly

[dagerikhl]

I am having this exact issue. I see it's referenced here, #1014, too.
This is annoying behaviour, especially if I use J and K to navigate through my many open tabs, but have 1 pdf-tab open. I then have to switch to CTRL+TAB/CTRL+SHIFT+TAB to navigate to the next/previous tab.

Expected behaviour

Any tab with an open pdf-file should act as any other tab in Chrome, with all shortcuts (especially J and K) enabled.

Current behaviour

All Vimium shortcuts stops working when navigating to a tab with an open pdf file, eg. file:///C:/Users/user/Downloads/pdf.pdf or http://www.pdf995.com/samples/pdf.pdf.
Vimium is loaded (blue extension icon).
Vimium, curiously enough, seems to work while the pdf is loading.
Pressing ESC does not unfocus the pdf and allow Vimium shortcuts to work.

Steps to reproduce

Open any pdf in a new tab in Chrome.

Info

Platform: Windows 10 (experience on Windows 7 as well).
Browser: Google Chrome 54.0.2840.71 m.
Vimium options: Allowed in inkognito: yes, Allow access to file urls: yes.

[smblott-github]

Interesting. Vimium is running on that page you link to, @dagerikhl. And we're seeing the keydown events, but not the keypress events which we use to trigger most commands.

This works:

map <c-e> Vomnibar.activate

(We handle control keys on keydown.)

If we moved all key handling to keydown, then this issue might be fixed. And that might be possible now (or soon), because Chrome Stable now has event.key.

[dagerikhl]

Thank you for the reply.
That's quite enlightening! And I now understand why it isn't working although it's loaded.

I tested with your suggested mapping, and I can confirm that it works as expected on my system as well.

Is this a fix that can be expected in the near future? Would be really great if the keydown event could be used, as it seems to fix the issue perfectly.

[kabeersvohra]

@dagerikhl how did you get this working with the mapping? I added that line to my vimium custom key mappings but vimium doesnt work in the native chrome pdf viewer nor does it work in pdf.js, this is something that I would really like to see fixed because if vimium doesnt work in all tabs then I may go back to standard chrome keyboard shortcuts even though I would really like to use vimium. Thanks