ido-vertical-mode.el
This mode takes care of some caveats that are otherwise ugly to store in your init file.
You may also be interested in
ido-ubiquitous
and smex.
Additionally, if you are interested in ido-mode displaying a grid of options instead of a vertical or horizontal list you can check ido-grid-mode.
Install via MELPA Stable or marmalade
M-x package-install ido-vertical-mode
If you use MELPA instead of MELPA Stable, there's no guarantee that you'll get something that works; I've accidentally broken master before and will unfortunately probably do it again :(
Turn it on
(require 'ido-vertical-mode)
(ido-mode 1)
(ido-vertical-mode 1)
(setq ido-vertical-define-keys 'C-n-and-C-p-only)
Or you can use M-x ido-vertical-mode to toggle it.
N.B. as of version 1.0.0, we do not bind to C-n and
C-p for you! You must include that last setq line in your
config somewhere. This is out of a desire not to change the default
emacs keybindings, as C-p is already bound by default in
ido-mode. See the keybindings section
for more information.
Customize
Count
Show the count of candidates:
(setq ido-vertical-show-count t)Colors
Make it look like @abo-abo's blog post:
(setq ido-use-faces t)
(set-face-attribute 'ido-vertical-first-match-face nil
:background "#e5b7c0")
(set-face-attribute 'ido-vertical-only-match-face nil
:background "#e52b50"
:foreground "white")
(set-face-attribute 'ido-vertical-match-face nil
:foreground "#b00000")
(ido-vertical-mode 1)Make it look like the screenshot above:
(setq ido-use-faces t)
(set-face-attribute 'ido-vertical-first-match-face nil
:background nil
:foreground "orange")
(set-face-attribute 'ido-vertical-only-match-face nil
:background nil
:foreground nil)
(set-face-attribute 'ido-vertical-match-face nil
:foreground nil)
(ido-vertical-mode 1)Reset the faces to their defaults:
(set-face-attribute 'ido-vertical-first-match-face nil
:background nil
:foreground nil)
(set-face-attribute 'ido-vertical-only-match-face nil
:background nil
:foreground nil)
(set-face-attribute 'ido-vertical-match-face nil
:background nil
:foreground nil)
(ido-vertical-mode 1)
;; optionally
(setq ido-use-faces nil)Alternative Key Bindings
Since the prospects are listed vertically, it might make sense to use
C-n and C-p to navigate through the options, instead of the
standard C-s and C-r. To accomplish this, set
ido-vertical-define-keys like this:
(setq ido-vertical-define-keys 'C-n-and-C-p-only)
The standard binding for C-p - ido-toggle-prefix - will now be
available on C-c C-t, which was previously unbound in ido-mode's
key map. Of course, you can also put ido-toggle-prefix somewhere
else on your own:
;; manually mimic the 0.1.5 behavior of ido-vertical-mode
(define-key ido-completion-map (kbd "M-p") 'ido-toggle-prefix)
You also have the option to rebind some or all of the arrow keys with like this:
(setq ido-vertical-define-keys 'C-n-C-p-up-and-down)
to use up and down to navigate the options, or:
(setq ido-vertical-define-keys 'C-n-C-p-up-down-left-right)
to use left and right to move through the history/directories.