Konqueror Gets Activ(eX)ated

Konqueror has received another
huge shot in the arm, this time
by gaining the ability to embed MSIE ActiveX controls such as
the popular Shockwave
Player
. KDE developers
Nikolas Zimmermann and
Malte Starostik today announced
the initial release of reaktivate.
While not perfect yet, work is ongoing to support other controls
for which no native Linux/Unix solutions exist, such
as Apple's QuickTime.
Credit goes to the WINE developers
for providing the ActiveX support. So now that Konqueror can embed
MSIE ActiveX controls, Netscape Communicator plugins (for Linux), any
X window
(through X window parenting), Java applets and any KParts components, and does an excellent job at handling HTML, CSS and JavaScript natively, it seems to me Konqueror is fast becoming the best browser on any platform. Sweet. Read more for the full press release.

 

DATELINE JULY 9, 2001

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

KDE Web Browser Konqueror Gets Activ(eX)ated

Konqueror Embraces ActiveX, Plays Shockwave Movies

July 9, 2001 (The INTERNET).
Nikolas Zimmermann and
Malte Starostik today announced
the availability of reaktivate for
Konqueror, KDE's web browser.
Reaktivate enables Konqueror to embed
ActiveX controls,
such as the popular
Shockwave
movies, for which no native Linux/Unix solution exists. Reaktivate relies
on the
WINE libraries to load and run
ActiveX controls.

With this addition, Konqueror now enables KDE users to take optimal advantage
of sophisticated websites that make use of Microsoft Internet Explorer plugins,
Netscape Communicator
plugins for Linux and Java applets,
as well as KDE plugins designed using KDE's
KParts
technology.

According to Malte, the reason he and Nikolas implemented reaktivate
is rather simple: it broadens the spectrum of web sites accessible
to Konqueror, and it was possible.

Successes and Limitations

Theoretically,
Reaktivate can eventually be used to embed any ActiveX control into Konqueror.
Currently, however, not all ActiveX controls are compatible with reaktivate.
In particular, the Microsoft
Windows Media Player
cannot be installed using reaktivate (though it is not known if a player which is already installed will work with
reaktivate). Thus it is likely there exist other ActiveX controls which
will not yet work with reaktivate.
Work is ongoing to increase compatability with other ActiveX controls,
including the
Apple QuickTime plugin.

So far, however, reaktivate has been successfully tested with the
following ActiveX controls:

ControlStatus
Test-URLScreenshots

Macromedia
Shockwave Flash 5

No known problems.
Click here
[1], [2], [3], [4], and [5]

Macromedia
Shockwave Player 8

Some files require the use of a native msvcrt.dll instead of the
one provided by winelib. The post-installation dialog is functional
but hard to decipher due to drawing problems. Some movies do not
display properly (only black stripes and rects are shown)
Click here
[1]

LivePics
Clicking the "info" button in the toolbar has no result, everything
else works fine.
Click here
[1] and [2]

Note on Security

Install ActiveX controls only from sites that you
trust.

Microsoft's ActiveX technology has often been criticized for weak security.
Those controls are dynamic libraries that are executed exactly like any
other piece of code installed on the user's system. This means they have
full access to the file system, the system registry etc. As a means to
establish the users' trust in the controls a web site wishes to install,
every ActiveX control is cryptographically signed and carries a certificate
issued by an authority known to the web browser (like
VeriSign). A control
that has no signature or no certificate or if they are invalid will not be
installed.

With reaktivate the situation is similar: the installed controls can call
every WinAPI function provided by the WINE libraries and therefore have
access to WINE's registry and all files visible to the WINE installation.
The current implementation of reaktivate will ask the user for
confirmation to install a new control, but it will not check the embedded
certificate and signature. This is due to technical reasons as well as
limited time. Therefore we strongly advise to install controls only from
sites that you trust. To save your files from malicious controls, you might
also consider using this feature only from a seperate user account that
has no access to your main user's files. Reaktivate will not run from the
root account.

Installing Reaktivate

Source code for reaktivate is freely available under a Free, Open Source
license from the
kdenonbeta
module
in
KDE's CVS repository
and its mirrors.
See the KDE website for
information about how to get a module from CVS. You only need
the toplevel, admin and reaktivate directories from kdenonbeta. Before
compiling, get the latest CVS
version of WINE
(a snapshot will likely not be new enough). Next,
apply all patches from reaktivate/patches-for-wine/ against the WINE
sources and build/install WINE. Finally, you can build and install
reaktivate.

Disclaimer: reaktivate is not in any manner sponsored or endorsed
by, affiliated with, or otherwise related to,
Microsoft Corporation.

Thanks to Andreas "Dre" Pour and
Navindra Umanee for assisting in
drafting this release.

Trademarks Notices.
KDE, K Desktop Environment and Konqueror are trademarks of KDE e.V.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Unix is a registered trademark of The Open Group.
Microsoft, ActiveX, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player
are registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
Shockwave is a trademark or registered trademark of Macromedia, Inc. in
the United States and/or other countries.
Netscape and Netscape Communicator are trademarks or registered trademarks
of Netscape Communications Corporation in the United States and other
countries and JavaScript is a trademark of Netscape Communications Corporation.
Apple and Quicktime are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in
the U.S. and other countries.
All other trademarks and copyrights referred to in this announcement are the property of their respective owners.

Dot Categories: 

Comments

by Navindra Umanee (not verified)

I see, so you did not buy the official Mandrake? Or else what is this "basic" Mandrake that you talk about? I only see the Standard Edition and Deluxe Edition here in Montreal stores. Perhaps in your country it is different.

You also seem to not understand that KDE has no control over what Mandrake decides to do. *YOU* do. So talk to Mandrake and get it fixed...

Anyway, I think I already said everything that I wanted, and more, in this conversation, I'm out.

-N.

by Alain (not verified)

> what is this "basic" Mandrake that you talk about? I

Of course it is the download version and also the magazines version. (and be quite, I bought a standard edition before you and -perhaps - before anybody else, the first day of the avalaibility of Mandrake 5.6, in Paris).

I am very surprised by your reaction. I have seen in this site that the KDE team wants to create more configuration tools (as do distribs), so I thought that it was a common wish to hope a KDE whole Konqueror configuration....

by not me (not verified)

>I thought that it was a common wish to hope a KDE whole Konqueror configuration

You misunderstand. Navindra wants Konqueror's Flash and Java to work too, but she is telling you that it is not *KDE's* fault that *Mandrake's* distribution doesn't install Java and Flash by default. If you want Konqueror to have Java and Flash working in Mandrake, you must talk to Mandrake. There is unfortunately nothing KDE can do about it, because Flash and Java are not KDE programs and can't be included with the KDE packages (legal difficulties).

This discussion should be taking place at Mandrakeforum.com, where you would be able to talk to other Mandrake users about this Mandrake-specific problem.

by Alain (not verified)

> There is unfortunately nothing KDE can do about it, because Flash and Java are not KDE programs and can't be included with the KDE packages (legal difficulties).

I don't say that Flash and Java are to be included in KDE packages, I know there are legal difficulties.

I said that the Konqueror team may write some scripts so that any distribution and any advanced user may easily (and in the same way) add Flash and Java to Konqueror so that it will be very simple and transparent (nothing to do) for the end users of distribs.

And I add now that it is perhaps possible that the Konqueror team create a separate package according to legal things so that it installs all the plugins of Konqueror. So if a distrib is only GPLed, the user has only to download and install a rpm (or something like).

I am sure that today a majority of Konqui users don't use Java because it is too difficult to install. Why say
that Shocwave is coming if tomorrow only a minority will install it, for the same reasons ?...

Do you want a Konqueror easy to install (with all things) and everywhere installed in the same way ? Now it is not...

I think it is the problem of KDE, yes.

(knowing that the KDE team wants to do some configuration tools, as distribs, I think that such tools would at first exists for the KDE programs installation, of course...)

by Digger (not verified)

Hi! Have just installed Mandrake 8.2. Im a newbie in this. Got the same problem. Maybe it is a good idea to include at least some kind of popup to give nwebies easy way to install Java and Flash.

by MANUEL PEREZ LOPEZ (not verified)

Ohhhhh!!!!... My new Mandrake 9.0 (update at this date dic-2002) does not work correctly: java and flash are not implement in this distribution in any browsers. I think Mandrake is making BIG mistakes to the newbie Linux users.

(And There are other important bugs)

Bye, Manuel Perez

by domi (not verified)

they aren't "not implemented", you just need to install them yourself. Are you using the free download edition of mdk, i believe that the for pay version comes with these non-free things pre-installed...

by digger (not verified)

Install Netscape. This will solve all the probblems.

by totallynotcool (not verified)

Allow me to rant for a moment. Whenever I do a search for any sort of help with Linux, all I find is a bunch of whining about how hard Linux is. If all you want to do is complain, reformat your hard drive and pony up some cash to Bill Gates. He'll be glad to sell you the latest incarnation of Windows!

I'm the type of person who drives a manual shift transmission in my car because it gives me a certain measure of control - within certain parameters, of course. I'm trying out Linux because I believe that, despite its sharper learning curve, the end result will be ultimatly more satisfying.

I'm only a lowly, undesirable newbie, and I, too, would like to install not only Java in my Mandrake 9.0 operating system, but Java as well. Unfortunatly, I have little or no idea of how to accomplish this remarkable feat. I've been around computers in general for a number of years, even built my own box on a number of occasions as well as tinkered with DOS commands here and there. If any of you Linux gods out there are willing to take a fledgling under their protective wing, so to speak, PLEASE let me know! As for the crybabies out there, a: go back to Microsoft
b: remember to pick up some baby food the next time you go grocery shopping. You obviously need it!

[email protected]

by totallynotcool (not verified)

After re-reading, I meant to say Java and Flash. No need to install Java twice, now is there?

by Alex (not verified)

HI!!!

I have SuSE 9.1 and java works fine with Konqueror. I cannot say the same about flash that works when it wants!!

I see that: if I open my home page in a tab (my home page contains a flash animation) i cannot see the animation. If I open, in another tab, the home page.. there I can see the animation.

After this I can see flash animation until I cose Konqueror.

Anyone has a reply for this??

Excuse me for my english...
ALEX

by Eric Windisch (not verified)

This will really please the x86 users of Linux, however this will still not make ActiveX available on non-x86 architectures. Great job, shame it is (and can) only satisfy a small percentage of users.

It would be really neat if there was a hack for Wine to run Windows applications compiled for x86 under non-x86 architectures without emulation.. of course that would be asking for a lot :)

--
Eric Windisch

by not me (not verified)

>It would be really neat if there was a hack for Wine to run Windows applications compiled for x86 under non-x86 architectures without emulation.. of course that would be asking for a lot :)

It would be asking the impossible. Emulation is required between different CPU architectures.

Now, if you were a l33t h4x0r, you might port Wine itself to a different CPU architecture, allowing the API to run natively, and using an emulation solution such as Bochs (http://bochs.sourceforge.net) to run the x86 binary code. Not sure if it's really possible, or even worthwile to implement, but it sounds cool :-)

by Eric Windisch (not verified)

Actually.. Wine was (being?) ported to PowerPC.

Well, one of the reasons you need an emulator to run Amiga apps on your x86 box is because there is no Amiga API implimented for your operating system on the x86 box. If you have an implimentation of the API, you can emulate a CPU and run applications without having to have a complete VM.

It would actually be possible to run Windows applications on PowerPC via any platform Wine supports.. without having a complete VM.

I never said it would be easy...

by Eric windisch (not verified)

Oh, btw..

How do you think that MacOS9 on a PowerPC machine runs applications written for MacOS7 compiled for a m68k processor? :)

by Andy Richardson (not verified)

If I remember correctly the PowerPC evolved from the IBM POWER architecture and was also developed by Motorolla, it could very well be that the 68000 op-codes form a subset of the PPC op-codes. This is certainly true for the POWER/POWERPC machines, which allows AIX to run on different architectures (this is not QUITE true, as AIX enquires as to the platform its running on and uses architecture optimised routines in the kernel, using a branch table). But the op-codes that can be used by the IBM RS/6000 compiler used for user space programs has to ensure that it will run on both. So this sort of thing is not new. The x86->PPC conversion is totally different.

Andy

by Bijan Soleymani (not verified)

No powerpc and 68k are completely different. The only way to run programs from one on the other is through emulation.

by Bijan Soleymani (not verified)

No powerpc and 68k are completely different. The only way to run programs from one on the other is through emulation.

by Timothy R. Butler (not verified)

Thank-you a ton Nikolas and Malte! This is really an exciting and and amazing accomplishment! Now I just have to try reaktivate.

BTW, does anyone know if perhaps this will be integrated into the main CVS for KDE 2.3?

thanks,
Tim

by Konqulator (not verified)

Followers, not leaders. Arguments for this are now people with Linux can do Linux and winblowz, and it costs less when users switch etc.... However, to beat your enemies, one shouldn't marry their daughter/son or marry into their family and hope to inherit your way to success. Therefore, do you think that people will stop using the supported activex junk? Or, they'll keep using it more and allowing micros~1 to set the standards? Looks like you are to follow micros~1 in standards, just like everyone else, not set them.

Why is it that micros~1 are able to charge for trash, while you can't even get enough users by giving away your work?

---
Call me a troll or what you wish, but you entitle my opinion, regardless.

by <b><i>for a blo... (not verified)

what's next, to port the BSOD and GPF's ?

by Navindra Umanee (not verified)

Dear l33t hax0r,

If you find any exploits, let me know too please.

-N.

by Darian Lanx (not verified)

me too
Feel free to mail them to my office address
[email protected] or [email protected]

by kde-user (not verified)

One question about Konq.

Does Konq have the ability to pre-cache links on the page that you are visiting so that if you click on one of the links, that site has been giving some time to load already and you wait less.

by stephan (not verified)

It's fairly interesting. When something is done in sparetime and absolutely free others aren't allowed to critizise the work. Those who dare are said to be flamers and co. This is amusing. Where is the freedom you talk about all the time?!

regards

stephan

by not me (not verified)

>When something is done in sparetime and absolutely free others aren't allowed to critizise the work.

On the contrary, constructive criticism is welcomed. People who criticize a project based on unfounded assumptions and poorly-thought-out arguments get what they deserve.

And trolls are just dumb.

The people who are criticizing this work just for existing (example: what next, port the BSOD?) are being trolls. You don't have to use this, it probably won't even be included in KDE proper because of its dependence on WINE.

Besides, they *are* being allowed to criticize. No one is censoring them, and their views are being heard. The fact that they are being called trolls and flamers doesn't inhibit their freedom of speech.

by Timothy R. Butler (not verified)

I see people criticise all the time (without flames back at 'em). The key things are:

1.) Does the criticism help?
2.) Is it really logical or is it a very narrow view point?
3.) Are the posters mean or insulting to those who worked hard on this project?

Now I might note that on one post who shall go nameless's posts last night he took a narrow view saying that if it didn't work everywhere, and just how *HE* wanted it, it shouldn't be on the dot. Thus he received flames.
The other poster, who notme mentioned to you said something about porting BSOD's next. Any logical person knows that the developers didn't port ActiveX merely to open up problems, and so this was obviously insulting.

When someone works in their freetime to do something like this, they certainly don't deserve, mindless, narrow minded, or down right insulting posts, don't you agree?

-Tim

by Martin Seiler (not verified)

Thanks, this is great.
We have been waiting a long time for
shockwave on linux.

regards M.Seiler
http://www.shocktime.de

Which are the limitations which make that programmers didn't make linux-native shockwave plugin yet?
Are there legal limitations?

by jari soderholm (not verified)

There is one native FLASH implementation for Linux

Check this out:
http://www.swift-tools.com/Flash/

Jari

by Carlos Morales (not verified)

Flash its NOT a shockwave-plug in shockwave uses director, its used for applications, games, tutorials, but there is not a linux-native shockwave player (as i know the only one that support shockwave its crossover plugin) but it is really slow, because it uses emulation to use shockwave for windows on linux, any way,

i think if a lot of ppl its really organized, can ask macromedia for some technical information to make a shockwave plugin for linux community, of course, it wouldn't be really suported by macromedia,

a lot, because i've sent some mails to macromedia, and there was not response, some ppl have had a response from macromedia saying that they have no plans to make a linux native shockwave plugin,

unless the free community develop its own plugin it think there is no way to have a Director shockwave player plug in for linux

by Scott (not verified)

This is good. Most of the security holes in activeX aren't applicable for linux anyway plus it's a PATCH. No one is forcing you to apply it! If you don't like activeX don't use it. Don't yell at the KDE League about progress. this isn't going to do the impossible, it's just a nifty hack. Don't whine about being insulted, wine NEVER ran on non x86 archs.
Jeeze.. some people.. can't appreciate anything. Just because you don't like activeX doesn't mean everyone else doesn't.

by Roger (not verified)

I'm a newbye on linux and i'm trying to install reAktivate, I can't undestand why Macromedia doesn't make a Shockwave player for linux, but that's not the problem, the problem is, how can i compile reAktivate? You will be probably laughting a lot now, but i think the documentation(if you call this documentation) of how to install reAktivate is horrible. I installed wine with the patch, but now i don't know how to compile the reAktivate source, can anyone help me please?
I don't know if reAktivate works fine, but I think that the documentation have to be improved a lot, because not all the users that use linux are gurus.

Thank's a lot

[royger]

by newbie (not verified)

i dont even get how to get it from cvs. they could write a commandline, but no.. "get it from cvs".

by wfyk (not verified)

hey i figured out how 2 do it, u must download e toplevel kdenonbeta directory and the kde-common directory to do it

e.g.

cvs co -R kdenonbeta/reaktivate
cvs co -l kdenonbeta
cvs co -R kde-common
cd kdenonbeta
ln -s ../kde-common/admin
make -f Makefile.cvs

by jennie (not verified)

=( And how/where do you do that from?

I am a total newbie to this. Lame-mans terms and links would be MUCH appreciated.

by Gando (not verified)

Hi

is it dead, or is there a new project with the same goal?

If somebody hear me ... please tell me :=)

Thx