Mastering Vim

Let’s start a conversation (about modal interfaces)

If you’ve ever edited text before, you are most likely to be familiar with modeless interfaces. It’s the default option chosen by modern mainstream text editors, and that’s how many of us learned to work with text.

The term modeless refers to the fact that the each interface element has only one function. Each button press results in a letter showing up on screen, or some other action being performed. Each key (or a combination of keys) always does the same thing: the application always operates in a single mode.

But it’s not the only way.

Welcome to the modal interface, where each trigger performs a different action based on context. The most common example of a modal interface that we ...