I've used this and other similar extensions but always them being an extension makes for a slow and unreliable experience imo. Pressing shortcut keys just might work depending on the focus and other current state. Going back to qutebrowser after trying out these extensions feels so fast and reliable in comparison - when you press a key it will instantly work like it should.
I just looked and qutebrowser is basically a webview right? I've played with webviews a little and it didn't feel much different than other injection-style scripting. What would make that better than the extension?
FWIW I tried the vimium or vimperator before and found it clunkier than I expected, so I can believe qutebrowser is better.
qutebrowser UI is on top of the engine running inside it so it catches every key press (and then submits it to the web engine when needed).
Clunky would be the exact term I find my day to day with these extensions - it's often pressing a key, noticing the focus is somewhere that makes the extension not catch it, and then either using a mouse or a key shortcut just to move focus somewhere the extension works with before repeating the actual command. I'd get so used to it that even when the keys do work I'm using them really slowly as I expect they might not. That never happens in qute, if I press a key it will work unless I've made a mistake myself. Also the UI being native Qt it feels snappier for me than extensions bolted on existing browsers.
The features qutebrowser can implement are somewhat limited by the web engine API and it doesn't have some things other browsers do, which is exactly why sometimes I try out these extensions, but usually after trying them for a day it feels so good to get back to qute and get an instant reliable response to key presses that I don't care about the few missing things.
It's a lot more than a webview in the sense that keyboard is a first-class citizen, everything is accessible via keyboard, the bindings are much more reliable and responsive, and many more features make it a predictable and stable experience.
For example, qutebrowser supports a hinting mode where I press Enter to activate a link after selecting it with hints, which almost entirely eliminates accidentally clicking the wrong link, something I still do occasionally with Vimium+Firefox.
It is also much more scriptable, so I can for example create a keyboard binding for clipping selected text (with references) directly to my localhost pastebin.
Every action you can imagine is scriptable and bindable.
It has built-in support for adblock and granular JS/image/etc permissions.
Great keyboard-accessible bookmarking system.
Keyboard-accessible and reproducible settings and bindings with autocomplete and lookups.
Not to mention that it does not on a regular basis non-consensually take away features I use/introduce features I don't want and can't disable.
