a DHTML developer's lament

[Alex Russell]

Hey all,

I'm the developer of a rather large DHTML API (www.netWindows.org) that 
supports Konqueror.

First off, I'd like to thank the KHTML/KJS developers for writing the 
browser I use all day, every day. It's a wonderful thing to have fast, 
reliable, good looking browser on Linux. As a user, I love Konqueror and I 
just won't use anything else on *nix for the time being.

That said, as a developer, I loathe Konqueror. It's an unmitigated train 
wreck as far I (and much of the rest of the development community) is 
concerned, not because it's a bad browser, but because it's essentially a 
black box. What little I know about Konq's standards compliance has come 
from good-old-fashioned source code reading and trial and error. I, 
however, am not most developers. Apple's use of KHTML is going to help the 
situation, but making Konqueror "developer friendly" is still an uphill 
climb. The convenience methods for IE compatability demonstrate a desire to 
make Konqueror a browser that developers feel comfortable with. But it's 
only a start.

 Konqueror needs a couple of things before DHTML developers are going to 
take it seriously:
	* A debugging utility that doesn't suck eggs. The current output when 
debugging output is enabled in the build does not even include JavaScript 
failure line numbers or file names. A debugger would be nice, but I would 
happily settle for something like Mozilla's JavaScript console (which is 
not build-time or packager dependant).
	* a single site or place on the current Konqueror site to go for 
information about developing with/for KHTML/KJS.
	* Complete JavaScript documentation. What level of JS does KJS support? 
1.3? 1.5? Which version of Konq ship with what level of JS support?
	* DOM binding documentation (what level of DOM is supported by what 
releases? what methods work? which ones are buggy? etc...)
	* CSS compliance docs (the recent CSS2 conformance list is a good start, 
but it's only a start)

Please remember that I'm saying all of this as someone that has dealt with 
bigger messes (IE 5.x, Netscape 4, etc...). I really do have a soft spot in 
my heart for Konqueror, which is why I keep developing for it. But if any 
other browser were as poorly documented as KHTML and someone asked me to 
make netWindows work in it, I'd just laugh at them. The technical work that 
has gone into Konqueror is fantastic. Now the rest of the world needs to 
know what I do: that Konq is a mature, feature complete browser that can 
handle some pretty advanced DHTML and CSS.

Hopefully a lot of these are things that are already planned for sometime in 
the future. If not, I'd hope that some discussion would ensue about what is 
realistic and in what time frame, as I know a lot of DHTML developers that 
are giving the KHTML/KJS combination a try now that Safari is bringing it 
into the mainstream.

Anyway, thanks again for the wonderful browser. I'm going to continue to 
support Konqueror in netWindows for the foreseeable future, but I'd like to 
have to stop fighting with it and start using it as my primary development 
platform. I think you've already satisfied the needs of most "know nothing" 
web developers, all that's left is to capture the hearts and minds of those 
who are trying to do more difficult things with their browsers.

Regards.

-- 
Alex Russell
alex at netWindows.org
alex at SecurePipe.com