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The User wrote:Why should the KDE-browser be a clone of another browser with Qt instead of Gtk+? It shouldn't.

Why not?

Because their wouldn't be major benefits.
A clone will always be behind the original browser.
We need innovation, Konqueror has innovations, why should we throw them away. We need Konqueror.

The User wrote:We need Konqueror.

Who needs Konqueror?

Maybe we should make a poll about this, but im sure there are much more firefoxusers than konqusers!
What I need is adblock, mouse gestures and bookmarksync.I need a proper firefox intergation or these addons for konqueror.
I dont care if firefox is using qt or whatever as long as it looks native. And I dont care if konqueror runs with KHTML or webkit if its usable.

Just make firefox look and work good with KDE and we all are happy aren't we?


Some developer thoughts:
-A QtWebKit KPart is no answer for a KDE browser: http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3998
-Stop Continual Web Failure: http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3995

And some more:
http://vtokarev.wordpress.com/2009/07/0 ... developer/
http://darktears.wordpress.com/2009/06/ ... tmlwebkit/

Great links.

One of the bloggers points out the following:

90% of the time on a computer is typically spend surfing the web. Of KDE users a huge majority is using firefox. The first problem is, that firefox (for whatever reason doesn't seem as responsive as it should be under KDE). Now for the real caveat: When is comes to interactions with the desktop environment firefox fails. GTK file dialogs show up, evince is started for PDFs (unless you manually navigate the the okular binary), setting backgroud images is not supported well, the list goes on and on.

So if firefox requires the presence of a zoo of GNOME apps why bother using KDE at all?

Therefore, I can only reiterate, what I think would be the best way to go:

- Take the best and fastest open-source browser out there (Chromium)
- Make it's configuration dialoges and such QT based (this could even go back upstream as chromium-qt)
- Make sure the Theme fits KDE
- Make sure file associations point to KDE applications
- Make sure Chromium is used as default browser from all KDE apps
- Eventually hack up integration with Plasma and Nepomuk

I too think, we should have a poll and let users decide if we are willing to sacrifice a modern browsing experience for historical KDE technologies (which of course have their place) such as KIO.

I'd be happy with a browser, that is good at two things only:
- browsing
- KDE integration.


cheers,
Chris

The User wrote:Because their wouldn't be major benefits.

The benefit would be betterKDE Integation compared to the original Chrome.

The User wrote:A clone will always be behind the original browser.
We need innovation, Konqueror has innovations, why should we throw them away. We need Konqueror.

We need standard compliance. We need speed. We need stability. We need support for extensions. We need a kick-ass JS engine.

Let the google guys do the innovation on this one, I think it's hard to beat the inertia they can put behind the browser. Being able to use it is the beauty of open-source isn't it?

Lastly, we don't want a clone, but rather we need a clean interface, so that the core can be easily kept up to date.

The User wrote:I for myself use Konqueror as file-manager, PDF-viewer, browser, FTP-client and I use the editor inside Konqueror.

May be its your usecase. I have dolphin,okular, kate for these purposes. All I (IMHO most kde users) want is a simple, working kde-integrated web browser. Is it an unfair requirement?

@nparihar
-You'll find a lot of PDF/PS/ODF/DOC-files in the web. Konqueror has the best integration.
-Of course I use Kate and KDevelop, but sometimes I just want to insert a line for debugging and then I use Konqueror's ftp-client and Kate-features
-Most users want to be able to open PDFs in a browser, many users need a ftp-client, it's normal to browse ftp in web-browsers (also in Firefox). When there are more general concepts, that's good for the user and you shouldn't throw this away.

---------

I prefer Konqueror, because:
-I can view PDFs
-I've web-shortcuts
-I've adblock
-It's my ftp-client
-It's my file-browser
-It's fast
-I can edit remote and local files immediately
-I can split the windows

When you want to use Firefox you don't need a Firefox-Clone for KDE.

But KDE needs a browser.
So there should be enhancements:
-KNewStuff with C++-Addons (the idea was moved to submitted, although it needs discussion)
-Script-Addons (anybody who wants to implement that? There's also an idea)
-Fast JS
-Acid3/CSS3

I need Firefox for:
-Chatzilla (I don't like Konversation, I want to have Kopete-IRC)
-Firebug

That's it, mousegestures and Adblock already exist in Konqueror.

Using a webkit browser is distribution specific: Kubuntu's hoping to use Arora from 2009.10 https://wiki.kubuntu.org/KubuntuKarmicWebbrowser

When Arora or Rekonq becomes the default-browser for KDE we may have working rendering, but there would be much less features than in Firefox or Konqueror and nobody would use it.
Konqueror has potential powers making it better than Firefox. But Rekonq and Arora will always be unused browsers like Dillo or Kazehakase in non-Qt-world.

Whatever happened to this: http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2004/09/4175.ars

?

pembo13 wrote:

Madman wrote:Konqueror is actually faster then firefox. Even Youtube loads in a second or so, and the videos work every time now.

ELinks is also faster than Firefox. Firefox is still, somehow more usable.

You missed the point. The original point was that KHTML and KJS were slow and clunky compared to Firefox's Gecko, which simple wasn't true (until they re-wrote the entire JS library...).


A few things we're overlooking: it's not just porting KDE applications to Webkit, it's also the other way round - porting Webkit to other applications, I.E. Akregator/KWallet/the AdBlock plugin et cetera so on and so forth. That's a LOT of work and would take yet more time. That, plus my previous point (that the KDE developers would have to submit patches to Apple, wait for it to get accepted into Webkit's trunk, wait for a stable Webkit release, wait for a stable Qt release that includes the latest stable Webkit release, THEN re-program applications around it because it's not actually written in exactly the way the KDE developers expected because they aren't the ones monitoring the codebase), and Webkit --> Konqueror integration is a very tedious and unsettling prospect, for half a second faster loading times.

konqueror is in fact pretty fast and very integrated into kde
BUT it doesn't work well with a lot of sites (specially flash full ones, and heavy ajax sites),
and making it better and keeping up with new technologies would be very difficult for the khtml team.

Possible solutions are:
1 Integrate webkit into konqueror: seems very difficult as the konqueror code is very integrated with khtml http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3998
2 make a new webkit based browser taking ideas from konqueror : this would be difficult and take some time, yet rekonq is a very promising project about this http://rekonq.sourceforge.net/
3 make a qt gui to the existing chromium core: I don't really know about this would it be easy to put chrome core into a qt gui? including v8 js engine in rekonq would also be nice

from these 3 the one that looks better is 2 because rekonq already works pretty well and just needs some work to gain the features on konqueror wich may include pdf viewing and ftp too. ( yet opening the corresponding app is better in my opinion)
if khtml developers still want to work on it keep the good work! buit for the normal user that goes to flashy or ajax heavy sites a new web browser should be made

I always read about "Konqueror is ours", "Konqueror has a lot of features" and so on but on the other hand there seems to be the problem with Java Script.

Wouldn't it be possible to remerge Webkit's JavaScript engine into KHTML if this is the only problem? I have no idea about the technical background but in consideration of the fact that they were one some years ago it could perhabs be possible. So KHTML can stay independent and think about forking the JS engine permanently or fixing and improving both engines synchronize them from time to time (or release to release).

The Qt-Trolls currently also working on JavaScript.
Maybe it will be easier when the Qt-JavaScript-Engine is integrated into QtScript.

@damipereira
1. That's wrong, but WebKit doesn't provide enough interfaces for KWallet etc.
2. Parallel development of two independent browsers is bad
3. You'd need a lot of work for porting Firefox or Chromium. A lot of work for some integration...

When there's a better JS-Engine there'll be still a few rendering-problems. Couldn't it be possible to integrate some parts of WebKit?

I would really like to have a nice integrated webbrowser, but I stick to Firefox because it is much more usable than Konqueror. See https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=190625 for example. I kind of lost my hope for Konqueror catching up with Firefox, when I still can't even manage my bookmarks with it...

It's great that the Kubuntu folks plan to ship Arora as their default browser - maybe this will boost the development of this fine browser even more!