[rekonq] Plugins

[Andrea Diamantini]

On Sunday 22 November 2009 21:26:39 nehlsen wrote:
> top and (2.) i think, if the mentioned features were plugins the browser
>  would be even more lightweight and easier to extend. e.g. another or an
>  additional adblocker or another engine for web shortcuts. this way the
>  user would by default get a very minimalistic/leightweight browser but
>  could extend it as needed with e.g. adblock and webshortcuts capabilities.

No, that's in general not true and it seems you have no idea on the 
implementation of such features.
In firefox you have tons of these plugins because gecko sdk let you implement 
these.
Same rules are not true for webkit and qtwebkit in our case.
We could anyway provide the usual sort of kde plugin structure. I don't know 
what is your experience about. I worked about in kipi-plugins (I stopped 
because of the rekonq affair), actually loaded in digikam and gwenview (the 
network ones, especially the gallery export one).
So here are facts about:
1) you have to load the plugin manager mechanism (for sure, to not let your 
browser being incredible minimalistic)
2) you have to load ALL plugins at startup (the mechanism has to know what 
plugins are available)
3) you have to trust them in what they do.

I fear people thinks about plugins in the same way he thinks about files. You 
start word and he starts with a blank file (no need for HD). You start word to 
work on a file in HD and word load itself and the file (one) from HD.
if documents were plugins word should load all .doc files in your HD before 
starting...

> (1.) essential or not, could be argued about a lot of functionalities,
>  thats why i think a plugin system would be appropriate. (i mean, who needs
>  a bouncing ball on their desktop?) furthermore a flourishing plugin
>  ecosystem would lead to a bigger user base because with the ability to
>  support more features and more individuality more users were drawn to use
>  rekonq.

konqueror was the most appreciate software in KDE. And it didn't have a 
flourishing plugin ecosystem, just 15 plugins created in 2 years. Adblock, 
webshortcuts and flash management are not plugins

> (3.) if the functionality is implemented in a plugin or in the browser
>  itself does not make a difference when its code causes a crash

makes difference for me. Considering that I will receive that crash report..

> i did not start working on that, just gave it some thought, because is
>  think that rekonq is "young enough" that such a feature could still be
>  implmented and i would like it a lot ;)

Yes, sure. I just think that if we implement what is planned for 0.4 and more 
(from kdewebkit port to multitasking) we'll have the fantastic browser 99% of 
our users dream.

Regards,
-- 
Andrea Diamantini, adjam
GPG Fingerprint: 57DE 8E32 7D1A 0E16 AA52 59D8 84F9 3ECD DBF9 730F

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