Request for Comments, Deadline 12/6 1 PM EST

Fri Dec 6 13:35:27 GMT 2002

In a short: everything what Konqueror does, it does better than competing 
browsers. :-)
There are several things which Konqueror doesn't, though :-))
(like: it doesn't hang up your computer, like MS IE)

|
|  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 Konqueror very pleasant to operate is very good support for font 
anti-aliasing (AA), Mozilla still has somewhat unclear support for AA (you 
need to get Xft patch, apply it correctly, recompile from sources, etc.)

Besides, NLS support is excellent in KDE and Konqueror.
You can take page in non-English language (like: my native Russian/Cyrillic 
alphabet), and *print it* - either to printer or to PDF.
And you wil get Cyrillic glyphs/text on that page.
Compare this to printing operations in Mozilla, and you will see that Mozilla 
is a way behind Konqueror.

Against MS IE:
----------------------------------
Well, I'd like to speak about fonts here, as fonts is area of my competence.
Konqueror supports TrueType, PostScript Type1, PostScript Type2 (also know as 
Adobe CFF format),  PostScriptType3  and even OpenType fonts.
I listed only major font formats, there is no need to tell about Bistream PFR 
- as it's not very common (and I haven't tested Konqueror with such fonts)

Windows 98 (and Windows 95) support only TrueType fonts, so you can't use PS 
Type1/Type3 or OpenType fonts on Win98/95 (neither in MS IE nor in 
Netscape6/7)
This is obviously *feature* of Konqueror, and one of its Unique Propositions 
to the (potential) End-Users.

Windows 2000/Windows XP users can use PS Type1/OpenType fonts, but as WinNT 
family accounts below 30% of all Desktops, I guess Win98 features gives more 
correct representation for font support.

Other interesting features of Konqueror:
* possibility to open multiple panes (Split Window Left/Right, Top/Bottom), 
with independent views for each sub-window.
You can have different webpages opened in different sub-windows, or you can 
browse file system(s) via these windows.
Console (terminal) is integrated into Konqueror

* Web Archiver - allows to save web pages to Web Archives (tar.gz), so you 
save all graphics, stylesheets, JS, etc. in such archive, and can re-open 
page offline.

* Customization/Plugins
In addition to EbArchiver plugin, you can insatll different plugins with nice 
functionality, like: Page validation, DOM Tree viewer, Translation, 
Identity(UA) switching, etc.
You need to install kdeaddons to get this functionality.

|
|  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.

I can just add here that KMail, KDE's Mail User Agent, uses KHTML rendering 
component to render HTML mails.
So, Konqueror components (KHTML, in this case) are widely reused in KDE 
codebase, therefor memory usage is reduced, and reliability is increased.

|
|  > 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? :)

I would add XHTML and XML support, in addition to *already known and 
supported* HTML 4.0 (both Strict and Transitional)

I would emphasize on XHTML, as: 
 *XHTML is not officially supported my Microsoft, neither in MS IE on Mac or 
on Windows*
(see comments from Tantek Celik and "Chris Wilson" <cwilso at microsoft.com> on 
www-style list, I think it was in Sep-Nov. 2001)

-- 

Vadim Plessky
SVG Icons * BlueSphere Icons 0.3.0 released
http://svgicons.sourceforge.net
My KDE page
http://kde2.newmail.ru  (English)
KDE mini-Themes
http://kde2.newmail.ru/themes/