http://www.osnews.com/story/82/Interview_With_KDE_s_Konqueror_Team Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:16:37 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I am constantly amazed at KDE's progress. This is due largely to the awesome Konqueror browser/file manager/swiss army knife.

It's hard to believe that a few KDE developers have managed to best both Eazel's file manager and Mozilla's web browser. Not only that, but this is just one component of a large project that, among many other things, also encompasses a complete IDE (KDevelop) and a cohesive office suite (KOffice.)

If you ask me, the KDE project has done a great service to Linux/Unix on the desktop. In fact, if you ask me, KDE offers a far more complete working environment than Windows, BeOS or Mac out of the box.

Then there's the fact that QT Embedded brings KHTML to small devices such as the IPaq, and KHTML is small enough and clean enough that it can be ported to something as obscure as AtheOS is such a short time frame. It speaks volumes that Kurt would choose KHTML over Mozilla's Gecko. These developers bring so much to computing, and make it fun and accessible to a potentially vast market.

Cool.

(And no, I'm not a KDE troll. (Do they show up on this site yet?) I use Gimp, videolan, jpilot and xmms daily and Star/OpenOffice for large documents. Proof that using one environment doesn't stop you from using apps that belong to another.) Mon, 03 Sep 2001 20:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Another great interview! I would like to see a Konqueror port to BeOS, it's a pretty good web browser, even thoguh it's a little slow. Actually, I think some one is porting Konqueror to BeOS but it still requires X for BeOS... Mon, 03 Sep 2001 21:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? ...is the tabbed window feature in Galeon. Normally, I don't like MDI, but for web browsing, it's great! I multitask when I surf; right now, I have four pages up (mail, this page, Linux Today, and a screenshot) all in one window and available with a click. In Konq, there would be four windows. Now, some people like multiple windows. That's fine. But I think there should be an option for tabbed windows. Keep multiple windows as the default option if you have to, but at least give me the ability to keep everything clean and in a single window!

:Peter Tue, 04 Sep 2001 02:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Hey, is it just me, or is http://www.konqueror.org/ down? Tue, 04 Sep 2001 03:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? salam Tue, 04 Sep 2001 05:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I hope the new Konqueror/KHTML will finaly have full PNG support. I'm using KDE 2.1.1, and Konqueror still does not know about 8bits alpha information.Tthis bug has been around since 1999 (from what KDE bug report database mentions).

Apart from this and a few other defects, KDE is a superb desktop environment. Tue, 04 Sep 2001 11:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? konqueror and in fact the whole of KDE uses libpng, this lib has full support for alpha channels for some time now.
Simply upgrade your libpng and you are done Thu, 06 Sep 2001 19:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? or enhanced massively during the "Hackfest" at the XFree technical conference:

http://www.usenix.org/events/xfree86/

- all the right peole will be there and they'll have their laptops so ....

JUST DO IT!! You know it will make KDE that much easier to develop Fri, 07 Sep 2001 04:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? my libpng is perfectly working. Gimp uses libpng, and gimp supports very well alpha transparency. Fri, 07 Sep 2001 09:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? From libpng website ( http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngapbr.html )

"Konqueror [KDE developers] (Unix/KDE) - all versions? read-only; binary transparency;"

binary transparency is working, I agree, vut PNG has 8 bits or 16 bits transparency, so only reading only 1 bit is a broken implementation (Netscape 4.x, x>04 and IE are broken the same way). Fri, 07 Sep 2001 09:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? KDE is nice, and the interview is interesting, but I'll carp at the statement that it is important for the user to see the fonts chosen by the webmaster. On the contrary, the user should be assumed to have chosen the fonts, sizes, colours, and other factors for their display that makes it work best for them. These should rarely be over-ridden by anyone else.

The insistence on a specific font for display will, for instance, be particularly unhelpful to those using a reader because they cannot see the page, but also anyone looking at the page using WebTV, a PDA or a new gadget which is invented next week and displays in an unanticipated way.

Stick to providing the information, and meta-information about what it means, and leave the maximum possible amount to the user-agent.

From the konqueror point of view, one of the ways in which browser dependence and OS dependence is driven is by adding marginal features to the servers and html authoring software that are coordinated to a single browser... joining in with that is not a good idea for a minority browser, whereas sticking with real rules is. Sun, 14 Oct 2001 10:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments