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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."
I use Konqueror every day, but there are just a few things I feel are missing. The articles didn't mention these, though.
1. I cannot seem to find any way to stop animated GIFs. Is there some buried command for this, or am I SOL?
2. It would be nice if I could put my favorite links on the menu bar, like with Navigator.
3. The bookmarks menu demands that I hold down the mouse button while swishing through my bookmark folders. If I accidentally let go, I end up with the wrong site, or all too commonly, get the "edit bookmarks" page.
4. There is noooo rule four.
5. Konqueror still croaks on various web sites. I don't know if it is the complexity, or maybe something to do with managing the color palettes. (My xterms are fixed - graphics upgrades are impossible...)
6. They did mention the loading time, but I'll still mention that it is slow. Sure, maybe my P150 was not up to snuff, but an AMD 800 with 256 MB of DDR?
Some things I like about Konqueror:
1. Rendering quality and speed are better than Navigator, in my opinion.
2. The conditional cookie and javascript (by web site) feature is awesome.
3. It's free, and has a long life ahead of it (thanks, guys!)
A dingo ate my sig...
In case you haven't already noticed, Konqueror is NOT a web browser. It is an application framework for their KParts technology.
:D
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
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...
Ner lbh sebz gur HFN? Gura lbh'ir whfg ivbyngrq gur QZPN!
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.
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?
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.
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. :(
Nice post! I showed it to Linus Torvalds and, though it was hard for him, he finally agreed to scrap Linux and work on the HURD. One battle won!
I'm going to talk to Bram Moolenaar next, because I'm pretty sure there was another vi clone before vim.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
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.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
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)
Hetz (Heunique)
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.
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..
Hetz (Heunique)
Why do we need another web browser?
What's the difference between this and asking why we need another Operating System when Linus first introduced Linux instead of working on the HURD or why developers should work on mySQL instead of PostgreSQL? If you can answer these questions then you've answered your own question.
Do you have some problem with Mozilla that we should know about?
Mozilla and the Konquerer are slightly similar projects with different goals. Mozilla aims to be a cross platform all-in-one web development/usage platform while Konqueror is part of the KDE component architecture.
Most people with even a passing experience in software know that all software is a combination of various trade-offs and compromises whether performance vs. correctness, space (use lots of mem) vs. time (use lots of CPU) or even ease of use vs. complete control of the system. Thinking that there can be one true product is the kind of fallacy and naivettè that brought us the Man-Month and "OO is a silver bullet".
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. Mozilla was there first, and it deserves the support of the community.
This opinion is so wrong headed and biased I'm almost sure that you are trolling. Blaming Konqueror developers for the fact that Mozilla is behind schedule is like blaming dotcomms and software companies for stealing programmers that could have worked at NASA worked on getting people on Mars by now.
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.
Seriously, who gives a fuck what the Business World thinks about Free Software? Dotcomm IPOs and get-rich-quick schemes will come and go but Free Software will still be around as long as there are coders with an itch to scratch. Free Software was here before NASDAQ became a topic of breakfast table conversation and it will be here the analysts and MBAs find a new fad to exploit the masses with be it BioTech or Genetic Engineering.
For some reason you are under the impression that Free Software needs big business to survive which is so far from the truth it's almost laughable.
KDE 3.0 is not going to be a major rewrite like when it was moving from KDE 1 -> KDE 2
KDE is now switching to a newer QT (3.0), it will be binary incompatible (because of QT 3.0 and GCC 3.0.1, and the upcoming 3.1) and will have some core functionality improved (like database support etc)...
Hetz (Heunique)