[kde-linux] User style sheet no longer with Konqueror 4.9+

[Duncan]

Robin Atwood posted on Sun, 16 Dec 2012 19:50:30 +0800 as excerpted:

> Since forever I have used a simple user style-sheet to force
> black-on-white default on web pages. This is necessary because I have a
> light-on-dark colour scheme and text can be unreadable if the background
> is defaulted. The CSS is not fancy, e.g.
> 
> body {
>   background-color: white; color: black;
> }
> 
> INPUT {
>   background-color: #E1E7FD;
>   color: black;
> }
> 
> Since about KDE 4.9 it is now completely ignored. Anyone else notice
> this?

FWIW, I too prefer light on dark.  But I wanted /some/ color, just 
enforcing light on dark, not the other way, and (as you mention) dealing 
with sites that set one of foreground/text or background, but not both.  
So I ended up with a different solution, which may or may not be suitable 
for you.  

What I do is use a web proxy, privoxy, running on localhost (the same 
computer).  The browser then uses privoxy, thus making the solution 
browser agnostic, a fact that helped greatly when I decided to switch to 
firefox from konqueror.  (I could go into the reasons, but suffice it to 
say I'm not happy with the security treatment konqueror gets, compared to 
a "real" browser.)

Here's the privoxy home page: http://www.privoxy.org

The biggest down side is that privoxy won't filter secure connections 
(there's a way to do it, but it's complicated and has other risks, so I 
haven't), so they normally stay at defaults.  However, it seems that most 
sites, banks, online purchasing, etc, that bother with secure connections 
are written well enough that while I might get irritating black on white, 
they *DO* set BOTH foreground and background if they set one of them, so 
at least they're generally readable.

The big upside is that privoxy, formerly known as junkbuster, works great 
for filtering ads and other irritants as well, and that if the filters 
break for some reason, they're under my control so I can either bypass 
the proxy or rewrite the filters as necessary.  Of course modifying the 
filters does require a bit of patience and skill with regular 
expressions, but if you're not upto that, just use the bypass where 
necessary.

My color-rewriting filterset is based on the idea of keeping the page's 
colors as much as possible, but rewriting the HTML/CSS color-codes (and 
filtering background images) where necessary, to make light backgrounds 
darker, while making dark text lighter.  Thus for example, dark brick-red 
text on a white background becomes brighter red text, on a black 
background.  I've incrementally developed the filterset over some years 
now, since 2003ish I'd guess, so that it handles a lot more pages without 
breaking and requiring a bypass than it used to, but there's still an 
occasional exception that I have to set bypass for and reload[1].  
Ideally you'd use my filterset as a base, continuing to customize it as 
necessary just as I have, but as I said above, if you're not up on your 
regex, etc, just hit bypass and reload when needed.

If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, let me know.  
Unfortunately I don't have the website I used to keep the filterset on 
any longer, but I hadn't kept it updated anyway.  I can post the filters, 
which are after all text-based, here, tho.

---
[1] Another option is a browser extension such as the firefox "read 
easily" extension, that toggles styles at the touch of a button.  I found 
that about a year ago after my switch to firefox, and use that 
occasionally when my filterset breaks things.  That was another problem 
with konqueror: it simply doesn't have enough market share to properly 
sustain a reasonably useful and active browser extension community, like 
firefox and chrome/chromium do.  In theory, with webkit being based on 
kde's khtml anyway, it would be possible to build a kde browser that 
would support most of chrome/chromium's extensions, thus allowing kde 
users to participate in and make use of that community, but perhaps 
there's simply not the kde developer resources and interest available, 
especially given that a non-kde browser such as chrome/chromium or firefox 
can already be set as the kde default, altho kde integration isn't as 
deep/nice as it is with konqueror.

The same thing can normally be done manually using the page style 
switcher option that most browsers including konqueror and firefox 
offer.  But that's little enough used by the majority that the option's 
generally buried deep in a menu somewhere, requiring an extension to make 
it one-touch usable as a toolbar and/or hotkey option, and konqueror only 
seems to enable the option if the page author provided style 
alternatives.  (Firefox seems to always have at least the basic style as 
presented by the page author, and no style, as options, effectively 
letting you toggle between no stylesheet and the normal page stylesheet, 
with more options when the page author makes them available.)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman