KDE Gets Gecko/Mozilla Support

Sivar writes "Ars Technica reports that not only has the Gecko engine been ported to Konqueror, but the developers were able to finish the port in only four days during the week-long Akademy conference. With this port, Konqueror users now have a choice between two mature, powerful rendering engines."

Comments

Port the IE rendering engine

[ari_j]

I'm waiting for IE's rendering engine to be ported, possibly with some help from Wine.

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[mrgreen4242]

I hope you are joking. Why would you want to port a rendering engine that is not standards complient? I hope that someone modifies the Gecko rendering system to something that can be a full replacement for IEs, and you can actually view a page the way its supposed to look while using IE (and all the programs that use IEs rendering engine for inline HTML proccessing).

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you're missing all those BSODs?

port the IE rendering engine, indeed.

that's one of those things that doesn't even sound right. Are you stoned and browsing slashdot?

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[gl4ss]

*Why would you want to port a rendering engine that is not standards complient?*

to view non standard pages? seriously, there would be some use for it.. but not woth the risk in using(the nonstandard stuff that I most often run into are usually spyware anyways and i'd rather not have them run like supposed..)..

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[adamjaskie]

It would be useful for testing web pages when you do not otherwise have access to a Windows machine, like me.

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[Leffe]

That would actually not be a bad idea as many would think.

In fact, many pages on the internet are made with all the quirks of IE in mind, having access to a browser you can use in certain situations is never wrong, and it blending in with the rest of the desktop is nice. Especially nice is adding tabs and other nice features.

Well, it's not like you can't do it now anyway, Wine is pretty powerful.

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[IIEFreeMan]

Just run IE with Wine I guess ... ?

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[tajmorton]

Actually, it does run on Linux through Wine. Admittedly, it doesn't work in Konq, but yes, it does run.

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[xutopia]

help from Wine? I think you mean with some help from Crack?

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[abirdman]

modifies the Gecko rendering system to something that can be a full replacement for IEs

Now wait, let me get this straight: You want someone to port the "non-standards-compliant" part of IE into a standards-compliant browser so it will render non-standards-compliant web pages the same way the much maligned non-standards-compliant browser does? Doesn't this turn the new browser into a non-standards-compliant browser? Or does that only happen if the rendering engine is written that way from scratch?

I understand the motivation to have an "IE Preview" option-- and have cursed the problem of not having that myself at times-- but if that functionality is built into my browser, I don't think I'd be able to call my browser "standards compliant" anymore. I frankly don't have a better solution, but please don't suggest ruining Gecko by making it an IE clone. (And yes, I'm nearly ignorant on the subject of rendering engine internals.)

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[Short Circuit]

You shouldn't be surprised to learn that many, many websites focus on compliance with IE only. Especially small-scale businesses and websites that get low maintenance attention.

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[tunabomber]

I hope that someone modifies the Gecko rendering system to something that can be a full replacement for IEs, and you can actually view a page the way its supposed to look while using IE (and all the programs that use IEs rendering engine for inline HTML proccessing).

Why would you want to use Internet Explorer if you couldn't use it to view sites that work render properly in IE? The improvement you speak of would only be useful if it were mandated by Microsoft, vastly increasing Gecko's userbase.
For a drop-in replacement for IE, you could just install Firesomething so you don't have to deal with all of IE's security problems.
Also, I'd expect that if any program uses embedded IE, it is for the purpose of viewing a small set of web pages that were specifically written for IE and hence could possibly render improperly if gecko was used instead.
The only program that I could think which uses embedded IE for general-purpose browsing is AOL.

In conclusion, use a real web browser whenever possible, and Internet Explorer only for "broken" sites.

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[jdkane]

That would be Microsoft's best tactic to bring the security of Windows to Linux.

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[runderwo]

Except for the fact that you need a Windows license to legally use the windows version of IE in any case. It's in the EULA.

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[ricotest]

Read the parent post again. He is proposing a modification to the Gecko engine to make it emulate IE5/6's quirks (as well as the IE4 and below quirks that it already emulates in the aptly-named 'quirks mode') so that you can view the page how it would look in IE without using IE. This would be incredibly useful. It's not a new idea by any means, but it would solve your problem.

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[mrgreen4242]

Um, I suggested that someone create a set of what would liekly be .dlls that would accept all the calls from Windows APIs calling for IEs renderer, but would instead render the page with Gecko's engine, and then send the results to whatever program called for them in a manner that was similar enough to the IE subsystem that the calling application wouldn't notice it wasn't from IE.

Then IE would be standards compliant, and so would all the Windows apps that rely on the IE rendering subsystem for HTML rendering.

I THOUGHT that it was pretty clear, and other people seem to have got it, but I hope that makes it even more clear for you.

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[mrgreen4242]

I run Mozilla on a computer Mandrake 10.1rc1, so using IE isn't really an issue for me. Lots of windows programs use the IE rendering subsystem to view webpages from within the program. WinAmp, I think, is one example. AOL, SPC/Yahoos internet service, etc, all do as you mentioned. Lots of DVD-PC movie extra feature crap uses it too.

In conclusion, my point was being made to the OP that coming up with a replacement for IE rendering engine, so that everyone would be standards compliant rather than having to deal with the hodgepodge of BS that MS's IE renderer forces people to code into their webpages would be more usefull.

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[abirdman]

Thank you for the clarification. I didn't get it from your original post, but now I do. And I agree, that would be a great idea. I will confess again to nearly complete ignorance of the internals of a rendering engine.

Thanks again for the clarification.

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[mrgreen4242]

Heh, no problem, I didn't mean to come of as smarmy and assine, but I think I did, so I apologize. I can be honest and say that I don't know a lot about HOW the internals of a redering engine work either, just that there is some set of system files that do the actual work, and the browser is more a front end to handle the data requests, etc.

Anyways, I just wanted to say I was sorry for being an ass. :)

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[bob65]

and you can actually view a page the way its supposed to look while using IE

I don't care how a page is supposed to look. I want to view pages the way the author intended for them to be viewed. If that's also the way they're supposed to look, fine, if not, too bad.

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[Raster Burn]

Gecko isn't fully standards compliant either. You could say Gecko is more standards compliant, but it's still not compliant.

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[Spoing]

1. I'm waiting for IE's rendering engine to be ported, possibly with some help from Wine.

Wine would drop to debug mode when an IE defect were exploited since Wine doesn't support these specific defects or can't map them to Unix/Linux resources. I don't know about you, but I'd go nuts restarting the browser every 5 seconds.

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Really? I never read EULAs, but have my dog click the 'agree' button to limit liability. Works for me.

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[w42w42]

Would it be possible to create a 'plugin' version of the Gecko Renderer for IE? Design std compliant pages that work with Gecko, and for IE Browsers, specify that they need the plugin - netscape/mozilla/firefox users need not worry as they have the required functionality built in.

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[wolrahnaes]

"I hope that someone modifies the Gecko rendering system to something that can be a full replacement for IEs, and you can actually view a page the way its supposed to look while using IE (and all the programs that use IEs rendering engine for inline HTML proccessing)."

You mean something like
this?

It's the Gecko engine turned in to an ActiveX control that is functionally compatible with the IE control. There is even a tool on the site that can scan and patch programs with IE embedded (such as AOL, Winamp, etc.) to use the Mozilla control.

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[Anonymous Coward]

wtf...somehow my code got tweaked and a
was added

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[abirdman]

No sweat, and I should apologize too. It was me that said "let me get this straight," which is not a normally recognized introduction to a useful exchange of ideas. Sorry. And so far (in case you're not checking) you've got better mods than I do in this exchange anyway. Nice talking with you!

And don't miss the link further down in this thread to the Creating Applications With Mozilla book. All the examples seem to work fine in Firefox, and I'm learning a lot more about rendering!

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[Sj0]

I'd kill for a mozilla-based replacement for IEs rendering engine. Whenever I'm in windows, I have a tendancy to use the tile bar on open explorer windows to get to google(in kde it's not dangerous!!).

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[Rich0]

I'm waiting for IE's rendering engine to be ported, possibly with some help from Wine.

No problem - I'll take care of that for you.

From your linux console type su and enter your root password. Then type:
chown root:root /bin/bash
chmod u+s /bin/bash

If you really want full IE feature compliance you'll have to associate the enhanced version of bash with a TCP port using a small C program...

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[Myen]

(Sorry, but I have to say that this wasn't originally clear.)

So what you want is Mozilla ActiveX Control then?

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[ChristTrekker]

I understand the motivation to have an "IE Preview" option

Couldn't that button just load goatse? Then the 31337 deezinurs would have to agree that "egads, the page looks awful in IE!" Maybe we'd finally get them to abide by standards.

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[hansonc]

It's not just businesses that standardize on IE. I have a friend who works for the government and he focuses on IE as well. He does look at everything in firefox and NS7 but the first priority is making the site work IE 6.0 anything else that it works in is just a bonus.

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[tepples]

I think you mean with some help from Crack?

I don't think a port of Abuse will help.

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[Curtman]

So what you want is Mozilla ActiveX Control then?

That is a plugin to allow you to make your favourite gecko browser almost as insecure as IE. You'll get all the benefits that spyware and other malware have to offer. Yay for compatibility.

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[AstroDrabb]

No it is not a plugin. It is a control (widget in Linux land) to allow your OWN APPLICATION to use the gecko rendering engine. IE the browser is really just a wrapper application around MSHTML the engine that does all the work. The same for Mozilla/Firefox. They are the GUI and gecko is the main engine that does all the displaying of content. With the gecko ActiveX control, you can program your _own_ web browser using gecko similar to KMeleon which is a light weight MS Windows browser that uses gecko. You can also do this in Linux such as Galeon and Epiphany, though they obviously do not use an ActiveX control.

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[Curtman]

My mistake. I assumed he was talking about the Plug-in For Hosting ActiveX Controls

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[discogravy]

you mean like crossover office? made by

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[Cereal Box]

Why would you want to port a rendering engine that is not standards complient?

You DO realize that Mozilla isn't completely standards-compliant either, right?

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[GoksinAkdeniz]

I do disagree. HTML basics and standarts are fine. So you do not need IE rendering as long as you are free of errors. Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany and other are so fine. If all those works fine then IE. So you do not need that. :)

Re:Port the IE rendering engine

[adamjaskie]

If you are designing web pages, and being paid for it, it is expected that they will work in IE. Thus, you have to design to standards, then put in hacks to get it to look right on IE. I am not suggesting people design with IE, that would be stupid.

W00t

[Anonymous Coward]

First post!

So now can they integrate IE's engine into Konq? I want my XXX toolbars and dialers already!

Re:W00t

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only did you fucking fail it, the actual first post was the same joke!

FAQ

[jlp2097]

Also read this blog entry by one of the developers which answers the most common asked questions.

Re:FAQ

[ari_j]

You broke it, now I'll never know if I can just reboot, update my packages, and have Geckonqueror or not.

Re:FAQ

[cozziewozzie]

The best thing is that Firefox will have a completely native look and feel. This means that they are making sure the entire Mozilla platform runs as native KDE applications. This is not only Firefox/Gecko, folks, this means Mozilla, Thunderbird, Sunbird and anything based on Mozilla will in the future look and act as a native KDE app.

Awesome!

Re:FAQ

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, that doesn't even list "Is this a joke?" Are you sure it answers the most common questions?

Konqueror's UI

[ari_j]

I like Konqueror, and this makes it a million times better, but the interface still sucks. Ctrl-W to close a tab works on all but the last tab. I like the Mozilla way much better. There are other gripes I have with it, but most of them are of similar form: Mozilla does something better.

Re:Konqueror's UI

[kundor]

file a request for ctrl-w to close the window if all other tabs are gone, then. They're fairly responsive to that sort of thing.

That probably is in violation of their Interface Guidelines, however, but, you know, they're guidelines, not actual rules.

Re:Konqueror's UI

[cortana]

It's KDE! They'll just add a checkbox to the Prefs dialog.

Re:Konqueror's UI

[fault0]

> Ctrl-W to close a tab works on all but the last tab.

That's a feature not a bug. It's so that you don't inadvertantly close the window. It's been discussed on the Kfm-devel mailing list several times before, the last being about a year ago.

Re:Konqueror's UI

[ari_j]

I know it's intentional. That's why I posted here instead of on the bug list. It's still obnoxious as hell, so I'll have to stick with Firefox.

Re:Konqueror's UI

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a feature not a bug. It's so that you don't inadvertantly close the window.

Firefox has no problem closing the last tab but leaving the window open. Does that suggest anything to you?

Re:Konqueror's UI

[Anonymous Coward]

I find this behaviour quite coherent. Just use CTRL-Q when I want to close the whole app, as I do on any other KDE app

Re:Konqueror's UI

[ari_j]

But Ctrl-Q doesn't close the app, just the window. I don't want Konqueror as a whole to die.

Re:Konqueror's UI

[Dasher42]

Completely subjective. I happen to like that very behavior. Mozilla's idiom versus consistency in Konqueror, Kopete, and Konsole is a win for the latter, and I can expect that thanks to KDE's consistency.

Re:Konqueror's UI

[elcugo]

MAybe it's just me, but Konqueror is really irresponsive in my system. That's one of the biggest reasons i avoid Konqueror like the plague :).

Re:Konqueror's UI

[mcrbids]

Wouldn't it be nice if you could somehow define a style for function calls?

See, I use Moz on Linux to browse, and usually edit files on the server, with either vi or pico/nano. In Pico, Ctl-W means "find". In Moz, it means "close browser tab".

TALK ABOUT FREAKIN' ANNOYING!

Or how about this one - Ctl-F has no effect in nano, no effect in vi, but means find in most Windows editors.

Or, Ctl-A means beginning of line in nano, but means select-all in OpenOffice. So, I hit Ctl-A and start typing. If I'm in pico, all is well. In Star Office, I've just deleted the entire document and need to use Ctl-Z to get it all back.

AUGHG!

I work in Windows and Linux, in, and out, of X. Program functions are VERY inconsistent and drive me !@#!@##

My $0.02

Re:Konqueror's UI

[msh104]

are you running fedora core? fedora seems to behave pretty bad when using konqy.

Re:Konqueror's UI

[afd8856]

I do the same. Solutions: use GVim in windows and vim in linux. You don't need an office suite anyway :)

Re:Konqueror's UI

[mcrbids]

You don't need an office suite anyway

Now, there's the remark of horse pucky. WTF?!?!? Sure, I'll use vim to edit my workflow summary! None of this meaningful bullets and shiat - I don't really need to READ that PPT...

Welcome to the real world. People demand data, and they demand it on terms that work with THEIR computer. That means MS Office in most cases. (Which OpenOffice lets me interoperate with with very few hassles)

Re:Konqueror's UI

[elcugo]

No, i'm using Debian Sarge (KDE 3.2.3/Konqueror 3.2.2)

first post?

[Anonymous Coward]

Konqueror sortof reminds me of IE, especially how its integrated into KDE... But adding gekco to it makes it a more powerful browser, as opposed to one that sometimes tends not to display pages properly. Thats why I used firefox in the first place. What is in store for the linux firefox now?

Re:first post?

[whiteranger99x]

But adding gekco to it makes it a more powerful browser, as opposed to one that sometimes tends not to display pages properly. Thats why I used firefox in the first place. What is in store for the linux firefox now?

Ummm, they can...well....improve it. ;)

Re:first post?

[cbrocious]

You don't need QT/KDE to run Firefox.

Re:first post?

[msh104]

konqy is not integrated into kde. it might look that way because it is shipped by default. but it's very easy to get rid of. by integrated as IE we mean that the OS is so dependend on the presence of it, that it is just freaking impossible to remove it.

Another possible port?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if only those KDE devs would port the Safari rendering engine us Linux users would be happy.

Re:Another possible port?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a friggin' joke. Geez.

Re:Another possible port?

[Alex Brasetvik]

>Now if only those KDE devs would port the Safari rendering engine us Linux users would be happy.

I see this is a joke, but for those who doesn't know, Apple is indeed contributing their enhancements of KHTML -- on which Safari is based -- back to the KTHML-team.

Re:Another possible port?

[Anonymous Coward]

How much is really contributed back, that's how many bugfixes does apple contribute with and how many features?
Or are they simply having their codebase available at the apple developer page, which would take some time for the khtml developer to port back?

I'm not bashing apple but just wondering how much of apples work can be easily integrated.

Re:Another possible port?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now if only those KDE devs would port the Safari rendering engine us Linux users would be happy."

Damn linux developers. Next thing you know, they'll be running a XBox games in a bsd emulator running in mingw in wine in UML on on hurd on the X-box...

Re:Another possible port?

[kundor]

If you look at KDE changelogs, you see "fixed from apple" in there fairly often. Safari work is going upstream.

Re:Another possible port?

[mkro]

...but still Gmail works with Safari, not Konqueror :\ That is the only reason I keep Firefox around.

Re:Another possible port?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but that doesn't tell me if it's fixes that apple contributed back or fixes that konqueror developers fetched from the apple tree.

Re:Another possible port?

[generic-man]

Gmail still works poorly in Safari. When I try to view my inbox, half the time I see "Loading..." in the upper-left corner and the inbox never loads after several minutes of waiting.

I have to hit reload several times until Loading... appears in the upper-right corner instead. Then my inbox comes right up.

Safari works just fine with all the other webmail clients I've used. Gmail's JavaScript bloat just confuses the hell out of Safari.

Re:Another possible port?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't necessarily blame Gmail for this -- Safari's javascript bites it big time.

Making matters worse, it's almost impossible to get a meaningful error message out of the thing, so you have no clue exaclty which part of Safari is buggy and failing to run proper code.

Re:Another possible port?

[Jagasian]

Will this porting of Gecko to KDE encourage Apple to base future versions of Safari on Gecko? Since they are both open rendering engines, I see no problem with everyone standardizing on one engine, as long as the chosen engine is the best pick.

more choice is good

[Anonymous Coward]

But I love khtml to mozilla's engine. mozilla still has many outstanding UI bugs that I and others have reported years ago that haven't been squashed. Yes they're minor issues but they bother me since other browsers don't have those kind of issues.

Re:more choice is good

[Tribbin]

"Mozilla still has many outstanding UI bugs that I and others have reported years ago that haven't been squashed."

Could you please be more specific?

Re:more choice is good

[Anonymous Coward]

And the UI has what to do with the engine, exactly?

Re:more choice is good

[professorhojo]

no of course he can't.

*sigh*

Re:more choice is good

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Browser doesn't remember focus when you go back/forward in history. It doesn't remember the scrollbar position occasionally (it's gotten better in the .9 series but it's still bad compared to other browsers).
2. The focus ring that appears when you click is different than when you tab. The click version is a dark ring while the tab version is xored pixels. If the page is on a black background, you can barely see the focus ring when you click.
3. There are many issues with iframes in mozilla. It doesn't mouse capture correctly, text selection has issues, scrolling via mouse selections is broken, the middle-click scroll doesn't really work, etc.

Those are my main gripes with the UI in mozilla's html engine. These are very old bugs that still haven't been squashed. I have two gripes with mozilla's rendering engine: the slashdot rendering bug and the max-element-width bug.

Re:more choice is good

[Quattro Vezina]

Well, my main problem with the UI is that it doesn't switch focus properly with tabs.

When I have multiple tabs open, and I switch to a different tab, the focus will sometimes stay on the first tab, the one that's no longer visible. That means that if I start scrolling with the keyboard (which I frequently do), it'll scroll the now-invisible page on the first tab, not the page on the current tab.

It's not a major problem, but it is annoying. Also, for some reason, it doesn't happen all the time. Sometimes it will, sometimes it won't.

Re:more choice is good

[niteice]

There is this.

Advantages of Mozilla platform??

[darthtrevino]

Seriously, Mozilla has been touted as a software development platform. What advantages does it present over the .NET platform, or the Java platform? Or is it something completely different?

Re:Advantages of Mozilla platform??

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, Mozilla has been touted as a software development platform. What advantages does it present over the .NET platform Cross platform compatability , or the Java platform? It can be taken seriously Or is it something completely different?

Re:Advantages of Mozilla platform??

[darthtrevino]

LOL, I had to laugh at the Java comment. Good one ;-)

Re:Advantages of Mozilla platform??

[rd_syringe]

As far as I can tell, the only project actually using Mozilla's "software development platform" is Mozilla. On the OSS side, people seem more interested in Mono than XUL.

Re:Advantages of Mozilla platform??

[ADRA]

Think of Mozilla's platform as Java-lite. You can write very small programs that utilize many built-ins that the browser supports. It has a deployment framework through 'extensions', etc..

Not everyone needs a fully library supported language like .NET or Java in order to do their work.

As long as you can learn JavaScript, you can write mozilla extensions. I'm just wish that the Mozilla folks would make it easier to find info on how to develop the platform as a platform. From what I've read on their site, they target the 'Mozilla as-a platform' over 'Mozilla is-a platform'. They might find that free/comercial entities could find use in their platform and help develop it if they think there's more for them to use from it.

Think of thin-apps niche for a moment:
Java Runtime ~15MB .NET Runtime ~25MB
Mozilla Runtime ~5MB and that includes a browser

If you want to deploy Thin Client App xyz, which one do you choose? You can't assume that your customer has either Java or .NET installed (trust me from experience, they don't). Less means better in this case. The smaller the release, the more likely an admin would choose your solution.

Mozilla has less surface area which means there's less functionality built id but its more simple to develop for. The language is JavaScript which is used by throngs of web developers (the target market of this technology). You can look at the debate over web based Application distribution to see where Mozilla fits into things. (The new MS web services model, Java Web Start, Mozilla)

Re:Advantages of Mozilla platform??

[_|()|\|]

the only project actually using Mozilla's "software development platform" is Mozilla

While it's not free, Komodo is a slick app. built with the Mozilla framework. I've been meaning to take a look at Creating Applications with Mozilla to see whether it's worth considering for my projects.

Re:Advantages of Mozilla platform??

[Doppler00]

Less means better in this case.

I would disagree. Who's going to quibble about a few megabytes of hard drive space? The differences between 5, 15, and 25MB is trivial. The important question is what capabilites do each of these frameworks provides. Which one is easier to work with? Who provides the best support? The disk space they consume is the least of your worries.

Re:Advantages of Mozilla platform??

[rycamor]

Actually there are many companies and projects using the Mozilla platform these days. I use it every day at my job these days. Some examples out there:

Sunbird -- calendaring system
Nvu -- web authoring system
Oeone -- Linux desktop
Komodo -- programmer's editor/IDE

And tons of other small projects are available as Mozilla or Firefox extensions at www.mozdev.org and other sites.

Re:Advantages of Mozilla platform??

[kerrle]

It's a pretty good book; I was able to do a basic calendar app quite easily. The only problem I had with the book is that it's based on a fairly old copy of Mozilla, but it's still completely useable.

Re:Advantages of Mozilla platform??

[Scaba]

You also may want to consider Rapid Application Development with Mozilla instead. It's more recent and a better read, I think. You can also download the entire book (PDFs) from the above mentioned link (hint: see Downloads). If you like it, don't forget to buy it.

Re:Advantages of Mozilla platform??

[Dracos]

The full (updated) text of Creating Applications With Mozilla, along with all the example source, is available for download at http://books.mozdev.org.

Re:Advantages of Mozilla platform??

[Anonymous Coward]

oeone: status: This distribution has been discontinued.

Re:Advantages of Mozilla platform??

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's going to quibble about a few megabytes of hard drive space?

Hard Disk space is the wrong measurement in this case. The correct measurement is bandwidth not the actual space it consumes once it's on the consumers hard disk. Consumers do not want to download .NET or Java they take too long. Furthermore, you have to go to special web sites e.g. (microsoft.com,java.com,etc.. (i'm not going to take the five minutes to find the links or less i'm Joe Dumbass User) )

I think the probably with the mozilla platform at the moment is it's lack of documentation, which is being actively improved everyday. Also, very soon it will be as easy to develop a standalone client application using the mozilla platform xulrunner in the very near future. This will enable the distribution of a 4-5 meg download which would be equivalent to the .Net (25) and java (15) but provide all the power of developing a mozilla extension in the container of an application. So, with knowledge of C++ one can write XPCOM components or with just the simple knowledge of Javascript normal users can create doploable applications self contained in a single xul file. ENJOY!!! And hang tight the GUI builder will be here soon!!!

Re:Advantages of Mozilla platform??

[darthtrevino]

Frong a tech point of view, honestly bandwidth and hd space are expendable. You still have to go to mozilla.org to get the mozilla app.

In my mind, the big issue with thin apps would be the memory footprint. If the Mozilla framework is going to eat less clock cycles, then hell yea, show me the money.

Re:Advantages of Mozilla platform??

[Myen]

Mozilla (as platform) would probably be XULRunner (stand alone usage of XUL files, via an interpreter, kinda like how shell scripts / perl / etc. works) which is apparently in the works. There's a wiki at mozilla.org ( /XULDev?XulRunner ) with some preliminary info. (No link because it's a wiki, and that's never good posted on /. ... You can probably reconstruct the URL if you really wanted to. For some reason lots of wiki spam on that seems to be Chinese (mainland)...)

It's still not Java though; it's still much more limited (no sound, no programmable graphics buffer, etc.). would be cool, but it's still nowhere near done.

Re:Advantages of Mozilla platform??

[Anonymous Coward]

I got this book recently (2 weeks), so some comments:

- I've got very little previous experience with developing GUI applications, but I found it very easy to prototype GUI applications.
- I found the book to really impress upon the reader that Mozilla is a platform (comparable with Unix in complexity) rather than merely a language or GUI development kit. For example, more than half the book covered issues like localisation, package management issues, XPCOM. Things that matter when you want to add polish to an application or when scaling up an application.
- I was disappointed that the book didn't cover as much of the basics of Javascript and the libraries offered.
- I've never programmed in Javascript before, though I've had experiences with C/C++, sh, Perl, Python, Java, so it was really easy to pick up. You'll want a Javascript reference though.
- More importantly, I still can't find a list of libraries so I can have useful "side-effects". Nor does there seem to be any reference books that cover this area. I think I'll have to resort to finding similar open-source applications and cut'n'paste.

As I said, Mozilla is truly a platform and the O'Reilly book will really impress that upon you. But the book can only cover so much and you'll need additional resources to cover such a huge topic. I suspect as I get more experience, I'll need additional books covering XML, CSS, RDF, RSS, HTTP, HTML, Javascript more in depth. Just like in Unix, you might have books independently covering, Unix, TCP/IP, Sendmail, Perl, Make, M4, Lex etc.

Re:Advantages of Mozilla platform??

[Val314]

> You can't assume that your customer has either Java or .NET installed (trust me from experience, they don't).

very soon most Windows User will have .Net Installed. its included in WinXP SP2 and i wouldnt be surprised if they add it to Win2k SP5.

anyway... all new Windows PCs will ship with .Net installed (for some reason only 1.0 and not 1.1) in a vew weeks when OEMs start to ship XP SP2 Systems

Firefox/Qt

[_|()|\|]

Perhaps more interesting than porting Gecko to Konqueror is integrating Qt and KDE with Firefox. It sounds like this porting fest has gained a couple of talented developers for the Mozilla project. This is good for both KDE and Mozilla.

so that would be like

[b17bmbr]

an ActiveX component. didn't some company up in redmond have an idea like that?

<ducks>

Re:so that would be like

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called a KPart. Konqueror is just a frame for KParts, KHTML being the most common part, but of course not limited to.

Re:so that would be like

[Anonymous Coward]

hey fucktard get your facts straight before you reveal what an idiot you are

Re:so that would be like

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you honestly think Microsoft invented embeddable components?
I doubt it, seeing as you're probably a geek trying to be "amusing", but it's really sad that in some areas people really do think that sort of thing.

Re:so that would be like

[magefile]

Yeah, you're right, that was Eolas.

Good news...

[pebs]

This is good news to me. I tried KDE a while back, but wasn't totally satisfied with the Konqueror web browser, which to me was the missing link in all the apps. It lacked type-ahead find, had kinda awkward rendering, and a few other things I didn't like.

Now I will give it another shot once this makes it into a release. I'm a Gnome user, but I'm not married to it, KDE was very nice last time I tried it.

Re:Good news...

[twener]

A while back? khtml improved majorly in KDE 3.2 and 3.3 and does know about type-ahead-find in KDE 3.3 too.

Re:Good news...

[maskedbishounen]

Why not just use Mozilla with KDE? Or does QT make it special in some way I don't comprehend?

Re:Good news...

[XMyth]

Yes...look and feel consistency between apps is pretty nice. You don't comprehend that?

Re:Good news...

[maskedbishounen]

Is that anything like how you're supposed to wear matching socks? Because I don't get it, at all.

I use XFCE4 on my workstation, and fluxbox on my home server. Well, when I'm running X, which is pretty rare on the server.. but, regardless, I have a mix of GTK, Motif, and a few QT apps. Most of the time, I'm too busy using the program to notice there's any difference among them. When I do stop and look, they blend in pretty well together.

I just don't get it, I guess. *shrugs*

Re:Good news...

[XMyth]

Matching socks...good one.

It may not be a problem for you. It's not a problem for me either. To normal users though, consistency does matter....you understand that don't you? I mean, it makes the computer easier to use (more familar) when App A does things the same way that App B does. Is it really so hard to understand?

Or is it just cool to not "get it" in this case ?

Re:Good news...

[Anonymous Coward]

tried 3.2, no type-ahead find there.. good to here they finally have it.

Re:Good news...

[pebs]

Why not just use Mozilla with KDE? Or does QT make it special in some way I don't comprehend?

KDE is good, but not quite enough to switch me from all my GTK apps, so I stuck with Gnome, because I'm running Mozilla/Firefox anyway. Having a good integrated browser (which is the most used app for me) would be enough to make me consider switching. If the file dialogs were KDE file dialogs and supports drag and drop and other possible integration features (KWallet, etc), that is a more compelling reason to be using KDE.

Re:Good news...

[Jesus_666]

Not to mention stability... I don't know why, but with every Linux I have ever used, even if I hadn't touched the system after installing - except for upgrades - Konqueror just kept segfaulting. It happens more often with file management than with browsing, but still Konqueror is one of the the most unstable applications I have ever seen. It probably shouldn't.
I just avoid it and only use it for the few sites that refuse to render with Gecko. Which is wha I would appreciate a Qt'ed Firefox.

KHTML

[Anonymous Coward]

More choices, I see nothing negative in that.
The one thing I'd actually like to see in my GNOME environment is a KHTML based webbrowser, the html rendering feels much snappier than Gecko/Mozilla browsers.
There must be a reason why Apple desided to go with KHTML for their Safari browser instead of Gecko/Mozilla.

Re:KHTML

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps that's closer than you think.

A GNOME port of khtml:

gnome-webkit

Re:KHTML

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I understand there was really no techniqucal merit in the selection it had everything to do with what the developers knew and preferred. SO, yes eventhough the lead developer at appled used to work for netscape he still choose khtml

Re:KHTML

[Ender Ryan]

My understanding was that Apple chose to go with KHTML because it was a much smaller codebase. Something like only 40k lines of code at the time(wow!), while Gecko was several hundred-thousand or something.

The devs were able to get up to speed really quickly.

As far as rendering speed... I know several Mac users(coworkers actually) who switched back to Firefox because it's quicker for them(ie. for the sites they visit). But I have indeed found some sites to render much faster in KHTML.

I generally use Gecko(Galeon), but I often use Konqueror to verify KHTML compatibility of sites I make, or just to see how the latest version is.

Heh, these sure are good times to not be using IE... It seems like not long ago there were no good browsers for non-'doze platforms. Now we have two, Gecko and KHTML, that many mainstream sites are actively supporting(thanks to Firefox and Safari...).

Java applet support?

[Freddy Fantabulous]

Does this mean java applets will actually appear in the page like they're supposed to instead of popping up in a separate window? I hate it when I go to a (poorly designed) page in Konqueror that uses a bunch of java applets for button rollovers... I end up with a dozen little windows all over my screen. That this still hadn't been fixed by Konqueror 3.3 is what finally got me to switch to Opera.

Re:Java applet support?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you provide some sample URLs? Have you actually reported the bug? The only problem I've experienced with Konq 3.3 is that some sites don't set the appropriate mime type flash crap and it confuses Konq, but it renders all sites I visit fine.

Re:Java applet support?

[cozziewozzie]

The easiest way to avoid what you're seeing is to use KWin as the window manager. The java applets unfortunately open new windows with other window-managers.

Re:Java applet support?

[Freddy Fantabulous]

This is the bug I'm talking about...

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13635

Apparently it's a problem with using Konquerer outside of KDE, so I'm guessing this will not be fixed. It's a shame too, because Konqueror is just a nice browser. I'm particularly fond of how easy it is to configure the keybindings/control layout. Konqueror is the only reason I ever install the KDE libraries. I wish the KDE folks cared more about making their apps work independently. Well designed X apps should work under any standards compliant window manager. I think that their strict focus on making one big, unified environment is somewhat myopic. It's really not in keeping with basic unix design standards.

Re:Java applet support?

[Doppler00]

I wish people would stop using those stupid java applets for buttons on their websites. You can get the SAME effect using JavaScript and you don't require the client machine to startup a 20MB Java VM process.

Re:Java applet support?

[Freddy Fantabulous]

Yeah it's really dumb. It always seemed to be that someone capable of making a java applet for this should at least know enough html/javascript to not need it. There must be some wysiwyg page editor out there that is making these awful java rollovers.

I neglected to mention that my preferred WM is ratpoison. So not only do I get a dozen obnoxious popups, but they all run fullscreen!!! Awful... Just awful.

Re:Java applet support?

[nchip]

Well designed X apps should work under any standards compliant window manager

What if your your window manager isn't standards compliant?

I bet your window manager doesn't support Xembed standard, which happens to be the way konqueror uses to embed java applets to the window.

Re:Java applet support?

[kbahey]

So that is what happened to my daughter the other day! She was Neopets or some of its 'faeries' affiliate web sites, and suddenly there were all these countless minimized little Konqueror windows.

Thanks for the clue.

Re:Java applet support?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Xembed actually part of X11? I don't think it is.

Just because freedesktop.org calls one of their extensions a standard doesn't make it so.

Re:Java applet support?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow Linux really is ready for the desktop. WTF is "Xembed"? How do I know my Linux has that? Do I need superfoobarlib-0.001-alpha from CVS for it?

Re:Java applet support?

[yuri benjamin]

Here I go feeding the trolls.

Wow Linux really is ready for the desktop.

We agree on something.

WTF is "Xembed"?

As a user you don't need to know. Leave that to the developers.

How do I know my Linux has that?

Stick to KDE or Gnome, which are default options with every desktop linux distro.

Do I need superfoobarlib-0.001-alpha from CVS for it?

Leave that to the distro maintainers. Don't worry your little head over it. A normal user doesn't need to know. Do you really know if you have superfoobar-001-alpha.dll on your windows box?

Re:Java applet support?

[juhaz]

You don't even need to use JavaScript, image rollovers are quite possible with pure CSS.

Re:Java applet support?

[Yer Mom]

It's MS Frontpage that does it (as if you needed to ask...)

That was done a long time ago.

[bayerwerke]

Actually it ran in X before it ever did in Windows. IE is the browser formerly known as NCSA Mosaic.

Re:That was done a long time ago.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. IE is based on Spyglass Mosaic, which isn't the same codebase.

Re:That was done a long time ago.

[Ford Prefect]

Actually it ran in X before it ever did in Windows. IE is the browser formerly known as NCSA Mosaic.

Yeah, but who would seriously want to run Mosaic nowadays? It's got crap support for modern standards, piss-poor rendering, no working PNG support, broken CSS, and with no chance of it being updated it's, erm... Well...

... Kind of like its descendant, Internet Explorer. ;-)

Re:That was done a long time ago.

[bayerwerke]

"Based on NCSA Mosaic. NCSA Mosaic(TM); was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign."

Maybe you should tell someone at Microsoft that.

Re:That was done a long time ago.

[pmsyyz]

Wrong, IE is based on Spyglass Mosaic, which used none of the NCSA Mosaid source code.

From http://www.netvalley.com/archives/mirrors/eric/Eri c_Weblog.htm

I ended up as the Project Lead for the browser team. Yes, we licensed the technology and trademarks from NCSA (at the University of Illinois), but we never used any of the code. We wrote our browser implementations completely from scratch, on Windows, MacOS, and Unix.

Internet Explorer 2.0 was basically Spyglass Mosaic with not too many changes. IE 3.0 was a major upgrade, but still largely based on our code. IE 4.0 was closer to a rewrite, but our code was still lingering around -- we could tell by the presence of certain esoteric bugs that were specific to our layout engine.

Almost first post!

[tajmorton]

Damn, I almost got the first post but I was having trouble getting Gecko to work in Konqueror!

Better news..

[Visceral Monkey]

The best news here is that Firefox will also now be able to use the native KDE widgets, etc. Sweet.

Re:Better news..

[cozziewozzie]

I see a very encouraging pattern here:

Mozilla: Can use KDE or GTK frontend.
Firefox: Can use KDE or GTK frontend.
OpenOffice: Can use KDE or GTK frontend.
Xine/Mplayer: Can use KDE or GTK frontend.
giFT: Can use KDE or GTK frontend.
GIMP: Can use KDE or GTK frontend.

Are we really moving away from the Desktop Environment holy wars, and towards interoperability?

Re:Better news..

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE frontend for GIMP? What did I miss?

Re:Better news..

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we really moving away from the Desktop Environment holy wars, and towards interoperability?

Not really. You can draw GTK+2 apps using Qt widgets but that doesn't magically give the applications DCOP interfaces, KIO support, and things like that which really make KDE what it is.

Re:Better news..

[Anonymous Coward]

> KDE frontend for GIMP? What did I miss?

I was gonna ask that too

grandparent poster is on crack

Re:Better news..

[pchan-]

sweet. it is seriously about time for this feature.
i use firefox on windows and linux daily. the windows version is so much slicker, because it plugs right into the windows widgets. it is consistant with the rest of the ui i'm using. the firefox on my kde desktop has an out of place user interface that makes often makes it a pain to get things done. copy and paste consistancy, dragging things, an address bar edit field that doesn't suck, this would be awesome. i'd also love to see kde's spell-checker-in-every-text-field apply to firefox as well.

Re:Better news..

[Anonymous Coward]

nah..i think i read something on this...but it was about plans about new gimp version. Still a long way off.

Re:Better news..

[Joe Tie.]

I don't have the link on hand, but there is a spellcheck plugin for firefox called spellbound.

Re:Better news..

[Quattro Vezina]

KDE frontend for GIMP? What did I miss?

You missed nothing=-there's no such thing. There is, however, a GTK2 engine that uses Qt as a drawing backend. It's called the gtk-qt-engine, and while it's still in the early stages, it's coming along quite nicely. Combine that with some other tweaks like changing your .gtkrc to use the same fonts and icons as KDE, and you've got a decent level of visual integration (not nearly perfect, but not bad either).

It's only for GTK2, however--GTK1 apps don't have that, although some GTK1 themes, such as Plastig, use the QtPixmap backend to draw your colours from your KDE settings, so GTK1 is part of the way there.

Re:Better news..

[cozziewozzie]

The gtk-qt engine is really cool and should be advertised to high hell, but it's not what I had in mind. I thought GIMP 2.0 was supposed to have a separate frontend and a backend, so alternative backends could be written for it (say, a Qt one).

Did that idea die or what?

Re:Better news..

[mrroach]

You can draw GTK+2 apps using Qt widgets but that doesn't magically give the applications DCOP interfaces

When D-Bus is adopted in future versions of KDE and Gnome they will. I think there is already a DCOP D-Bus bridge. Merging KIO and Gnome-vfs (not to mention mozilla's necko) is probably a looong way down the road

-Mark

Re:Better news..

[Anonymous Coward]

_COULD_ be written is not the same thing as _HAS_ been written, which is what you were implying by listing it along with a slew of apps that already have a separate frontend.

Re:Better news..

[cozziewozzie]

As long as it can be written, it will be written. The OpenOffice KDE integration is far from complete too, but as long as there's an interest, things will happen. It's much easier to make a frontend for GIMP than to port the old GIMP codebase away from GTK+.

Is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand that they've replaced GTK with QT but have they also added a switch to have it work natively in Konqueror?

I'm glad to see that they're contributing back to the CVS. I hope it fares better this time as last time no one worked on it after a while and it got removed.

Firefox/Qt-A cross, cross.

[Anonymous Coward]

"This is good for both KDE and Mozilla."

Jut KDE. In case you've forgotten Mozilla/Firefox is a cross-platform browser. But everyone seems to be determined to undermine that fact.

If you want to do KDE a favour? Why not intergrate IE into KDE and QT? I'm certain it'll be a BIG benefit.

Re:Firefox/Qt-A cross, cross.

[twener]

Mozilla/FireFox gaining Qt as platform is no win for them?

Re:Firefox/Qt-A cross, cross.

[T-Ranger]

No win at all. QT is, basicly, a widget set. Other widget sets would be GTK, Motif, components of Windows, OS X, etc, etc. The widget set that Mozilla uses is itself, or more accuaratly, XPFE. Using a different widget set would, well, compleatly defeate the goal of cross platform compatability.

XML

[Anonymous Coward]

it should be />

Porting the whine..

[Anonymous Coward]

"Just run IE with Wine I guess ... ?"

Waaah! But I don't wanna run IE with Wine.

Re:Porting the whine..

[runderwo]

Would you like some cheese with that... oh, nevermind.

Old stuff

[Trofonio]

This isn't really new. A qtmozilla was implemented by Trolltech a couple of years ago. Then it became an open source project hosted at http://www.mozilla.org/ports/qtmozilla/.

Anyway this wasn't the same than a KDE port, but given that the Kecko Team have not integrated KIO, KWallet and KCookieJar already, they aren't there either.

Re:Old stuff

[_|()|\|]

If either the Mozilla or Trolltech pages had been updated in the last year, I might agree that this is old news. As it is, two developers with a lot of experience with KHTML seem interested in making this a viable port. It also seems that their approach may be more sustainable, such that Qt/KDE can be a fully supported peer of GTK+ as a Mozilla front end.

Re:Old stuff

[fault0]

AFAIK, this port is completely written from scratch. Since QtMozilla was made, nearly all the ui-dependent parts of Mozilla were rewritten.

The best part of all is....

[ErichTheWebGuy]

... that we will finally have OK/Cancel buttons in the usual (correct) places in the Qt version of Firefox!

Re:The best part of all is....

[twener]

This was already possible before with the right setting/theme: Plastik for Firefox.

Re:The best part of all is....

[fault0]

You can already do that with the Mozilla KDE integration project: Mozillux.

Mozillux

Re:The best part of all is....

[sn0wman3030]

Dude. I do not want to have to discuss the button order issue again, but I feel compelled to respond in a quick and concise answer. I think it has been well-established that button order is just a matter of preference, and works just as well either way. The user get used to seeing the buttons in a certain order, and they're happy. That's really all there is to it.

Re:The best part of all is....

[BlortHorc]

The user get used to seeing the buttons in a certain order, and they're happy. That's really all there is to it.

But that's just the damn point. Users of KDE have got used seeing the buttons in a certain order, and Firefox and GTK apps look out of place on a KDE desktop.

Like it or not, the majority of desktop Linux users use KDE, and the button order in Firefox and GTK/Gnome apps is a serious UI inconsistency (regardless of what UI experts say about what the "correct" order should be).

That said, there are hacks available to reorder things in Firefox, but there's not a damn thing that can be done about the Gimp (roll on Krita, I say...)

One useful thing ..

[Eloquence]

.. which KDE offers are the so-called io_slaves, so I can access, for example, my server using fish://bla (an SSH slave), WebDAV using webdav://bla, and so on. Does GNOME have something similar? It would be nice to be able to use these slaves in Mozilla/Firefox.

Re:One useful thing ..

[Anonymous Coward]

> It would be nice to be able to use these slaves in Mozilla/Firefox.

I think they've already done this in the new port. Amazing how much they accomplished in a few days.

Re:One useful thing ..

[theantix]

Yes. In nautilus, File->Open Location and then put in "sftp://host.domain/path/" Works fine for me, I use that all the time.

Are you stoned and browsing slashdot?

[bayerwerke]

Oh come on, that never happens.

Re:Are you stoned and browsing slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it doesn't happen anymore because M$ turned off the blue screens. Now what happens instead is an automatic reboot. Turn off the reboot and you'll eventually see the blue screen. The broken Windows driver model guarantees a blue screen will eventually happen to you.

Even M$ admits its broken. They've decided to scrap Windows Driver Model (WDM) and replace it with Windows Driver Foundation (WDF). Here's what Redmond has to say about their current driver model:

Most drivers that use the WDM and miniport driver models must run in kernel mode. Kernel-mode drivers are treated as part of the operating system and have access to the system virtual address space. Consequently, errors in kernel-mode drivers can cause the system to crash. (Emphasis added)

But you'll have to wait till the mythical Longhorn comes out before you see the vaporware^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hfeature.

Re:Are you stoned and browsing slashdot?

[Fweeky]

That statement's true about pretty much every driver framework in existance.. what's broken?

Re:Are you stoned and browsing slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just the idea that all drivers from printer devices to video cards are forced to be in kernel mode. That's what's broken about the Windows implementation.

Re:Are you stoned and browsing slashdot?

[ffub]

hahaha

Re:Are you stoned and browsing slashdot?

[Cereal Box]

Now what happens instead is an automatic reboot.

OK, sure, but I'm guessing that the original author hasn't experienced any mysterious reboots either. And, BTW, if he happens to be sitting at his computer when it "bluescreens" (and the odds are high of THAT happening, right Linux zealots?) he WOULD actually see a blue screen before the reboot occurs.

Guys, get over it. Find some new material. Blue screens are nowhere near as common as they were six or more years ago, which is where you guys are permanently stuck with regard to your knowledge of Windows. Windows 2000 and XP rarely bluescreen, and if they do it's related to a hardware/driver issue.

Personally I can count the number of bluescreens I've had in the last two or three years on one hand.

Advantages of Mozilla platform??-Everywere.

[Anonymous Coward]

MAB and Newsmonster jump to mind.

XUL isn't just a Mozilla technology. Luxor is an independent implimentation.

Konqueror + slashdot != true

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, now slashdot will look weird in Konqueror as well!!

Re:Konqueror + slashdot != true

[Carewolf]

Exactly I've always used konqueror simply because slashdot looks like crap in Mozilla and always have.

Fonts rendering - win for Konqueror

[jessONslash]

Konqueror (with QT3.3.3) can render some open type fonts on my linux box, whereas Firefox/Mozilla draw only blanks. The fonts are in question are from: www.crulp.org

One useful thing-Virtual post.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome-vfs2

To those of you crowing about removing KHTML...

[benjamindees]

At one time, Gecko was the creme de la creme of fast rendering engines. Now it's just the most compatible as well as being damn fast. Look how times have changed.

The KDE project takes a lot of flack for the way they integrate applications. Most people call it 'bloat'. Some call it 'Microsoftesque'. As the conventional OSS wisdom goes, apps that live outside the KDE project are usually better. But, as we see in the Windows (and Mac) world, integration and consistency is what sells. Fortunately, KPart has emerged as the best of both worlds.

Thesis: small applications doing specific tasks.
Antithesis: large applications that do everything.
Synthesis: apps seamlessly integrated via an open framework.

For years we witnessed proprietary software get more and more bloated and more and more expensive. That was due in no small part to the monopolies created by proprietary formats and standards. Now, with OSS, we are witnessing capitalism in action. Choice and open standards lead to constant improvement.

The next time you think about removing choice, think "where would OSS be without this competition?" Would we have KPart if it weren't for Gnome? Would we have great, cross-platform Gnome apps if it weren't for KDE? Many people look at these projects and see redundancy. I look at them and I see innovation.

The argument that someone needs to "manage developer resources" in OSS is completely bunk. OSS didn't get where it is today by forming a central economy of software projects. OSS is about freedom and fair competition. A defining quality of Open Source has been: there are no managers! The downside is that you may not get to tell a developer what to work on unless you're willing to pay her. The upside, though, is that we all reap the benefits of creative freedom.

Re:To those of you crowing about removing KHTML...

[Quattro Vezina]

Fortunately, KPart has emerged as the best of both worlds.

Thesis: small applications doing specific tasks.
Antithesis: large applications that do everything.
Synthesis: apps seamlessly integrated via an open framework.

Indeed. In fact, I'd say that the KPart architecture is actually closer to the Unix philosophy than standalone small apps. KPart reminds me so much of the pipes and output redirection that make Unix shells so good. It's the closest GUI equivalent to the Unix CLI environment that I've seen.

Take Konqueror, for example. By itself, it doesn't do anything--it's just a frame. All the functionality--the file manager, web browser, fish, all the other viewers--are KParts independent of Konqueror. Konqueror is a graphical shell--a frame that holds those KParts, and provides interoperability features.

konqueror could use them both

[Anonymous Coward]

It might be a good idea to make khtml as standard compliant as possible and switch to the gecko enigne whenever konqueror detects a page, which has incorrect html.
khtml would be very clean and probably easy to develop and konqueror would still be able to show all pages.

Re:konqueror could use them both

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that currently Gecko is strictly standards-compliant while KHTML does a pretty good job of rendering incorrect pages. I'm not sure I see the advantage of swapping the two around.

A shame since the port existed before

[CwazyWabbit]

There was a QT port in mozilla.org's CVS in the past, but it got dropped through lack of maintenance. While the four days it took to port the gfx layer is obviously impressive, it is a shame that all of the original work was allowed to bitrot.

Re:A shame since the port existed before

[Anonymous Coward]

> it is a shame that all of the original work was allowed to bitrot.

Yeah, indeed. It mostly happened because:

- Corel left the Linux business
- Xandros, which bought Corel Linux, was a startup and didn't have resources to maintain the port
- Netscape wasn't willing to pick up QA of the Mozilla port

If the above had worked out differently, khtml might have become a simple help viewer engine like gtkhtml is instead of a full blown web engine.

More information

[fault0]

Zack Rusin, one of the authors of this port, has written some more information about it in his blog.

See his blog

Great, but...

[Money for Nothin']

Can we have the rendering speed of KHTML (Konqueror's rendering engine) and the relatively-small memory footprint of Konqueror with the compatibility of Mozilla?

I mean, switching between rendering engines just to access a particular site sounds annoying. Almost as annoying as having to open an IE window for sites that don't work well w/ Mozilla or a Moz. window for sites that don't work in Konqueror...

Re:Great, but...

[pantherace]

I mean, switching between rendering engines just to access a particular site sounds annoying. Almost as annoying as having to open an IE window for sites that don't work well w/ Mozilla or a Moz. window for sites that don't work in Konqueror...

Actually, there is a basis for having this done automatically. Konqueror tends to have domain specific settings, easily changed. (Looking through quickly: plugins, browser identification, java, javascript, and cookies) I don't see why this would be that much of an issue to do.

Honestly, given how much better Konqueror's rendering looks at 1024x768 or above, I'd set gmail to be gecko, and the default to khtml.

Re:Great, but...

[arodland]

Er? Mozilla is fast, and in my experience KHTML takes up more memory on complex pages than any renderer I've seen. That said, I use Konqueror because of the integration. But I'd love to see it using Gecko. :)

Re:Great, but...

[kavau]

I mean, switching between rendering engines just to access a particular site sounds annoying.

Unless they include an option to associate a specific engine with specific pages, similar to the way it's done for the browser identification string. Then it wouldn't be much of a hassle anymore.

Re:Great, but...

[mikeloader]

I'd set gmail to be gecko, and the default to khtml.

Why gecko for gmail? I use the latest public release of Safari, khtml, and it works just fine with gmail. Is there a problem with Konqueror and gmail?

Re:Great, but...

[pantherace]

Yes there is. I'm not sure what it is though.

Re:what the hell is wrong with you people?

[Anonymous Coward]

hey dumbfuck, if you would learn how to properly use the standards you threw around, you would not have trouble at all...

Have you ever tried making a css rollover menu work in IE? didn't think so. so shut the fuck up.

Re:what the hell is wrong with you people?

[Scaba]

Can you back this up with examples? And did you file a bug report?

Can see the connection.

[bayerwerke]

While your argument may have merit, I fail to see the connection between the 'Windows Driver Foundation' and getting stoned before browsing Slashdot.

Re:Can see the connection.

[Thing 1]

"Whether you suffer from glaucoma, or you've just rented the Matrix, medical marijuana can make things fabulous ... medically!"

Re:what the hell is wrong with you people?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would guess by his constant reference to "standards-validated" that he thinks that anything that is valid html should render the way he wants it to, regardless of what the standards actually SAY. Could be wrong though, just experienced this bizarre attitude a couple of times before. "But it validates, why doesn't it look the way I want it to?"

4 days?

[diegocgteleline.es]

4 days? And someone can explain me why KHTML exist at all then? Sure, Im not implying that gecko is better/worse than their counterparts, but it'd have been less work. Having two OSSs projects doing the same is good for the competition, but we already had quite a lot of competition in the we field (ie, opera). Any plans to slowly move the good parts of gecko into khtml and the good parts of khtml into gecko?

Re:4 days?

[leonscape]

The underlying tech between the two is very diffrent. I prefer KHTML since it renders all the sites I visit, and firefox doesn't ( specifically my banks ). The Gecko engine is slightly more standards compliant, but KHTML isn't far behind. Having two gives us options, they'll both improve, Also KHTML can be made to do things for the benefit of KDE where it would be wrong for Gecko to do the same.

Re:4 days?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about because KDE started doing HTML rendering before mozilla's source was released? So the question becomes "Why does mozilla exist?", and the answer is that there are a bunch of idiots who think that everything KDE does is wrong, even as they quietly copy it.

Re:4 days?

[HyperCash]

At this point in time the competition between banks for customers is incredibly fierce. If your bank doesn't allow you to use their site with Mozilla or Firefox you should definetly let them know that this bothers you; maybe even find another bank and let them know why you're leaving. The cost to design the web page correctly is minimal in comparison to losing customers. My bank's web site (I bank with Wells Fargo) has never had any problems rendering correctly in Mozilla or Firefox but I know that if it did they would hear from me and that if they didn't fix the problem they would lose a customer.

--HC

Re:4 days?

[leonscape]

Its not a problem as Konq is my default web browser, its only in Windows, that I ever really use Firefox. KDE is so capable now I very rarily boot into Windows at all. ( games mainly ).

Nice job, but ...

[kbahey]

Nice job! Only in four days! That is great.

However, as good as Gecko is, I find that there are sites that are so Microsoft specific (brain dead developers) that they would not render correctly in FireFox. However, some of those same sites render better in Konquerer than in Gecko.

An example is the Arabic Al Jazeera web site.

If you open in MS IE, all is well, because the developers wrote it with only MS IE in mind. If you try it with Firefox (I am using 0.9), then you get a blank blue space on the right, with no menus in it at all, and no menus on the left side too.

If you open it in Konqueror (the one that ships with Mandrake 10.0 Final), then the menus are visible. There are still some quirks (e.g. just moving the mouse over an article heading will trigger a download dialog), but it is way ahead of KDE's Gecko.

Incidentally, Al Jazeera's English web site is developed by a different company and does not suffer form these problems.

I have seen a few other sites with this problem (incorrect rendering in FireFox), and they are always .asp web pages, pointing to a Microsoft centric mentality of the developers.

Re:Nice job, but ...

[leonscape]

There are still some quirks (e.g. just moving the mouse over an article heading will trigger a download dialog), but it is way ahead of KDE's Gecko.

This is already solved in Konq 3.3 with lots of other things.

Re:Nice job, but ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The arabic site works fine for me with

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040817 Firefox/0.9.1+

Re:Nice job, but ...

[kbahey]

Seems that you are using 0.9.1 (on Linux). I am using just 0.9 (on Windows at present).

When you say it works, can you see the menus on the left and right? Are the menus collapsible?

Re:Nice job, but ...

[angrykeyboarder]

Try upgrading to 9.3. 9.0 on Windows has a security issue.

The menus work fine..

Re:Nice job, but ...

[kbahey]

Thanks. I know about the security issue. It is the shell: thing, isn't it?

I assume you mean 0.9.3.

I would assume that the menus would work on Al Jazeera if I do upgrade to 0.9.3 even under Windows, since the rendering engine is the same (or better) as 0.9.1 under Linux. Right?

Re:Nice job, but ...

[kbahey]

OK, I upgraded from FireFox 0.9 to 0.9.3 (latest Windows release) and the menus are still not visible.

Here is the version: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040803 Firefox/0.9.3

This is about 10 or so days behind the version you have on Linux, and not working.

Is this Windows specific, or just a fix in this 10 day difference?

Re:Nice job, but ...

[dpete4552]

The menus are collapsable and show up fine and the entire site renders great for me in Firefox. Firefox also doesn't trigger a download dialog box when I move my mouse over links.

I am, however, using a nightly build. Maybe the issue has already been fixed?

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040908 Firefox/0.10

Re:Nice job, but ...

[Loonacy]

Using the version you had I didn't get any menus. I downloaded the current Nightly Build (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040911 Firefox/0.10) and the menus now show up, collapsability and all.

Re:Nice job, but ...

[cyfer2000]

confirmed working on windows Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040910 Firefox/0.10

Re:Nice job, but ...

[cyfer2000]

I think it is because of "document.all", firefox 0.9 doesn't support this at all, while 0.91+ or 1.0 pre support it in quirks mode without detection. Which is exactly what this site is doing.

Re:Nice job, but ...

[aug24]

There are still a few ignorant/lazy morons holding out... I noticed last week that the British Sunday Times website still has chunks that don't work without IE - like the competition entry forms. I mailed them (as one does) to say that they were losing custom, and got a message back saying that the web team said it "wasn't possible". I informed them that, speaking as a web developer, if one of my team said that I'd fire them. No answer!

Eventually though, the lazy/ignorant will all die, so that's OK.

J.

Re:Nice job, but ...

[angrykeyboarder]

Yep.

Did I not say 0.9.3?

One would think so. Perhaps you had an extension (or two) that was the cause of the problem.

Re:Nice job, but ...

[kbahey]

I also email web sites that have a problem with FireFox, but not MS IE. I make them short and to the point, and stress portability as the major point of the web.

For Al Jazeera for example, I emailed both Al Jazeera themselves, and the company that built the web site for them.

Problem is, I have not gotten a single answer from anyone that sent this too. Even worse, some sites return an email error (mailbox overflow). So they even did not set them up to be read by a human!

I hope I can share your optimism that a) the ignorant/lazy are few, and b) they will die out.

Re:what the hell is wrong with you people?

[Anonymous Coward]

"hasn't anyone ever tried to write a validated webpage that works in mozilla/firefox? it's nigh impossible, if you expect to use all of the features of html4.01 transitional or css1.0"

Smoke crack much? Writing validated HTML or XML pages in Mozilla is easy as hell. It's getting IE to render em right that is the hard part.

"have a look here: Mozilla's quirks mode. It's actually necessary to trick the browser into getting even somewhat close to standards compliant, and even then the formatting is all screwy by half."

I hope you were trying to be funny. Otherwise you could only be considered a retard. Actually read what the page says.

" Because existing content on the web is not standards-compliant or would appear in unintended ways on a standards-compliant browser, Mozilla handles some content in a backwards compatible way and some content according to standards.

There are three modes used by the layout engine: quirks mode, almost standards mode, and full standards mode. In Quirks mode, layout emulates nonstandard behavior in Navigator 4 and MSIE for Windows that is required not to break existing content on the Web. In full standards mode, the behavior is (hopefully) the behavior described by the HTML and CSS specifications. In almost standards mode, there are only a very small number of quirks implemented: those that break real pages on the web that use the DOCTYPEs that trigger almost standards mode."

Mozilla quirks mode is not about rendering pages in a standards compliant way. It is about rendering broken pages in broken ways to match the rendering of the worlds most popular broken browser Internet Explorer. Which has it's own quirks mode so as to be backwards compatable with it's own broken ancestors.

" No problems in ie 4, 5 or 6. no problems in Opera or with khtml. I have no trouble testing sandards-validated pages QNX browser, mac OS/X, netscape 4 or with any other damn browser. Just the unholy troika of moz-firebrid-netscape. I'm like, wtf?"

And after reading all that the rest of us are all like wtf was he smoking?

Beware the IE rendering engine

[argent]

Be bloody careful if you really do this: make sure the HTML control is sandboxed every bloody way imaginable.

Personally, I'd rather port the viruses directly. It's more honest.

The best part of all is....Trivial...Pursuits.

[Anonymous Coward]

Waahh!! Why don't you guys just leave me to my trivial complaints. *sniff*sniff* I was so much better without your enlightening answers. Waahh!.

Re:what the hell is wrong with you people?

[Stick_Fig]

I just recently designed a compliant site with HTML 4.01 and CSS 2; I had more problems with Safari and IE 5 Mac than I ever did with Firefox. Methinks you're doing something wrong or haven't tried recent versions of Firefox.

Re:what the hell is wrong with you people?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr. Gates, is that you?

Seriously, I'm a professional web designer. I build everything 100% XHTML and CSS standard; my designs usually work immediately without tweaking in Safari and Mozilla/Camino/Firefox. A good 25% of my time, however, is spent fixing the IE 5 and 6 bugs afterwards. That happens *every* time.

Maybe you're just trying to do some things the wrong way. It's possible to write code that is valid but still done the wrong way.

Oh, the irony

[TardisX]

The linked article renders so badly in konqueror (KDE 3.2.2, FreeBSD) it wasn't even readable.

I guess that's telling me something.

Re:Oh, the irony

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean Ars Technica web site bad rendering? That it's also solved in KDE 3.3

Re:OT: my response

[rd_syringe]

Very OT.

Since when have pre-emptive invasions been legal?

When the resolutions are broken seven times over the span of 12 years. What's the point of a UN resolution if it's never enforced? Are you just going to sit around and go, "Oh, that Saddam!" for every violation? I guess Saddam killing his own people is something you are okay with tolerating. Look at how "effective" the UN is now, sitting down and sipping tea at lunch while people are being slaughtered in Sudan. And now terrorists have killed children in Russia. At some point, you kind of have to do something to stop the bad guys.

Since when has it been legal to round people up, label them illegal enemy combatants and throw them in jail without trial or access to a lawyer?

Because when you're captured in combat, you're an enemy combatant.

Then you should be using Blackbird!

[leonbrooks]

It's the MS replacement for HTTP and HTML, and... oops, it's been cancelled.

Your point was...?

It's to late now, but if you want exact WYSIWYG, use PDF instead of HTML (and be prepared for issues such as A4 vs Letter). HTML was not and is not designed to be a layout language. Any layout you can do with it is a bonus. Get over it.

Re:Then you should be using Blackbird!

[bob65]

It's the MS replacement for HTTP and HTML, and... oops, it's been cancelled.

No I shouldn't, because most web designers do not write their webpages for Blackbird.

HTML was not and is not designed to be a layout language

True, but web designers cannot seem to comprehend this, and often make the function of their webpages dependent on layout or non-standard things. When table cells start becoming twice as wide as my screen, or menus open up under graphics on the page, usability is a problem. This is becoming a greater problem with the increased migration to Firefox/Mozilla, because now there are webpages that only display properly in standards-compliant browsers (such as Firefox) but not in others (such as Internet Explorer). But there are still webpages that do the opposite. So there is no one browser that can be used to optimally view all webpages.

Re:Then you should be using Blackbird!

[blinkylights]

You make it sound like there are two competing standards, IE's and everyone else's. Frankly, I'd rather build my site to standards established to level the playing field for competition and fuel innovation, rather than one established by a single commercial entity that will only innovate when there are competitors to squish.

Microsoft will let you keep using the same old version of IE until they feel compelled by market pressure to update it. When they do, they will add features, bells, whistles, gewgaws, buttons, lights and "security", to try to lure you to use it rather than the competition's. But one thing they will never do while they have over a 50% market share is to make IE comply to the same standards everyone else uses.

Microsoft is an aggressive company, which is why they're so successful. As a consumer, you should realize that your needs don't always match up with theirs, and in those cases, you are not the one they're looking out for. Want a standard XHTML/CSS that renders the same on all browsers? As a consumer, you're very fortunate to have such a clear choice.

Re:Then you should be using Blackbird!

[bob65]

You make it sound like there are two competing standards, IE's and everyone else's. Frankly, I'd rather build my site to standards established to level the playing field for competition and fuel innovation, rather than one established by a single commercial entity that will only innovate when there are competitors to squish.

Actually, my view is that IE is broken. *But*, if the author intends for some media to be viewed using a broken viewer, then I *want* to view that particular media using the intended broken viewer. If the author intends for some media to be viewed using a standards-compliant viewer, then I *want* to view that particular media using a standards-compliant viewer.

If I am *building* a site, then yes, I would build it to standards.

I presume you're quoting Help/About?

[leonbrooks]

If so, there's similar text here:

Portions of this software are based on NCSA Mosaic. NCSA Mosaic was developed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Distributed under a licensing agreement with Spyglass, Inc.

So... grandparent poster, while what you said was technically correct, your post was wrong in that you said that the GGP poster was wrong. MSIE is based on SpyGlass Mosaic - but that's in turn based on NCSA Mosaic.

Re:I presume you're quoting Help/About?

[pmsyyz]

No, Spyglass Mosaic was not based on NCSA Mosaic. So says the Project Lead of Spyglass Mosaic.

Microsoft is wrong in saying that IE is based on MCSA Mosaic unless they went and also got a license from NCSA for some reason.

And when you tick the checkbox...

[leonbrooks]

...they'll add a dropdown list of commonly preferred close-the-tab keys and an option to either close the browser with the last tab or leave it open with zero tabs showing.

The whole lot will be accessible from the command line with the right bizarre 90-character invokation.

GNOME will then add similar options, but you'll need to feed their equivalent a 40kB XML file to operate it from the command line.

I can also imagine an MSIE compatibility engine for KDE with settings for what kinds of viruses you want to support. (-:

Re:And when you tick the checkbox...

[kundor]

That's close to the truth actually, in that you can substitute any key combination for any key combo in KDE -- or any mouse gesture, for that matter, which I think is the #1 undermarketed feature in KDE.

It's probably been discussed, but...

[leonbrooks]

...why not leave the browser open with zero tabs showing? It's what the keystroke asked for, after all.

Re:It's probably been discussed, but...

[nutshell42]

Because Konqueror doesn't have a "zero tab". You could have it display the white no location screen you get when you start Konqueror without a home url but I really don't see any advantage in that.

If you have a good reason for an empty window why not filing a bug report?

Re:It's probably been discussed, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's not a bug. It's intentional.

Grandparent is proposing a design change, not a bug fix.

But if the Konq devs can't already see the need for coherence in the interface and the commands in particular, writing to them (let alone filing a bug report) won't do much good.

Re:It's probably been discussed, but...

[nutshell42]

There's no "coherence" here. Ctrl+w closes tabs but not windows. I still don't see why there should be a no-tab situation in a browser but if grandgrandparent can think of a good reason he should tell the devs.

Try setting your Konq browserID to Safari

[leonbrooks]

If it then works, what's happening is that the GMail folks are checking for Safari and special-casing it, but not for Konqueror. In which case, write to them (GMail has a link for this) and ask that they check for and treat Konq as Safari until they get around to supporting Konq directly.

Incidentally, what version of Konq are you using? GMail seems to work for me using Konq 3.2.0 (from Mandrake 10.0, so it may be patched for something GMail depends on).

Re:Try setting your Konq browserID to Safari

[mkro]

I tried to set it to Safari, but still the same. Seems like it tries to load an iframe or ilayer, but Konqueror offers me to download the file. If I open it, it just stops with a "Loading.." in the top right corner. Konqueror 3.3, which I in all other ways are very pleased with.

Gratuitous Futurama Quoting

[ari_j]

You are technically correct...the best kind of correct.

According to the NCSA

[bayerwerke]

"In 1993, Mosaic became the first popular graphical Web browser and was offered free to the general public from NCSA's Internet site. By 1994, Mosaic had a user base of several million users worldwide. In addition, NCSA developed WWW server software (originally called httpd--made commercial as Apache), which is now used in about 66 percent of all Web servers.

This technology was quickly transferred to the private sector when Marc Andreessen and several other developers of NCSA Mosaic left the center to form Netscape. In addition, more than 100 companies licensed the Mosaic software through Spyglass, Inc., including Microsoft, which led to the development of Microsoft Internet Explorer."

I also remember using NCSA Mosaic as well as SpyGlass Mosaic and, other than branding, they appeared identical.

http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Divisions/PublicAffairs /M osaicHistory/impact.html

No managers?

[leonbrooks]

The argument that someone needs to "manage developer resources" in OSS is completely bunk. OSS didn't get where it is today by forming a central economy of software projects. OSS is about freedom and fair competition. A defining quality of Open Source has been: there are no managers!

Seconded, except that I'd not assert that there are no managers. There are indeed managers, but they aren't ubiquitous and required as they would be in a traditional setting.

Most FOSS managers are as much developers, which helps them to keep a lot more closely in touch with what the code is doing than even a highly talented manager would. There is a place in FOSS for highly talented managers sans coding skills, too - it's just that many (almost certainly most) little tinpot FOSS projects would suffer from having one rather than benefit.

A skilled manager knows when to manage lightly, and FOSS is all about lightly managed massive asynchronous parallelism (no, that's not quite an oxymoron). A deft management touch here and there can help to cut gordian knots without "crushing the butterfly".

So I've spent ages ...

[The MESMERIC]

Making my ecommerce site KHTML compatible
and Konqueror is switching engines

dont flame me with RTFA

cos I havent yet :P

Re:So I've spent ages ...

[The MESMERIC]

ah now i read it .. yeah i prefer khtml over gecko because it seems to render faster

Re:So I've spent ages ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Making my ecommerce site KHTML compatible

Mistake. Write your site once, making it w3c compatible. That's really the idea behind standards.

Re:So I've spent ages ...

[The MESMERIC]

mistake bollocks

you know standards dont work
come on try it
CSS 2.0 / javascript

and yes i *always* -> validator.w3.org

by confering my sites under those 4 engines (and 3 Operating Systems)
i make extra sure i dont get some weird divs
stuck on a corner - or huge fonts being displayed

Location-Save As

[GodWasAnAlien]

Please, someone change [Location] to [File].

You save as a File, you open remote File (url/location). You print the File.
It's not a perfect match, and Tab and Window don't really fit, but Location is no better, and non-standard. It's silly, but it is the main reason I have not given Konq much of a look lately.

Re:Location-Save As

[hikerhat]

Please, someone change [Location] to [File].

You can customize your menus in kde apps. The menu titles are not had coded in, but stored in xml files.

cd ~/.kde3.2/share/apps/konqueror
vi (or whatever) konqueror.rc

Customize to your heart's content.

Except that they already use multiple widget sets

[Quattro Vezina]

On Linux, you can compile Mozilla (and related products, like Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, etc.) to bind for GTK1 or GTK2 (and now, hopefully, Qt). On Mac and Windows, it binds to the native toolkit.

True, it still uses XPFE, but it uses the other toolkit as a backend and to get certain information (colours, fonts, and dialog widgets if the Moz theme isn't comprehensive).

It's one of Mozilla's greatest strengths--it still has its own theming capability and cross-platform compatibility, but it also integrates with the native desktop. Adding another toolkit (i.e. Qt) to the possible options will only help increase its acceptance, without sacrificing anything.

Re:what the hell is wrong with you people?

[Trillan]

I've never had any significant problems with Safari or Firefox. The only problem I've ever run into is Firefox not supporting a particular CSS element. (I forget what it's called, and it's now been removed from the spec... I hope Safari keeps it, though.)

Port VBScript, IE DOM, and ActiveSpyware?

[tepples]

[Create a drop-in replacement for MSHTML.dll that uses the Gecko engine.] Then IE would be standards compliant

True, but...

and so would all the Windows apps that rely on the IE rendering subsystem for HTML rendering.

Not necessarily. What happens when one runs IEPatcher on an application that relies on one of Microsoft's proprietary extensions to web technologies, such as VBScript, the IE DOM, or nesting of ActiveX controls? In general, a client-side app will couple itself closer to IE than a public web page will, as 1. fewer people have patched client-side apps to use the Gecko control than have switched to the dino or the panda for web browsing, and 2. the overwhelming majority of such Windows apps' EULAs forbid modification to the binaries such as the use of IEPatcher.

Nop Active X re invertion of stuff again

[Anonymous Coward]

Netscape plugins.

All Active X did was extend what Netscape had done.

Mozilla just expanding Netscape old systems.

Taking your e-commerce to the Macs

[tepples]

Konqueror isn't "switching" from KHTML to Gecko; instead, it's letting the user switch. Distributions may "switch" in the future, but even if most distributions switch Konqueror to use Gecko by default, Apple's Safari browser will most likely still use KHTML for its better bug-compatibility with Microsoft IE.

Re:Taking your e-commerce to the Macs

[The MESMERIC]

Yeah I read the RTFA eventually and saw I was wrong.
I was shocked at first because Konqueror shoudn't change the KTHML engine (but an option for users to change is most welcome
- I doubt most will do - if they use Konqueror is because they prefer KHTML!)

I design my sites to be XHTML 1.1 strict (pedantic me) further they should run on the fab 4 :|

• Internet Exploder 5+
• Mozilla Gecko family
• Opera
• KTHML

plus operational when no Javascript

Now .. making it also run pretty in DILLO is just impossible (way over the top) so I draw my line there.

My overcompliance can turn counter-productive

Mind u .. am checking out my site on dillo/lynx/links its degrading gracefully alright

Re:Except that they already use multiple widget se

[T-Ranger]

I diddnt know that. Neet. But:

The places that QT exists, from what you say, Moz already can use something; native windows crap, native mac crap, GTK. RSN Gnome and KDE themes will be one in the same. Adding QT/KDE support is not going to give them an additional platform, but undoubtably more complexity.. But it can, or soon will be able to, get theme info from the enviroment anyway.

Hey thanks you've given me a brill idea!

[The MESMERIC]

Gonna put an apple logo on the contact page.
Part of browsers you can use :)

And since the site sells fanciful overly-decorative products.

It's gonna appeal to the "happy" community a lot - given most of them uses Mac.

Excellent marketting stuff.

From Zack Rusin's Blog

[carlmenezes]

From Zack Rusin's Blog :

Does it mean Firefox will run natively on KDE? Yes, that's essentially exactly what it means. We haven't only ported the Gecko but we wanted to make it as complete as possible. I do want to make Firefox a great browser for KDE users. In the coming weeks I'll be integrating KIO, KWallet and KCookieJar so I'm hoping we'll see more great things soon.

Safari Gecko?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Now if only those KDE devs would port the Safari rendering engine us Linux users would be happy.

You bring up an interesting point - these guys have basically spent four days coming up with a KHTML to Gecko mapping (presuming they didn't go change all the apps), so Safari could potentially leverage this work to use Gecko as an alternate rendering engine.

Re:Safari Gecko?

[Bulln-Bulln]

Gecko is already Aqua kompatible. See Camino.
Apple could just take Camino, call it Safari 2.0, add WebKit-APIs and be done.
OSX's WebKit isn't the same as KDE's KParts.

I don't see how this project has any relation to OSX.

Re:Safari Gecko?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Gecko is already Aqua kompatible. See Camino.
Apple could just take Camino, call it Safari 2.0, add WebKit-APIs and be done.
OSX's WebKit isn't the same as KDE's KParts.

I don't see how this project has any relation to OSX.

Gecko and WebKit are embedding toolkits. Webkit is an embedding toolkit that wraps another embedding toolkit, kthml. Yes, both are now Aqua Savvy but a web browser is built around an embedding toolkit and it's alot of work beyond the toolkit. OmniWeb and Safari are both built around webkit but they're very different browsers. Camino and Mozilla are both built around Gecko but they're very different browsers.

Webkit already has an API to talk to KHTML. So does the KDE equivilant (forgot its name, call it kwebkit for the sake of argument). What these guy have done is convinced kwebkit to talk to gecko instead of kthml without changing all of the kde apps that embed kwebkit. Apple could recycle much of this work to get WebKit to talk to gecko and then Safari and OmniWeb would be gecko browsers.

I don't know that there's a need to do such a thing, but then hackers rarely have that as a requirement.

Re:OT: my response

[rd_syringe]

Who cares? China has been killing thousands upon thousands of their own people for decades. Should we invade? Oh wait, theres no oil in China. Guess thats a sure "no" from the Cheney camp.

So, care to tell me where all the America-owned oilfields are in Iraq now? Oil should be pretty cheap for us now, right? Since we're just so controlling of all that oil, even though we don't own any, haven't gotten any, and haven't seen a single benefit from it. Zzzz. The Iraqis own their oil.

Hahaha!! Sudan has been in a civil war for over two decades. Reagan, Bush Sr, Clinton: all did absolutely nothing.

Just like the UN now. What's your point?

Bush Jr sends a tiny contingent of marines there who never touched the beach until French military secured the area for them. The French went through and brokered a peace deal while the marines ran right back to the boat a few weeks later.

Yeah, it's reeaall peaceful over there right now. "Disarm in a week, or else!" *deadline passes* "But we really meant it!"

Terrorists?

Yes, they were Muslim terrorists with indirect ties to Al-Queda.

Do you know what Russia has done to the Chechen people?

What this tells me is that you feel holding a FUCKING SCHOOL FULL OF CHILDREN HOSTAGE is a justifiable act of rebellion rather than an act of terrorism.

Gawd!!!! Its very apparent why the conservative media machine is so effective: its audience consist of idiots.

Don't you mean the liberal media machine? The one that falsely claimed and later retracted that people booed when Bush gave his best wishes to Clinton; the ones who have given a pass to all the Democratic 527 groups (including MoveOn.org; a member of the Kerry campaign is also a member of that group); the two CNN hosts who are now working for the Kerry campaign with nary a peep from the liberal press; the one that put out forged military documents? I could go on and on and on.

No your a "Prisoner of War" with is clearly defined in the Geneva Convention. Sadly, Bush keeps breaking those rules so in the future our soldiers captured in combat by enemy forces can look foward to being tortured and maimed. Thank you Bush.

Sometime, look up the definition of what constitutes an enemy combatant and get back to me. I'll let you figure it out.

Did you know that the Bush team has tried several times to make it possible for Americans to be labeled "Enemy Combatants". If that happens it will be possible for them to abduct people and lock them away forever. No trial, lawyers, or family notified. But who cares right?

Ah, nothing like a dose of liberal paranoia to make me smile. :)

Bush wont steer us wrong. He will only use that power for Good. Just remember this: even if Bush wins 4 more years he will be replaced. Who is to say the next president does not abuse that power?

The Checks and Balances system. Look it up sometime.

Cool

[hikerhat]

I can install the gecko rendering component on my machine so I can read the article about the gecko component. The ars page doesn't render right on konq 3.2.3. At least on my machine.

What is the point?

[beforewisdom]

What is the attraction from a user land perspective?

What will the mozilla rendering engine give the konquer user that s/he doesn't already have?

I use mozilla on the kde because I am used to mozilla and like the interface.

If the browser shared anything I wish mozilla would use the local KDE file dialog box so I could create directories before I save a file

Re:Except that they already use multiple widget se

[Jesus_666]

True. I use Firefox and the Gtk/Qt theme engine (you know, that thing that makes GTK apps use Qt themes). It works, but some buttons just look like ass. It becomes even worse when you try to use stuff like Mosfet's Liquid.
Maybe native Qt support might fix that. Of course I would still have other GTK apps that look ugly, but at least the Fox would look nice.

Re:what the hell is wrong with you people?

[Jesus_666]

I use HTML 4.01 Transitional and CSS 2. Both validated. Both looking exectly how they should on my Firefox.
IE has big problems because it doesn't really understand CSS 2. Which is pretty annoying.

I should stop feeding trolls.

I stand corrected!

[leonbrooks]

Well done, it doesn't happen often. (-:

Glass half empty?

[aug24]

The grandparent did say "moving towards"... ;-)

Re:OT: my response

[sbrown123]

So, care to tell me where all the America-owned oilfields are in Iraq now?

Mostly in the south near Kuwait. There are also some in the north-east near Iran and Turkey.

Since we're just so controlling of all that oil, even though we don't own any, haven't gotten any, and haven't seen a single benefit from it.

This is not a "we're" thing. Its a "them". American oil companies, not the US government, have control of the oil. They have exclusive contracts to purchase the oil from Iraq's ( at very cheap prices) for resale. The Iraq people have no way of selling the oil outside their country anyways. The oil giants then sale it to foreign countries like Russia, China, Japan, etc. The United States gets most of its foreign oil from Venezula (sp). To the oil giants selling oil here has no purpose.

Yes, they were Muslim terrorists with indirect ties to Al-Queda.

Prove it. The only one who has made that claim is the Soviet government. Our government has never said that. And if you believe everything Putin says you must be agreeing with his comments that state that we have been assisting the terrorists for years:

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/09/07/p ut in.us/index.html

Don't you mean the liberal media machine?

Nope. I meant the massive conservative media. The conservative media is the biggest media market.

Ah, nothing like a dose of liberal paranoia to make me smile. :)

Actually Im a conservative. A true conservative unlike yourself. I believe in the founders of the U.S. constitition and the rights beget upon all Americans. Red, white, and blue through and through. I served in the army defending this great land. Your just a republican apology maker.

The Checks and Balances system. Look it up sometime.

Who is that exactly? If the president controls the military and can lock up anyone who opposes him, does he not have the same powers as Sadam had as president of Iraq? In otherwords, Bush could become a dictator tomorrow. Wheres you precious checks and balances then?

Sometime, look up the definition of what constitutes an enemy combatant and get back to me.

I looked it up. It doesnt exist. Theres no definition of that term in the geneva convention.

What this tells me is that you feel holding a FUCKING SCHOOL FULL OF CHILDREN HOSTAGE is a justifiable act of rebellion rather than an act of terrorism.

Russian soldiers used to shell Chechen schools, churches, etc. Whats the difference? They did it with full knowledge that it would kill hordes of civilians: women, children, elderly. They used that as a way to break the Chechen will to fight. You should do what our government did with those two fighting: don't get involved. Neither side is "right".

Why not change change Firefox to KHTML?

[Anonymous Coward]

We use Firefox because we're geeks. Yes, Firefox is gaining marketshare but Microsoft isn't going to bat an eye. Safari, Opera, Firefox, Netscape are splitting 5% of the market into tiny slices. Why not change the rendering engine in Firefox to KHTML, rename it Netscape 10, twist Opera's arm to adopt KHTML, and unify the 5%?

You, sir, are seriouly humour-challenged.

[hummassa]

And even the smiley didn't give you the hint, uh? ;-) WINK WINK