Did Your Vimium Chrome Extension Just Stop Working?

Vimium is an extension for Google’s Chrome browser that allows you to navigate the web while avoiding the mouse. It goes beyond keyboard link navigation, attempting to incorporate the muscle memory developed by users of the Vim editor to manage windows and tabs. Or it did, until a May 18^th update to version 1.43 caused it to simply stop responding to any keypresses for me, using Chrome 21.0.1180.89 on Ubuntu 12.04.1.

My salvation, and perhaps yours, can be found in Vimium’s relative VimiumPlus, which can be found on Chrome’s extension page. Not only does this actually still work¹, but it contains a few nifty commands in addition to the set in the plain old Vimium.