bcooksley wrote:@StopTheFail: Please stop being negative. Simply because Konqueror does not work for the sites you frequent does not mean it doesn't work for others, and the sites they frequent.

john_hudson's comment was in response to wtbennington's question of:
"Why does KDE focus on creating its own applications instead of using other
open sourse apps and make it easier just to integrate them into KDE."

and then wtbennington asserted that
"Konqueror - which REALLY SUCKS for web browsing"

In the light of that, john_hudson was clearly being one of the "Well it works for me" crowd, and totally ignoring the real world landscape that Konqueror needs to operate in, in order to be considered a functional web browser.

Don't get me wrong, negativity for negativities own sake does nothing for no-one, but falsely restricting the conditions and environment upon which Konqueror needs to successfully function in to a tiny sub-set of the internet, and then boldly claiming:
"I use it everyday in my work accessing sites across the world and it is quicker
and more reliable than any other browser I have used."
does nothing for his credibility.

Lets hope that isn't the standard that the Konqueror devs are happy to have met, and accordingly stop developing its capabilities any further.

Hans wrote:By the way, according to Linuxquestions.org Amarok is by far the most popular media player application for Linux. Of course the results aren't 100 % accurate, but give a pretty good indication.

You forgot to say Amarok 1.4.

Not sure the result would have been the same for Amarok 2.
Many users have left Amarok on KDE4, because were expecting Amarok 1.4 ported on KDE4.

L_V wrote:

Hans wrote:By the way, according to Linuxquestions.org Amarok is by far the most popular media player application for Linux. Of course the results aren't 100 % accurate, but give a pretty good indication.

You forgot to say Amarok 1.4.

Not sure the result would have been the same for Amarok 2.
Many users have left Amarok on KDE4, because were expecting Amarok 1.4 ported on KDE4.

It doesn't change the fact that Amarok is more popular than Songbird (in this particular poll).

Background on why insisting on Amarok 1.4 is that, for example: http://ubuntu-blog.com/how-to-install-a ... ubuntu-904

You can read the comments to understand that a vote made in 2008, was in 2008.

StopTheFail wrote:Lets hope that isn't the standard that the Konqueror devs are happy to have met, and accordingly stop developing its capabilities any further.

StopTheFail, please remember the KDE Code of Conduct. This negative behavior is very detrimental to the discussion.

einar wrote:

StopTheFail wrote:Lets hope that isn't the standard that the Konqueror devs are happy to have met, and accordingly stop developing its capabilities any further.

StopTheFail, please remember the KDE Code of Conduct. This negative behavior is very detrimental to the discussion.

I'm very interested in the psychology behind that kind of a reaction to what I've said.

There is an obvious streak of "don't look, don't see" in some people when the subject of KDE's weaknesses are concerned. I personally would like to see a more realistic view of KDE's current state of usability, and hopefully more reliability would follow.

Many in the Linux community like to point fingers at Microsoft Windows inadequacies, yet refuse to look at Linux with the same standards. I find this frustrating for several reasons.

Instead of continually shooting the messenger, it would be fantastic to take seriously the statements made by end users with a view of making the software appropriate for their use.

We have had the situation for a few years now where the Linux desktop looks achingly close to being usable by the general masses, but then never gets pushed the final mile needed to make this a reality. This "by developers, for developers" attitude has produced a desktop that is usable by developers and those more technical end users, but still cant be pushed out for everyone else to use.

While Linux has quite a decent userbase now, and doesn't necessarily need to become 10% or more of the landscape out there, it would still be nice to see it gain good market share.

Lets hope that with 4.4 that comes even closer to reality, but for it to, with the limited resources available, a sensible attitude needs to be taken to where and what to spend time on. Developing Konqueror to be a Firefox competitor doesn't seem to make sense to me, and seems to make more sense to integrate Firefox into KDE so that the developer time can be spent of more important things. My comments in this thread are motivated by that thought process. How that can be considered harmful to the debate, well I just don't get it.

bcooksley wrote:@StopTheFail: Please stop being negative. Simply because Konqueror does not work for the sites you frequent does not mean it doesn't work for others, and the sites they frequent.

Dear Administrator, please tell me why we have this forum?? Just for how is KDE 4 the best? If is this what you want than we don't need to have a forum.

BTW: I agree 100% what member StoTheFail wrote! and many friends which have to used KDE3 and many of them switch to Xfce and GNOME agree too.

StopTheFail wrote:I'm very interested in the psychology behind that kind of a reaction to what I've said.

You mean ridiculing other posters with different experiences than yours, stating that they don't have any credibility anymore because their use cases don't match yours?

I agree, interesting psychology behind that kind of reaction. What did the moderators take so long to remind you of the CoC?

StopTheFail wrote:Developing Konqueror to be a Firefox competitor doesn't seem to make sense to me, and seems to make more sense to integrate Firefox into KDE so that the developer time can be spent of more important things.

You are basing your comments on the misunderstanding that Konqueror is being developed as a Firefox competitor.

Developing a browser is mainly a side effect of developing a web render engine, something that is an absolute requirement for any platform.
If you have a look, basically all othr major platforms other than Microsoft Windows are now using some variant of KHTML, mostly in the form of WebKit, including their respective browser: GNOME uses or is moving to use WebKit (also in its default browser Epiphany), Apple is using WebKit (also in its default browser Safari) and Google also using WebKit (as part of ChromeOS and browser).

The problem of Gecko is that its development is tightly bound to the development of one application: Firefox. Which is good for Firefox but unfortunate for anyone else.
(Interested readers might try to find the interviews of Safari/WebKit developers in which they explain why basing their work on KHTML was the better choice despite them being long-term Mozilla contributors).

It would certainly make sense to improve the integration of a popular application such as Firefox (assuming Mozilla's stance on platform integration has changed), but there is still the major requirement to maintain and improve a render component for all non-browsing use cases (e.g. email, help viewers).

anda_skoa wrote:

StopTheFail wrote:I'm very interested in the psychology behind that kind of a reaction to what I've said.

You mean ridiculing other posters with different experiences than yours, stating that they don't have any credibility anymore because their use cases don't match yours?

I agree, interesting psychology behind that kind of reaction. What did the moderators take so long to remind you of the CoC?

And here we have a perfect example of what I'm talking about.

The general, a normal use case, would be accessing a wide range of web applications, from facebook, youtube, twitter, slashdot, hulu, etc, etc. and therefore, for a browser to be considered usable to the general population, would need to be able to work with them to at least a fair degree. There is no point in restricting the internet to a tiny sub-set, and then boldly proclaiming, "Yay, Konqueror is a great, useful and functional web browser."

In fact I the user to whom I initially responded to, john_hudson, made this comment;
"I use it everyday in my work accessing sites across the world and it is quicker and more reliable than any other browser I have used."
He was responding to the post previous to his in which it was remarked that Konqueror sucked.

The making of that comment by john_hudson suggests to me, that he felt that the statement wasn't valid, and indeed Konqueror was a grate browser. If john_hudson felt that Konqueror was only usable for very "light weight" websites, he likely wouldn't of posted the comment he did.

I'm suggesting that Konqueror needs a lot of work to be considered viable to the general population, and that the effort would be better spent integrating an already great browser into the KDE desktop, and then spending the time saved on other more important things.

You obviously don't feel this way.

When you say
"You mean ridiculing other posters with different experiences than yours, stating that they don't have any credibility anymore because their use cases don't match yours?"

I think it would've been more acurate to say something along the lines of
"You mean ridiculing other posters with different experiences than the general use case for a web browser."

anda_skoa wrote:

StopTheFail wrote:Developing Konqueror to be a Firefox competitor doesn't seem to make sense to me, and seems to make more sense to integrate Firefox into KDE so that the developer time can be spent of more important things.

You are basing your comments on the misunderstanding that Konqueror is being developed as a Firefox competitor.

Developing a browser is mainly a side effect of developing a web render engine, something that is an absolute requirement for any platform.
If you have a look, basically all othr major platforms other than Microsoft Windows are now using some variant of KHTML, mostly in the form of WebKit, including their respective browser: GNOME uses or is moving to use WebKit (also in its default browser Epiphany), Apple is using WebKit (also in its default browser Safari) and Google also using WebKit (as part of ChromeOS and browser).

The problem of Gecko is that its development is tightly bound to the development of one application: Firefox. Which is good for Firefox but unfortunate for anyone else.
(Interested readers might try to find the interviews of Safari/WebKit developers in which they explain why basing their work on KHTML was the better choice despite them being long-term Mozilla contributors).

It would certainly make sense to improve the integration of a popular application such as Firefox (assuming Mozilla's stance on platform integration has changed), but there is still the major requirement to maintain and improve a render component for all non-browsing use cases (e.g. email, help viewers).

Konqueror can already render the help pages, etc with enough success not to warrant much attention.

From your comment I take it that the Konqueror devs are in fact not trying to expand its functionality to be able to be used as a general purpose browser. This is good news as I think their time could be better spent elsewhere.

StopTheFail wrote:The general, a normal use case, would be accessing a wide range of web applications, from facebook, youtube, twitter, slashdot, hulu, etc, etc. and therefore, for a browser to be considered usable to the general population, would need to be able to work with them to at least a fair degree.

True, but how do you know that the poster who said that Konqueror "it is quicker and more reliable than any other browser I have used" doesn't do just that? In fact, the wording suggests that he does even if he doesn't specify exactly which sites he frequents.

StopTheFail wrote:The making of that comment by john_hudson suggests to me, that he felt that the statement wasn't valid, and indeed Konqueror was a grate browser.

For him, yes. I saw nothing to suggest that he claimed it was the best browser for everyone. And even if he had, he is entitled to say so without being told that his opinion is ridiculous.

You don't have to like Konqueror, or KDE in general. You are, however, required to treat other members of the forum with respect. Even when you don't agree with them. John Hudson's POV is just as valid as yours, or mine, or anyone elses. Calling a comment ridiculous is uncalled for, and is unproductive to boot.

StopTheFail wrote:Konqueror can already render the help pages, etc with enough success not to warrant much attention.

It does indeed, but it wouldn't be able to do so without the rendering engine Andy was talking about. Neither would Kontact (html-mails for instance).

Kryten2X4B wrote:

StopTheFail wrote:The general, a normal use case, would be accessing a wide range of web applications, from facebook, youtube, twitter, slashdot, hulu, etc, etc. and therefore, for a browser to be considered usable to the general population, would need to be able to work with them to at least a fair degree.

True, but how do you know that the poster who said that Konqueror "it is quicker and more reliable than any other browser I have used" doesn't do just that? In fact, the wording suggests that he does even if he doesn't specify exactly which sites he frequents.

He wouldn't be using Konqueror for sites like the ones I mentioned, as it doesn't work with them. If he meant sites that are very light-weight or Web 1.0, than yes, he certainly could use it for them, but the way his comment is framed, I don't think that's what he was getting that. In fact he seemed to be rebuffing wtbennington's comment that Konqueror wasn't much chop.

Kryten2X4B wrote:

StopTheFail wrote:The making of that comment by john_hudson suggests to me, that he felt that the statement wasn't valid, and indeed Konqueror was a grate browser.

For him, yes. I saw nothing to suggest that he claimed it was the best browser for everyone. And even if he had, he is entitled to say so without being told that his opinion is ridiculous.

But the context that his comment was made in suggests that he feels wtbennington's comment is not valid. If john_hudson felt that Konqueror was good for light-weight sites, but not for general use sites, then I doubt he would've responded in the way he did.

Kryten2X4B wrote:You don't have to like Konqueror, or KDE in general. You are, however, required to treat other members of the forum with respect. Even when you don't agree with them. John Hudson's POV is just as valid as yours, or mine, or anyone elses. Calling a comment ridiculous is uncalled for, and is unproductive to boot.

John Hudson has just as much right as anyone else to comment on the state of KDE, and this right I myself will always uphold, but it doesn't necessarily follow that his comments are as valid or correct as anyone else's. I guess this is for each user to decide for themselves.

I do like the general direction of KDE and will shift back to using it as soon as it stablises, but I am surprised by the amount of people giving its current level of stability a "free pass" that they probably wouldn't give to other operating systems.

Kryten2X4B wrote:

StopTheFail wrote:Konqueror can already render the help pages, etc with enough success not to warrant much attention.

It does indeed, but it wouldn't be able to do so without the rendering engine Andy was talking about. Neither would Kontact (html-mails for instance).

Are you suggesting that embedding Firefox or Chrome into kmail, etc. would be imposable, or just much harder than correcting Konquerors current abilities?

StopTheFail wrote:There is an obvious streak of "don't look, don't see" in some people when the subject of KDE's weaknesses are concerned. I personally would like to see a more realistic view of KDE's current state of usability, and hopefully more reliability would follow.

Many in the Linux community like to point fingers at Microsoft Windows inadequacies, yet refuse to look at Linux with the same standards. I find this frustrating for several reasons.

Instead of continually shooting the messenger, it would be fantastic to take seriously the statements made by end users with a view of making the software appropriate for their use.

I haven't seen this at all. Quite the opposite, we have an entire forum, the brainstorm forum, designed specifically to point out inadequacies with KDE. The people on this forum, particularly the staff, are very involved and strongly encourage people to participate. Further, in the thread where people actually offer constructive complaints, instead of just "KDE 4 sucks", generally speaking several forum members go through point by point and explain the details of the issues, asking the person to submit bug reports for valid issues. The KDE developers, likewise, seem very open to the opinion of the community. They have implemented a lot of things they were not originally inclined to do because the community wanted it. This notably includes the classic launcher and per-desktop activities.

This idea that people on this forum or KDE or Linux developers ignore complaints and inadequacies of their software does not match with what I have seen at all.

However, not every complaint is going to be fixed immediately. There are several issues at work. One is that distributions often add their own bugs, both in KDE and elsewhere. Users often come here blaming things on KDE that are clearly not KDE's fault, or things that were broken by distributions (either through modifications of the original KDE or through using unstable software where it shouldn't be used). KDE can't fix those. Second, developing software takes a lot of work, not every bug is going to be fixed instantly, not every feature is going to make it into the next release. But every user wants their pet bug fixed right now. That's simply not possible, there is a finite amount of time available. This is even more so for feature requests, which cannot be implemented until at least the next release, 6 months away. People have to learn to be a little bit patient. Finally, there are features that simply won't be implemented, either because they are infeasible or because developers have decided for one reason or another they are not a good idea. A lot of people will not accept this, they insist that KDE developers must do exactly what that particular user wants without question. The problem is that a single user is just that, a single user. KDE developers have to look out for the interests of the entire KDE community, and can't bend to the whim of every single user or else KDE would be a horrible mess (as many parts of KDE 3 ended up being). But certain people keep repeating the same thing over and over no matter how many times we point out that it isn't going to happen. These sorts of people feel entitled, for some reason, to have everyone roll over backwards to do exactly what they say when they say, and they get upset when that doesn't happen. That isn't how the system works.

There is a group of people who take this even further, with basically the mindset "KDE lacks feature xyz that I want, or hasn't fixed bug xyz, or made design decision xyz that I don't like, therefore KDE sucks and no one should use it." You could say it is the exact opposite of the mindset you are complaining about, but similarly not at all grounded in reality. People seem to not be able to understand that not everyone has the same experience that they have had, that not everyone wants the exact same things or uses the software in the exact same way, and therefore if they have problems the software is unusable by anyone. I notice you were very quick to criticize someone who generalized their good experiences to the software being good for everyone (or at least that is how you interpreted, I interpret the statement very differently), yet you don't seem at all inclined to criticize the person that comment was made in response to, namely that because konqueror does not work for his or her use case therefore konqueror sucks for everyone. These two perspective are just as flawed, yet you only seem to have a problem with one of them.

StopTheFail wrote:We have had the situation for a few years now where the Linux desktop looks achingly close to being usable by the general masses, but then never gets pushed the final mile needed to make this a reality. This "by developers, for developers" attitude has produced a desktop that is usable by developers and those more technical end users, but still cant be pushed out for everyone else to use.

While Linux has quite a decent userbase now, and doesn't necessarily need to become 10% or more of the landscape out there, it would still be nice to see it gain good market share.

I don't see this mentality much at all. It is a common complaint, but I have seen little evidence for it myself. On the contary, a lot of thought, time, effort, and work has gone into making linux in general and KDE in particular suitable for everyday users, and in increasing its market share. To ignore all this work, claiming it doesn't even exist, is pretty insulting to all the people who have spent the effort to try to figure this out. You must recall we are dealing with a competitor who has pretty much complete control over almost all software and hardware distribution mechanisms. Just making Linux better isn't going to be enough.

StopTheFail wrote:Lets hope that with 4.4 that comes even closer to reality, but for it to, with the limited resources available, a sensible attitude needs to be taken to where and what to spend time on. Developing Konqueror to be a Firefox competitor doesn't seem to make sense to me, and seems to make more sense to integrate Firefox into KDE so that the developer time can be spent of more important things. My comments in this thread are motivated by that thought process. How that can be considered harmful to the debate, well I just don't get it.

The debate has been done, nothing you have said has been remotely news to anyone who has been watching KDE for more than a few months, certainly not for the konqueror developers. They are not suddenly going to see the light (from your perspective) now that the same arguments have been repeated for the thousandth time. You aren't going to change anyone's mind, so why keep going on and on and on and on about it? That isn't productive, it is just a waste of everyone's time. If you had something new to say, we would be happy to listen, but you don't.

StopTheFail wrote:But the context that his comment was made in suggests that he feels wtbennington's comment is not valid. If john_hudson felt that Konqueror was good for light-weight sites, but not for general use sites, then I doubt he would've responded in the way he did.

Once again, I disagree. I think the point of the comment was simply to point out that konqueror does not suck for everyone. This is a valid point, as I said earlier. Saying that because konqueror sucks for the web pages a certain user likes, that it must therefore suck for everyone, is just as flawed as what you are criticizing yet you seem to have no problem with that statement.

StopTheFail wrote:I do like the general direction of KDE and will shift back to using it as soon as it stablises, but I am surprised by the amount of people giving its current level of stability a "free pass" that they probably wouldn't give to other operating systems.

I am not sure it is necessarily a "free pass". Yes, KDE has problems that other operating systems and desktop environments do not have. It also has a ton of benefits compared to other operating systems. People can weigh the benefits and limitations of a set of software and see which comes out ahead for them. For software that lacks strong benefits for a certain user, that user will be less tolerant of flaws. If there are major benefits for certain users, they will be more likely to tolerate flaws. This is not some sort of blindness to flaws or ignoring flaws, it is simple economics. Everything has a cost and a benefit, you go with whatever has the biggest benefit-to-cost ratio for you. That doesn't mean you don't want to see the bugs fixed, don't report, them don't ask developers about them. It just means you report the bugs and get on with your life.

StopTheFail wrote:There is no point in restricting the internet to a tiny sub-set, and then boldly proclaiming, "Yay, Konqueror is a great, useful and functional web browser."

We don't know if john_hudson was artifically limiting the subset of websites. In fact his comment suggests that the subset he was commenting on includes all his web related activities.
If, by his experience, Konqueror is a great webbrowser, then there is nothing ridiculous in it.

I currently can't come up with a site that does not work for me. Some do not work perfectly but I still think that Konqueror is a great browser because of the experience on all those sites where it does.

StopTheFail wrote:I'm suggesting that Konqueror needs a lot of work to be considered viable to the general population, and that the effort would be better spent integrating an already great browser into the KDE desktop, and then spending the time saved on other more important things.

You obviously don't feel this way.

I don't because these are orthogonal concept, independent options.
As I wrote, it would be nice to have popular applications better integrated assuming the application's vendor supports that (Mozilla for example tries to avoid that to have the same "experience" everywhere).

But as I wrote as well, it is important to not lose focus and forget that the browser is just one application displaying web content.
People working "on Konqueror" from a layman's perspective are actually almost exclusively working on things that are not specific to Konqueror but benefit a whole range of current and future applications.

I can imagine that it is difficult to understand probably due to Firefox being such a stand-alone product, but most browser are actually just an application housing a web component used in all kinds of other applications and thus work on these components is necessary independent of other applications existing for a few of the use cases these components are deployed for.

StopTheFail wrote:"You mean ridiculing other posters with different experiences than yours, stating that they don't have any credibility anymore because their use cases don't match yours?"

I think it would've been more acurate to say something along the lines of
"You mean ridiculing other posters with different experiences than the general use case for a web browser."

I don't think there is a difference. The general use case for a web browser is to display and allow interaction with content served by a web server.
Which is obviously what the other user is successfully using Konqueror for. Might not match your experience but doe not invalidate his. Especially since he specifically mentioned that he has been using it successfully.

StopTheFail wrote:Konqueror can already render the help pages, etc with enough success not to warrant much attention.

Help is just one of the use cases of a web render engine. People come up with new uses cases all the time, e.g. when Amarok started to offer embedded Wikipedia information in its context view.

StopTheFail wrote:From your comment I take it that the Konqueror devs are in fact not trying to expand its functionality to be able to be used as a general purpose browser.

Right. Because it already is being used as a general purpose browser.

StopTheFail wrote:This is good news as I think their time could be better spent elsewhere.

Exactly!
Which is why a lot of engineers from a lot of projects and companies are working together on software that can not only be used as a web browser.

Cheers,
_

StopTheFail wrote:He wouldn't be using Konqueror for sites like the ones I mentioned, as it doesn't work with them.

I know there were just examples but still:

facebook - works for me, although it's possible that there a specific fb-apps that don't. I'm on facebook right now using Konqueror as a matter of fact.
youtube - Works. That fb-page mentioned is playing an embedded youtube-clip. It works as a "standalone" page too.
twitter . No problems as far as I can see.
slashdot - Seems to work.
hulu - can't check since I'm not in the U.S.

Now, it's of course possible that there are certain places of those sites that do not work but I haven't run into any. Could you give a specific situation where Konqueror can't handle say Slashdot?

Otherwise I have to conclude that my Konqueror (version 4.3.2) is delusional and run those sites even though it can't...

StopTheFail wrote:If he meant sites that are very light-weight or Web 1.0, than yes, he certainly could use it for them, but the way his comment is framed, I don't think that's what he was getting that. In fact he seemed to be rebuffing wtbennington's comment that Konqueror wasn't much chop.

I thought he was saying it doesn't suck for everyone, and that it's unfair to claim it's worthless.

StopTheFail wrote:John Hudson has just as much right as anyone else to comment on the state of KDE, and this right I myself will always uphold, but it doesn't necessarily follow that his comments are as valid or correct as anyone else's.

True, but even if they're factually wrong it doesn't follow that it's warranted to call it ridiculous. Instead, say _why_ you think he is wrong and under what circumstances.

StopTheFail wrote:Are you suggesting that embedding Firefox or Chrome into kmail, etc. would be imposable, or just much harder than correcting Konquerors current abilities?

It's not impossible. It just hasn't been done. Well, with the exception of a webkit "plugin" that in my experience is rather buggy. Still, Chrome uses webkit so if the plugin was less buggy it would essentially mean that the Chrome-engine could be embedded in kmail if the user chooses to use it. And I guess you know that webkit is based upon code written for KDE?