OSNews Talks With the Konqueror Team

JigSaw writes: "OSNews features an exclusive interview with the Konqueror team, KDE's integrated filemanager, image/document viewer and web browser. Dirk Mueller, Waldo Bastian, Carsten Pfeiffer and Simon Hausmann are answering questions regarding the future of Konqueror, its portability and the integration with KDE3 and QT3. And speaking about KDE3, OSNews is reporting what's new in the new version: KDE 3 will be based on QT 3.0 and will also feature educational and other apps (like Kompare and KWinTV) as part of the default installation, support for extremely large files, new versions for KNode and KMail, email templates in KMail, advanced Web Shortcuts, S/MIME support, plugins for the KMenu, a graphical Regular Expression app (KRegExpEditor) and much more. A (very early) alpha version is already available."

Comments

Fast...

[DaFake]

What the heck, how long ago was the release of 2.2 ?

And now there's already an alpha of 3.0...

Re:What SHOULD have been asked, but wasn't:

[kisielk]

In case you haven't already noticed, Konqueror is NOT a web browser. It is an application framework for their KParts technology.

Konqueror is the file manager for KDE, and allows for embedded viewing of any files with KParts plugins (or whatever the correct term is). KHTML is just one piece of Konqueror, so your comments do not necessarily apply.

Additionally, Linux has always been about choice and freedom. There is nothing wrong with the Konq guys making their own HTML renderring engine. In fact, you can even use the gecko engine with Konq if you so desired, but in all honesty I think KHTML has it out-done. Konqueror does so many more things than Mozilla, and much faster too.

A more fair comparison of apps would be Konq vs Nautilus, as both of those have similar functionality.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents :D

Re:What SHOULD have been asked, but wasn't:

[steelhawk]

Since when is Mozilla a stable and fast browser?

The last version I tried was 0.9.3 (still current?) and that's the slowest browser I've tried in a long time...

I'm sorry, but Mozilla is not fast...
And not really any more stable than any other browser...

The only way one can get any benefits from the mozilla project is to use the gecko rendering engine with another UI... (like galeon)... but it's still a bit sluggish when opening new windows/tabs...

I'd actually say that for actual browsing Konqueror _IS_ superior...

Re:What SHOULD have been asked, but wasn't:

[David Greene]

Did you ever wonder why Mozilla is continually falling behind schedule? Because people like the Konqueror team decide to go off on their own instead of working for the good of the community.

Don't go blaming Konqueror or other browser projects for Mozilla's problems. I love Mozilla. I use it as my browser. But it has problems and those problems are there in spite of Konqueror, not because of it.

Mozilla was there first, and it deserves the support of the community.

Just because a project is "first" doesn't mean it should get a monopoly on developer resources. Should the same be said for KDE over GNOME?

If the free software community wants to make a good impression on the business world (and it may

This is a flawed assumption. The Free Software Community does not exist for the business world or any other world outside that of the people hacking code.

That said, if a project wants to court business, I'm all for it. But don't assume that is the goal of every project.

Here's an idea: before starting your new project, check to see if someone is already working on a similar project. Had the Konqueror team observed this little suggestion, the whole Konqueror fiasco could have been avoided.

I'm sure the Konqueror team was well aware of Mozilla when they started. The projects have different architectures and different goals. Mozilla will never be the integrated browser Konqueror is. ioslaves are something Mozilla will not have any time in the near future.

There are lots of duplicate projects out there. I'm thinking of starting my own shortly. Why? Because all the other similar projects don't have the goals I have and their designs are clearly biased toward something I have no interest in. Furthermore, such designs are nearly impossible to "fix" properly to accomplish what I need. These are fundamental, core architectural decisions that can't be patched around. Better to start from scratch and build something the Right Way to accomplish my goals.

Not to mention the complete lack of documentation and code comments. :(

Please drop the K

[TandyMasterControl]

For the love of Khrist already.
On a few applications it isn't so bad and helps to keep the enduser aware of the origin of an app. I'm not sure that's worth anything to the enduser, unless he's in the process of expunging all KDE packages from a system. If 'ls /usr/bin/k*' shows a long list then he hasn't got them all.

But if it's innoccuous and even "unifying" on the kind of applications you expect to find built-in to a desktop environment like kedit or kpm, when used to prefix dozens of add-on applications the leading "K" becomes rather stupid sounding and I feel sure gives many newcomers an impression that Linux/KDE is bush league & unprofessional. A joKe.
Koffice, Kword, Killustrator --not only are some of these flirting with trademark infringement, they are as names kwite krappy. The hard work going into this software deserves much better.

Imagine yourself doing tech support over the phone and having to put "K" in front of every third word. Kwhat? Many "K" applications begin to confuse the user: is it K-this or k-that? This has already reached the point where it is worse than the legacy of x-this x-that for program names (begun I suppose when it was such a novelty for an application to be written with a xlib GUI that the author just had to insist on the distinction for his program's name -- now it's no distinction at all is it?)

PLease use your imagination when naming your applications, and if you haven't got any, ask a friend. Hopefully there will be 5x the number of kde/qt applications in the near future. Now if they all begin with "K" autocompletion in bash (or Krun) is going to rapidly lose its usefulness for invoking them by name. In other words, NOW is the time to break this bad trend.

Re:What SHOULD have been asked, but wasn't:

[proxima]

Konqueror exists (in my belief) partly because of GUI toolkits.

KDE is looking to provide an entire host of applications that all look, feel, and interact the same way. They are designed to work together, to complement each other. Easy examples of this include KOffice (Kword, etc), Konqueror, and KNotes. If you apply a theme to KDE, it affects every QT based application. Of course, GTK+ (GNOME) applications work fine, but they don't pick up the look and feel of the rest of the interface. Mozilla does not use QT, and it implements its own themes. Some people like their browser looking and feeling completely different from the rest of the applications they use, but others want consistency. My belief is that the KDE team simply wanted to provide an alternative browser that fit in with the rest of the KDE applications very well.

Konqueror is designed like Internet Explorer was for Windows - it provides browsing, file managing, filesystem-like FTP, etc. Mozilla is a browser/e-mail client/newsreader designed as a standalone application. Konqueror leaves mail up to KMail, but KMail uses Konqueror's rendering engine (KHTML) to render HTML based e-mail (to my knowledge).

So, in the end, users are left with two nice choices for their browsing experience. Konqueror works very nicely if you prefer KDE (I do), but loading up all the QT libraries under GNOME in order to run Konqueror makes it lose some of the speediness that fans of Konqueror enjoy. Mozilla is nice because it is completely standalone, fully-featured (some would say bloated), but most importantly very cross-platform. Mozilla runs very nicely, and looks almost exactly the same, on Windows, Linux, MacOS, etc.

Both browsers have their niche to fill, and I think both projects are quite worthwhile to pursue.

Re:What SHOULD have been asked, but wasn't:

[HeUnique]

Mozilla was first? really?

As far as I recall - even KDE 1 beta 1 had some browsing capabilities - I remember when I tried it and then checking with ps if they're running netscape without widgets or something like that - it was quite a surprise to me back then to see a first "competitor" to Netscape in terms of graphics browser integrated so well..

Now - if I recall correctly, KDE 1 (beta) was released at around 1997 with some browsing capabilities - so if I'm not mistaken - KDE was before mozilla..

Please correct me if I'm wrong (give dates or something)

Dropping the K

[BierGuzzl]

M$ has it's name added to the front of a ton of their apps. This doesn't help make a case in favor of it nor against it, but it does show us one possible way of doing things. Instead of Knotes, why not call it "K" notes, "K" word, "K" calc, "K" mail, etc. That way if you actually _need_ to specify that it's a KDE app, you include the K, and if you don't you just omit the K.

Re:What SHOULD have been asked, but wasn't:

[HeUnique]

ok, I'll try to answer your questions...

Why do we need another web browser?

Why GNOME exists? because of some stupidity licensing issue (mind you - even after trolltech relicensed their QT - and I use KDE right now - you still cannot write commercial apps without buying full commercial QT license - so what RMS got from this? and his "forgiveness" to the KDE developers? nothing - cosmetic issue, nothing else)

So do you say ditch GNOME or KDE and lets of them be de facto standard? good idea - try to convince some people - good luck.

Did you ever wonder why Mozilla is continually falling behind schedule? Because people like the Konqueror team decide to go off on their own instead of working for the good of the community

How come? Mozilla is written in C, KDE and Konqueror - C++ - both are totally different creatures - Konqueror beauty is the the HTML rendering is just another plugin - try to do: man:gcc - see the online help in a very beautiful format. try to put an Audio-CD inside your cdrom and type: audiocd:/ - and it you'll be able to rip on-the-fly your audio tracks to MP3 or OGG format - so you see - KDE designers (and developers) wanted to do something very different then Mozilla..

So far, the KDE teams seems to be way ahead then anyone else and it just seems to me that Mozilla and other parts are catching up, they're on the way to KDE 3.0 and they're completing the stuff (like CSS 2) while other KDE developers hiding W3C standards that the Mozilla guys doesn't even dream to do - like the SVG support..

If the free software community wants to make a good impression on the business world (and it may already be too late), we must, at all costs, avoid splitting into tiny, useless factions working on useless, duplicate projects.

Fine - help the Mozilla team to release 1.0. I see the reaction from Windows developers when they see Mozilla, and when they see KDE.. Guess what they preffer...

Here's an idea: before starting your new project, check to see if someone is already working on a similar project. Had the Konqueror team observed this little suggestion, the whole Konqueror fiasco could have been avoided.

Almost agreed - Mozilla is not Konqueror - it's just like comparing apples and oranges..

Re:Commingling!!! Call the Justice Department!!!

[TheMidget]

Oh wait, nobody uses it, so it's OK to do the same exact thing as someone else. I get it.

I understand you meant your comment as a joke, but you are actually closer to the point than you think... Indeed, because of his dominant position, a monopolist has actually less rights than minor players. Acts which would be perfectly ok for a vendor which only has 10% market share are no-no for the 500 pound gorilla. The reasoning is that the minor player does not have the power to do real damage anyways (except maybe to himself...), so why restrict him? The bully, on the other hand, has the power to wreck the market-place, and thus has to be closely watched.

Ridiculous browser integration

[Elentar]

These threads carry a strong statement about the true feelings of Slashdot readers. Many of you are quick to bash Microsoft for tying Internet Explorer into every part of Windows, yet you insist that Konquerer is doing something wonderful by doing the same thing. It is the behavior you should be criticizing, not the perpetrator. Microsoft could easily use something like Konquerer to validate their own actions.