Hi all

Now that KDE/KWin supports tabbed windows, how can I configure Konqueror (or any other Qt browser for that matter) to use Kwin tabbing instead of its own.

My general guess would be
1. Disabling of native tabs in the application and forcing all new pages to open in a new window
2. Configuring KWin to automatically group the tabs together... thereby having a single window with a tabbed title bar.
3. Configuring the task manager to group the different Konqueror windows (only) either as a list of windows (appearing as tabs) or just to the Konqueror window group.

A screenshot of what I'm trying to achieve.

I don't think this is possible at this time, however the elements needed to support this are present, simply a window manager specification to enable use of it, and support in Qt would be all that would be required.

Actually, I believe all of that is possible, except the disabling of Konqueror's native tabs (I do remember seeing a setting for kwin to group similar applications as tabs in a single window). You'll just need to manage the open in tab vs. window settings in Konqueror (refresh some habits). Otherwise do what you proposed and you can get the desired outcome.

Of course, you won't find any setting to use kwin tabbing instead of application's native tabbing. That probably isn't going to change because you would have to assume that any window manager and theme used supports tabbing - right now it's only the Oxygen theme in kwin.

drsjlazar wrote:My general guess would be
1. Disabling of native tabs in the application and forcing all new pages to open in a new window
2. Configuring KWin to automatically group the tabs together... thereby having a single window with a tabbed title bar.
3. Configuring the task manager to group the different Konqueror windows (only) either as a list of windows (appearing as tabs) or just to the Konqueror window group.

Sounds good. So, what's the problem?

1. You can't disable native tabs in all applications, but in some you can choose to open in new window instead of tab.
In KDE applications it's generally also possible to reassign shortcuts (maybe you want Ctrl+T to open a new "tab" instead of Ctrl+N for example).

2. System Settings -> Window Behavior -> Window Behavior -> Advanced -> Automatically group similar windows.

You can also create a rule in Window-Specific to group specific windows (New -> Preferences -> Autogroup ...), but I'm not sure how it works.

3. You can choose to group by application name. I don't think it's possible to group by window group in the taskbar yet.

I've done a little bit of fiddling around with both Konqueror and rekonq and here are some issues...

- I can get both to open new windows instead of new tabs... except when I middle click in rekonq (still opens new tab).
- I can force KWin to group these windows together but it only works if all windows are grouped. e.g. if I pop out a Gmail chat window out of the group, all subsequent windows opened are not grouped.
- Opening config dialogs and the like minimizes the whole group to the task bar.
- If some dialog or popup appears as a new window, it resizes the whole group.
- Both are kind of "quirky" browsers and don't play well with some sites.
- KHTML is still not supported by sites like Gmail and getting Webkit Kpart as the default engine in Konqueror seems like a little extra work.
- (The sad one...) Chrome still feels faster...

Right now the only major apps I use that are GTK based are Firefox and Chrome. I know this is akin to blasphemy... but I wish we had a browser of FF/Chrome caliber in KDE.

I'll keep trying to see what I can iron out.

until there is a dbus api for accessing kwin functions, this is futile.

i hope there will be one soon (preferably with a convenient “use window tabs” option in konqueror, rekonq and dolphin, too )

I kind of gave up on trying to do this... But I still think it would be a great feature.

On the bright side, Rekonq is now a much better browser. Not perfect... but good enough to be my default for most sites.

For KDE 4.6 there will be a kwin scripting interface that I would suspect will make this possible.

Wow! We'll have to wait and see! It seems like a normal progression to allow applications to use the window tabbing feature as tabs.