[kde-linux] State of Konqueror ?

[Kevin Krammer]

On Thursday 17 January 2008, Richard wrote:
> Well, after reviewing Dolphin the new file manager for KDE 4, and Firefox 3
> Beta3.  I could not help but think?, there must something serious wrong
> with Konqueror...

Not that I am aware of.

> Well, I don't understand why the KDE group would need dolphin?
> there is Krusader!, if one is needed more.

I don't know Krusader to well, but I think it also targets a different group 
of users than the one Dolphin is mainly intended for.

Dolphin started as a proof-of-concept to demonstrate technologies and 
techniquies for making common file handling task more obvious, easier to 
understand, etc.

It is targeted at users who are not so comfortable with the usual way most of 
us others have grown accustomed to, e.g. split view, detailed about the file 
itself (permission, etc), but rather prefer to have the content outweight the 
system's view, e.g. having documents separated by content type rather than 
file properties.

> I think IMHO there must be a serious issue with Konqueror, and that is why
> they have not chosen to FIX Konqueror... maybe it would take to much time
> to fix Konqueror... and its easier to come out with with newer product ?

I personally don't think there is a need to "fix" Konqueror, it works the way 
I expect a file manager to work and I prefer having it available instead of 
getting its behavior changed. After all the current groups of users will 
still be users after the newly targeted group gains access to the platform 
and it might not be a good idea to turn them away by removing something they 
like.

Additionally the way things are implemented makes it easy for the two 
development teams to share functionality, actually they even have quite some 
overlap in personnel.

> as a file manager, its great!!, sure they could add more options, meta-data
> mouse overs...etc and its very mature, piece of software, compare to
> Dolphin.

Exactly, therefore ripping out things from Konqueror and replacing them with 
totally new code doesn't sound like a good idea.

> as a Web Browsers, as of late... it dieing a slow death...

Quite contrary. Its renger engine, especially in the form of webkit, is 
starting to become available on all sorts of platforms, from the usual 
desktop software to embedded devices and smart phones.

At some point even the laziest web "developer" will need to think about either 
including it in their hacks or produce suitably standard conformant code.

> first Adobe Newest Flash plug-in FAILS to work with Konqueror, there are
> numerous reports, on launchpad about this.

True. It is really a pitty that proprietary software vendors like Adobe switch 
to incompatible API version within the same major version. Compatability is 
something they regularily demand from the platform developers, but incidents 
like this show nicely that they do not intend to do it themselves when others 
rely on it.

Fortunately the user experience is important to the free software developers 
and so they changed their applications accordingly during their maintenance 
phase, where one usually keeps from changing functionality and concentrates 
on fixing bugs.

> I'm just pointing out, some issue with Konqueror, would hate to see,
> a great application, get thrown by the wayside... as it appears to be
> happening... according to all the hype about kde 4 and its eyecandy.

You must be reading different, seemingly uninformed, sources then.

Cheers,
Kevin

-- 
Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer
KDE user support, developer mentoring
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