Request for Comments, Deadline 12/6 1 PM EST

[Simon Hausmann]

On Wed, Dec 04, 2002 at 11:10:34PM -0700, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier wrote:
> Hi Simon,
> 
> I'm writing a story for NewsFactor on the state of Web browsers, and I was 
> hoping to get a few comments from you on Konqueror. The story is running in 
> two parts, each about 1,000 words.
> 
> If you could take the time to answer these questions, it'd be really 
> helpful. Also, please let me know how you'd like to be attributed.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> 1. Does Konqueror have any features that are unique to Web browsers? 
> Anything that Konqueror does better than any other browser?

>From my personal experience the feature that I like most and find
most unique is the keywords feature. Being able to type "gg:foobar"
in the locationbar to start a google search for example is very
convenient.

What makes it overall unique for Web browsers in the free software
world is the high level of integration into the desktop environment
though. While being an optional feature (just change the mime
binding for text/html if you want another web browser for example) I
think it's what makes it the most important feature for the users
out there. Like when saving a document to the disk you get the
standard file dialog and not something that behaves and looks
totally different.

> 2. Standards compliance -- how compliant is Konqueror to W3C standards? Any 
> work that needs to be done in that area?

The Web browser component supports the common standards, like HTML
4.0, DOM Level 1 and 2, CSS 1 and 2 (see also
http://www.konqueror.org/content/khtml_css2.html and
http://www.konqueror.org/konq-browser.html for more details) .

I think most work is currently being done on the javascript
bindings, especially by David Faure and Koos Vriezen.

kfm-devel: anything missing? :)

> 3. What about IE-specific sites? How well does Konqueror handle those 
> sites, and is it a priority to be IE-compatible?

As far as I know IE is the reference browser when it comes to
rendering details or javascript bindings.

> 4. I recall that Konqueror got a lot of attention from Linux sites and the 
> community until Mozilla came out, now I don't hear about it so much... with 
> Mozilla being available, is Konqueror still a "hot" project -- are you 
> seeing continued interest in advancing Konqueror?

There's definitely still much interest in it, from the users out
there. The fact that Konqueror's release cycle is synchronized with
the KDE release cycle gives it probably less attention PR wise, but
that doesn't prevent it from getting more and more users every day
:)

> 5. What does the future hold for Konqueror? What kind of goals are the 
> Konqueror developers working towards?

The KDE 3.2 feature plan
(http://developer.kde.org/development-versions/kde-3.2-features.html)
lists a couple of interesting features that might get implemented,
like improvements on the bookmark editing or in the file management
area.

> 6. Are there any features in other browsers that you're hoping to include 
> in Konqueror in the near future? (ie, tabbed browsing...)

Tabbed browsing is part of Konqueror 3.1 (being part of the KDE 3.1
release) .

kfm-devel: anything else? :)

> If you have any other comments or ideas, please feel free to share those as 
> well.

I'm CC'ing the konqueror development mailing list, in hope that some
of the other developers can give additional input.


Simon