Two days ago I installed Opensuse 11.1 beta 5 on my main laptop, and so far I am very happy with the KDE4 experience. Previously I have tried the latest Mandriva and Kubuntu and was left with a love/hate feeling, I was loving most of the new features in KDE4 but hating both the frequent crashes and the poor integration with KDE3 applications (Kile is a must for me and there is no KDE4 version yet). I must congratulate Opensuse on their approach for 11.1 version, they wanted to provide the best user experience with a majority of KDE4 apps and some essential (not ported yet) KDE3 apps.

I have been using Pardus/KDE3 for almost 1 year now, and after using Opensuse 11.1 I am impressed with many KDE4 features and applications, but the most application I am impressed with is Konqueror as a web browser. To be fair I have never really used Konqueror as a web browser in KDE3. Mainly for two reasons, under Windows I was already using Firefox, also Firefox was always set as the default web browser in most of the distros I have used. So I can't really compare Konqueror 3 and 4.

Firefox under KDE/Linux always behaved poor, I never came to like it. One of the biggest problems I had with is getting it to display good fonts on my laptop screen. Other problems include, getting it to integrate well with the KDE envy, speed, random crashes, memory, flash, can't open many tabs and the other problems we all faced. I must admit I almost spend the same amount of time on customising my Linux box as getting Firefox to behave. I don't think there is an article on the Internet that involves Firefox use under KDE/Linux that I have not read Also, I followed the Qt-Firefox integration stories closely before discovering that they are only dreams. Actually, the only application that I didn't like under KDE/Linux is Firefox. Opera was not an option as it does not display Arabic fonts well. I mainly use Latex for my text processing needs, also OpenOffice is a decent application and I never had major problems with it. Of course, all the KDE applications in general give me a pleasant experience, ranging from Kontact, Kile, Amarok to KAlarm and KShutDown.

The web is one of the most important factors in the average user experience, for myself I rate the whole desktop + desktop applications as half of the experience and the other half goes for the browser. Firefox currently have the biggest share of users for an open source browser. But I can see this changing quickly, Google chrome is a good example, many of my friends switched to Chrome after using Firefox for years. People just want the best and fastest browser. I don't feel that the future looks good for Firefox under Linux, actually I think that Mozilla don't care about Linux anymore, they just want to focus on Windows/Mac and make money.

I believe with the right strategy Konqueror can become the best open source browser. Which takes me to the point of this post on how we should give wings to Konqueror and make it fly. History has shown us that the popularity/success of a software does not always relate to the source code. A software can be badly designed with bad source code but still be the most used. MS is a big example on how a good marketed software takes the biggest market share. Konqueror lacks good marketing much more than any technical issues. I suggest the following to better market Konqueror.

1) Konqueror needs a separate nicely designed domain which include, information, tips, downloads, easy access to plug-ins. The site www.konqueror.org is outdated and currently not very useful.
2) Good user/developer documentation.
3) Static binary builds for Windows/Mac and even Gnome. The current KDE Windows/Mac installers situation is not suitable, most people won't download many things just to run a browser!!! It is very important to get Konqueror running well easily in non native KDE platforms. More Konqueror users will result in better support for it from web designers. Also, it will attract more plug-ins contributors and hopefully developers.
4) Konqueror should not have out of the box file management capabilities for non native KDE environments (Windows,Mac and Gnome). The web itself is important enough to focus on. I am very happy dolphin got created as it will decrease the pressure on Konqueror.

Although the work on Plasma is great and very important, much more focus should go to the browser as it might be the best way to attract more users/developers to KDE.

I totally agree with you.
Moreover, I suggest to integrate KGetHotStuff in the Konqueror to make getting new themes, plugins and Icons more initiative like firefox.

Zayed wrote:I totally agree with you.
Moreover, I suggest to integrate KGetHotStuff in the Konqueror to make getting new themes, plugins and Icons more initiative like firefox.

I support this to, easy plugin system for konqueror is a most have if it want to conquer the browsers. Themes isn't that important because it has to follow system settings.

Agree 100% on all of your points and integrating KGetHotStuff. The need for extensions is one of the biggest things holding Konqueror back. Why is it so hard to find extensions? Why aren't there more extensions? I can't even have a simple cookie button or Flash/Java button in Konqueror like CookieSafe & NoScript in Firefox and that's very discouraging.

The Cookies button people seem to want is already there, you just have to edit the toolbar. Follow the instructions I provided here

These features need to be more easy to find, and the toolbar support has some nasty bugs in it as well. ( Clicking apply in the Configure Toolbars dialog will disable all other toolbars except Main, Location and Bookmarks. You also cannot remove any items by default )

I agree with the KGetHotStuff or another easy plugin system as it will be great in Konqueror.

I was also thinking that a development model such as that of Amarok will be better suited for Konqueror, since they don't have to follow the offcial KDE releases.

I am inrested to hear the opnion of Konqueror developers on the thread.

kaismh wrote:I was also thinking that a development model such as that of Amarok will be better suited for Konqueror, since they don't have to follow the offcial KDE releases.

I think this is a really good idea. AFAIK konqueror is not necessary for using KDE 4, because there is dolphin. So I think konqueror does not even have to be placed in kdebase/apps.

Konqueror has always been a bit of a bulky app for me, and I've only ever used it when I needed a GUI to browse my networked folders. If it worked for more websites I would definitely use it more.

I totally agree, Konqueror is really great, but it currently lacks support for many, many websites. I think the KHTML developers should consider merging Webkit code into KHTML more actively, especially when it comes to JavaScript.

blueget wrote:I totally agree, Konqueror is really great, but it currently lacks support for many, many websites. I think the KHTML developers should consider merging Webkit code into KHTML more actively, especially when it comes to JavaScript.

They already do that !! They try to get what they can from webkit (SVG + CSS 3 + ..etc) The only thing KHTML miss right now is contentEditable/designMode implementation (they have started to implement it but not yet finished ).

Konqueror needs a strong contributed community (developers and users).

Oh, didn't know that the were actually doing that. What I did know is that KHTML is very active, because if it wasn't my computer wouldn't have to recompile it daily when updating my trunk install .