If a user wants to keep Vimium C's commands usable even when an input box is focused, here's some advices:

press Esc or Ctrl+[ to "blur" input boxes and then Vimium C will go back to normal mode and consume following keys

• <esc> and <c-[> can be mapped. For example, mapkey <c-]> <esc> will make Ctrl+] (during Vimium C consumes it) work like Esc
• there's a command named switchFocus, and you may use it to re-focus the most-recently-focused input box, when you have pressed Esc

map some keys which contains F1 ~ F12

• Vimium C will keep such keys, whose main key is F1~F12, usable even in a default insert mode
  • of course not in the insert mode entered by the command enterInsertMode
• For example, map <s-f8> LinkHints.activate makes Shift+F8 always trigger LinkHints mode
• But map <f8>f LinkHints.activate can not be triggered in a default insert mode, because the second key, f, is not in F1~F12
  • if press <f8> and then f, then <f8> will be consumed by Vimium C, and f will be passed through to a input box itself.

configure global shortcuts on chrome://extensions/shortcuts or about:addons (Firefox)

• command shortcuts configured here are always usable, unless some of browser's built-in shortcuts have higher priorities.
• if the command you want is not in the list, you may setup "User Customized" 1 and 2, and add something like shortcut userCustomized1 command="goBack" into "Custom key mappings" on Vimium C Options page
• if the 2 placeholders are not enough, there's an assistant extension named Shortcut Forwarding Tool to let you setup more.
• on Firefox, please visit about:addons manually, click the settings icon button and click Manage Extension Shortcuts

• long keys ending with :i also work in a plain insert mode, since v1.84.1
  • for example, map <c-j:i> editText run="auto,forward,line" will move caret down by a line, only in insert mode
  • but they do not work in any global insert mode of enterInsertMode
• long keys starting with v- always work in a plain insert mode, since v1.92.0

Note: this section only works since v1.97.0.

The passNextKey support a parameter named normal, just as in Vimium, and since v1.97.0 it can skip the check of insert mode**, so you may add a mapping like this:

map <f1> passNextKey normal count=10

And then, if press <f1> in input, you can trigger all key mappings, whether it's allowed in insert mode or not, for up to 10 times. If you want to exit this, an <esc> is just enough.

The editText command support run="<text-command> [... "," [spaces] <text-command>]":

• a <text-command> must include 1-3 units; if it is not the last text command, it must include 3 units
  • in a text command, this order of units is cmd, arg1, arg2
  • when arg2 is omitted, it means an empty string
• when cmd is exec, arg1 and arg2 are passed to document.execCommand(arg1, false, arg2)
• when cmd is replace, replace currently selected text with arg1
  • arg1 can be URL-encoded, and it will be decoded before inserting into an input box
  • arg1 can include "$s" (or %s) which refers the currently selected text
• when cmd is collapse, make a current selection collapse
  • if arg1 is end, then collapse into the end; otherwise collapse into the start
• when cmd is auto, extend or move, then modify a current selection
  • if cmd is auto, it means extend when a selection has a range, or otherwise move
  • arg1 can be forward, backward or count (if command count > 0 then forward; otherwise backward)
  • arg2 should be a valid granularity like character, word, sentence, line or lineboundary
    • a full list is in https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Selection/modify#granularity

Here're some examples:

# make selected text italic (e.g. in a MarkDown document)
map <c-b:i> editText run="replace,_$s_"
# delete a word starting from a current cursor, just like in Bash shell
map <a-f:i> editText run="extend,forward,word,exec,delete"

editText also supports a boolean dom. By default it only executes its run when an editable input / textarea is focused, but when dom is true, it also executes on common content-editable elements.

More examples can be seen in https://github.com/gdh1995/vimium-c/issues/114#issuecomment-581125416 (in English) and https://github.com/gdh1995/vimium-c/issues/386#issuecomment-876404555 (in Chinese).

Here's an example to simulate a pair of Escape keyboard events to trigger actions of a page itself and other extensions:

mapKey <c-]> <v-esc_pair>
# v1.96.* has a bug, so `keys` need to be `"+esc+-esc"`, since v1.97 `keys="esc-esc"` should work
map <v-esc_pair> runKey keys="+esc+-esc"
map <v-esc> dispatchEvent type="keydown" code="Escape" key="Escape" keyCode=27

This method requires the command dispatchEvent, which is available since v1.92.4 .

Since v1.96.0, Vimium C has supported Compatibility of Escape, and you may specify a list of CSS selectors to make Vimium C pass Escape keys to pages when it blurs a target input element.