Mozilla-KDE Integration

zniper writes: "According to this mail on the KDE-KFM-DEVEL mailing-list, Corel revived the Mozilla QT-port and claim to have a port even more stable than the official GTK version. Additionally, they are planning to port Gecko to the KDE2 kparts architecture, allowing it to be embedded into Konqueror and other KDE2 programs. "

Comments

Nice one Corel

[Darren Winsper]

It's nice to see Corel helping out the Mozilla and KDE projects this way. Since Nautilus already uses Gecko and now the possibility for Konqueror to use it, we are one step closer to having a more standards compliant web.

Once Netscape 6/Mozilla reach RTM versions, all that really stands in the way of true standards compliance is WinIE. MacIE is already wonderfully standards compliant by all accounts, and hopefully the WinIE team will follow suit.

They have been working on it for awhile

[infiniti99]

Konqueror was created to replace KFM, and I'm pretty sure they at least used KFM as a reference. It rendered web pages decently, but not much else. Now KDE has Konqueror which boasts everything you'd expect a web browser to do: HTML 4.0, CSS1&2, Java/Javascript, and SSL. What was once a wishlist in May is a reality now.

And I do believe you're right in that the KDE developers have not recieved as much attention. Think about how many news items we have seen about Mozilla or Nautilus in the last few months. When was the last time we heard about Konqueror? I just did a Slashdot search and saw a news item for it dated back in May (its *only* news item).

I think the only reason it has no attention is because it's a KDE app. You generally only hear about the "whole package" of KDE, and nothing about its individual apps. This is unfortunate because Konqueror *really* stands out. The people who normally complain that Mozilla is too bulky should definitely try out Konqueror. It does everything necessary, yet is faster and lighter. I was impressed with the no-hassle SSL. It just utilizes OpenSSL if you have it installed. In fact, this is the first time I've ever been able to get a browser besides Netscape to use SSL.

Embedding Mozilla into Konqueror seems strange at first, since Konqueror does a fine job of it's own. However, wouldn't it be neat to be able to choose a render engine? Imagine a case where the KHTML widget renders a page not quite like you wanted it to. Flip over to Mozilla rendering to give yourself a second shot! =) Hey, there's a first for everything.

-Justin

Re:Konqueror already rocks...

[update()]

Incidentally, this news is not about Konqueror, although there has been speculation about using Gecko as an alternate rendering engine for Konqueror, alongside khtml.

I mean, how long have they been working on Mozilla?..And when did development of the Konqueror HTML widget start? I am really surprised they could build a good-functioning (speaking as of the final-beta ) web-browser in such a short time! ..How did the KDE developers manage this?

I think these are important questions to ask. Whenever anyone here tries to raise the issue of "What went wrong with Mozilla?" it's always met with angry accusations of trolling and claims that the project is doing great, just great! especially if you've tried the last couple of nightly builds which are much better than those of a few days ago.

Mozilla is the flagship project of the "Open Source Movement" (not to be confused with the "Free Software Movement") and when it was launched, Eric Raymond and CmdrTaco were featured prominently in everything from C|Net to Cat Fancier preemptively declaring victory in the browser war. Three years later, Mozilla isn't close to their first release and has been crushed by Microsoft in both market share and quality. At the same time, the Konqueror team has come up with a 90% usable browser from scratch in half the time, with a tiny fraction of the developers and bug testers and without the resources and experience of Netscape behind it.

It seems to me that the sensible course would be to make an honest effort to figure out where Mozilla went wrong instead of keeping up the pretense that everything is going perfectly. I mean, when Eric Raymond goes into CEOs' offices doing what he's not embarassed to call his Prince From Another Country act, don't they ask him what happened to Mozilla? Wouldn't there be practical and rhetorical advantages to having an answer to that question?

---------

Corel Product Line

[FFFish]

CorelDraw -- widely recognized as the best vector illustration application available. Beats Illustrator hands-down, both for ease-of-use and sheer functionality. Challenges Adobe Pagemaker in many areas.

Ventura Publisher -- the only professional-level long-document layout/publishing tool available for desktop-class machines. Adobe FrameMaker is a wanna-be, in comparison: it's adequate for smaller publications and independent contractors, but lacks the functionality required by high-end professionals. Quark doesn't even register on the scale.

WordPerfect -- regarded as one of the two best general-purpose wordprocessing applications (MSWord being the other). Has many strengths that Word lacks; has some weaknesses. Does deal moderately well with SGML; it's a viable alternative to XMetal for those that need more versatility than SoftQuad's product; high-end professionals are using ArborText's products.

PhotoPaint -- recognized as being as powerful (in many ways more powerful) than Adobe Photoshop, but generally presents a challenging interface to anyone who has become used to the Photoshop/Paintshop interface. Once you get over the UI hurdle, it's magic.

Paradox -- as powerful as any desktop-class database, and far better than the dog's breakfast that MS Access provides.

Quattro -- as powerful as any desktop-class spreadsheet. Not as many frills and thrills as MS Excel. On the other hand, it doesn't seem to have math errors; Excel has had some primo botches in the past.

In the end, Corel has the world's best desktop-class software. Nothing comes close to Ventura and Draw; and it's neck-and-neck for the other products.

What Corel doesn't seem to have is a marketing plan, the common sense to not release buggy product on every odd release number, and respect.

It's a crying shame.


--

Corel? Corel??

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

Of course I appreciate any effort expended in making Free Software more usable--but what on earth is Corel thinking? They are on the brink of disaster, surely they should be working on something that will Make Money Fast.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/

The tradegy of Corel is continuing

[j-pimp]

Its sad to see that a company that is signifigantly benifiting the opensource community is dying. Obvisiously Corel Draw and Word Perfect have been dying for a while now, but its still sad. Fortunatly, Corels benifits of a better WINE and work on the QT version of Mozilla will continue to live on. Is there any way Corel can auctual become profitable, or should they just continue to suck money out of investors until they die? If they do the OSS comunity will benifit. Hopefully though before they die they release the source code to Wordperfect for DOS so maybe all us Linux/*BSD users out there will finally have a console Word Proccessor without having to learn latex or install dosemu.

Re:The tradegy of Corel is continuing

[Floyd Tante]

Hopefully though before they die they release the source code to Wordperfect for DOS so maybe all us Linux/*BSD users out there will finally have a console Word Proccessor without having to learn latex or install dosemu

Older, text-based versions of WordPerfect were ported to Unix long ago. You might even still be able to buy them (not from Corel, but from the company that did the actual porting; I forget their name). For a number of years, WordPerfect's cross-platform abilities were touted as a major selling point.

-- Floyd

Re:Corel? Corel??

[decaym]

They way they can make money is to sell products. The way they can sell products is to draw attention to themselves. The way they can draw attention to temselves is to create talk in the press over projects they are supporting. This is a good thing!

The quickest way for Corel to completely fade away is to stop doing new development. It's kind of like evolution, either you advance or get overrun. A company that terminates all development efforts is usually on it's last leg.

When you consider how much money Corel is burning through, how much is it really costing them to have a couple of programmers dedicated to a project like this? $200-250K/year for a company operating on the level of $20-30M/year is not that big of deal.

Getting Galeon working

[Cato]

This is not a very elegant solution, but it worked for me... Try updating to the latest mozilla nightly build, and then installing Helix Gnome. Galeon is now working very nicely, and is very fast. Still a bit primitive, but not bad.

Got Pliers?

[Spoing]

Its sad to see that a company that is signifigantly benifiting the opensource community is dying.

1. [Sam Kinison, talking about Jesus on the cross]

2. Crowd (mumbling): 'Jesus, it's too bad you've got to die!'

   Jesus (screaming): 'Well, I wouldn't have to if somebody would get a pair of pliers!'

It's not a question if there are Corel products that are worth having and ... yes ... buying. The question is 'Is it worth it to you?'

So far myself, I've downloaded the freebies and have considered recommending v.2 of Corel Linux for less-tech savy friends and family. I can't justify getting WordPerfect because it uses a closed format, and I don't do that much graphics work so I'm not a customer for Corel Draw. I've only spent a few minutes fiddling around with Photopaint only because I don't do much graphics work.

The only thing stopping me from recommending v.2 Corel Linux is that I know more about RedHat and RedHat derrived distributions then Debian. Not a big hurdle, true, yet if anything goes wrong or needs changing, I'll have to make the changes (via. SSH, of course!).