Re: KFirefox?

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Re: KFirefox?
by Larry Garfield on Sunday 12/Sep/2004, @22:58

Yes! I use/love KDE and Konqueror, but the tight browser/file integration drives me nuts.

To the various people below who point out that Konqueror is just a chrome around IOSlave plugins and that there are profiles etc. etc., you're missing the point. I know how Konqueror is built architecturally, but from a user perspective that is irrelevant. When I am MANAGING files, I want the application to work in one specific way. When I am viewing web pages (i.e., HTTP IOSlave to an apache server somewhere), I want it to behave VERY differently. I want my "browser application" to always have tabs visible, and my "file manager application" to never have tabs visible, because that's how I like to work. I want web URLs on my bookmark toolbar for my "browser application", and either none or common local URLs like my music directory or remote SFTP servers on my "file manager application". Doing that with a single unified program/chrome/framing system is extremely difficult. Perhaps profiles could help there, but the fact that I never figured them out is proof that they're not sufficient. :-)

If the solution is to have a KDEified Firefox as a standalone HTTP-viewing-only application and then just set Konqueror to direct HTTP to KFireFox or whatever, so be it. That would suit me fine.

As for the differences in the engines and their feature sets, welcome to the glory of Free Software. I love the auto-spellcheck in Konqueror. No reason that can't be ported into Gecko. I find the popup blocking in Firefox far superior to that in Konqueror. Port that over into KHTML/Konqueror. Let both engines share and improve. That's what makes FS/OSS superior to proprietary/closed software. Both sides can improve without anyone being bought out.

And if in the end we end up with Gecko-with-KHTML-inspired-improvements as the de facto default browser/engine for all FS/OSS web browsing, so much the better. This is the browser/engine that the entire security world and Homeland Security (in the US) is recommending over IE, so it's the one that clueful but pragmatic developers are going to support. If the OSS world can standardize on a unified "single target" browser and rendering engine, that provides a united front to make everyone's lives easier and try to stamp out IE, and making the Internet a safer place in the process.

Related Links

·   Articles on Konqueror
·   Also by Larry Garfield
·   Contact author

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