Firefox > Konqueror move

Neuro · 2006-01-09 21:23:13

(warning: long post + bad English )

I've moved from Firefox yesterday. Mainly for the following reasons:
1. got fed up with crashes (using the testing 1.5-2 thing as well as my custom-compiled cvs supposed-to-be-fixed packages)
2. Firefox's a terrible memory hog. Just by browsing forums (no real huge pictures or anything) Firefox's memory footprint reported by xrestop could rise to just above 120MB. It kept on causing my 512MB machine to swap all the time.
3. I use KDE, and thus QT is my 'main' toolkit. I've been running gtk-qt-engine all the time, but... still.. it looked more like a hack (some things weren't looking correct). And the GTK FileChooser... nothing near KDE's IOslaves (yes, I know, I could use gnome-vfs, but I don't want any gnome parts on my system, none, period)

I've never used Konqueror for anything except file browsing before. I was rally pleasantly surprised by how configurable it is!
1. I really hate the mid-click goto clipboard url thing in any browser. I quickly found a way to turn it off. Instead, now I'm having that pretty auto-scrolling feature I've been using all the time in Firefox (although it's a bit slow).
2. I'm using tabs all the time. One thing I've got used to in Firefox is the mid-click close tab. It really works wonders. I've had to hack a bit around to get it working the way I wanted:
In ~/.kde/share/config/konquerorrc add under [FMSettings]

MouseMiddleClickClosesTab=true

3. I had to remap some shortcuts. Ctrl-L for Location bar and Ctrl-K for search bar.
4. I've been pleasantly surprised by the Ad-Blok feature.. works great - just like the Firefox extension. And the acronym thingy! Thumbs up for the devs. It's 100x easier to configure it than it is under Firefox. And.. you can manage them easily.
5. Integration.. the thing I've been missing the most in Firefox. Although I've been able to get Kpdf to view pdf's inside Firefox, other things were crippled. And here, they just work And don't forget. Now the browser know what mimetype opens in which program
6. Bookmarks: importing them from Firefox was painless
7. Kwallet: Well... too bad I couldn't move my passwords and cookies to Konqueror as painlessly as the previous things. I had to edit them all by hand since I haven't found a neat import feature anywhere

To tell you the truth: Now my Konqueror looks exactly the same as my Firefox setup. Really. Even the button, toolbar and partially the menu (you can edit them by hand in ~/.kde/share/apps/konqueror/konqueror.rc) were changed I have the same browsing experience, without the memory problems or the crashers... and a far better integration.

However.. there is one thing I'm missing. Sage (RSS reader for Firefox). I really loved it. I don't have zillions of RSS feeds to manage, just a couple of sites I'd like to stay up to date. I really loved the way it allowed me to render the feeds using my custom CSS style in the main window. I really miss that. Akregator is fine, but it's... it's just not it. It's a stand-alone application that's aimed at people who have thousands of feeds. I only have a couple. I wish there was something like Sage for Konqueror... a RSS browser in the sidebar.

Just some thoughts. I don't want to start a flame-war (yes, I know this is not the type of forum, but no one never knows ). If anyone has any suggestions on some features I've been missing, please let me know

(again, an awefully long post )

Snowman · 2006-01-09 22:10:31

For the RSS reader for Konqueror, did you do a search on www.kde-apps.org or freshmeat? Maybe there are some add-on for that... BTW, I use liferea for RSS but it's a stand-alone app.

rezza · 2006-01-09 23:17:10

Kudos on finding something to switch away to - I've been looking for a while. Unfortunately I really just plain can't stand the way Opera looks, Epiphany is just a little too limited for me - Konq is the best candidate I've found. The only problem it has is that it can't show the bookmarks toolbar to the right of the main menu bar (as far as I know). The middle-click to close tab trick is nice though, thanks for that.

Neuro · 2006-01-10 08:02:15

Snowman wrote:

For the RSS reader for Konqueror, did you do a search on www.kde-apps.org or freshmeat? Maybe there are some add-on for that... BTW, I use liferea for RSS but it's a stand-alone app.

I've already looked there. No luck. I might move to a web-based RSS service if I don't find anything side-bar based. anyoen knows any good web-based RSS readers?

eyolf · 2006-01-10 13:37:22

Two extensions I can't live without in FF are Scrapbook and the Web Developer toolbar. I know there is an option to Archive web page, and also some validator plugins for Konqueror, but as far as I can tell, they don't have anything near the functionality and the ease of use as the FF extensions have. Then again, I haven't tried it out much - I generally stay away from Konqueror: I use FF for browsing and Krusader for file management.

Neuro · 2006-01-10 15:54:02

eyolf wrote:

Two extensions I can't live without in FF are Scrapbook and the Web Developer toolbar. I know there is an option to Archive web page, and also some validator plugins for Konqueror, but as far as I can tell, they don't have anything near the functionality and the ease of use as the FF extensions have. Then again, I haven't tried it out much - I generally stay away from Konqueror: I use FF for browsing and Krusader for file management.

Well... it's been a while since I've done client-side web development (mainly DOM+JS+CSS dynamic things), but after having a glance at Konqueror's capabilities in that area, I'd say they are quite big.

The internal DOM Tree viewer is similar to the one Firefox has. Moreover, it's capable of, for example, adding attributes on-the-fly and allows you to see the whole HTML code of the browsed object and it's children. Quite helpful.

I haven't looked at the JS debugger.. all I can say is that it's there for sure Firefox's JS debugger isn't that great either. The validators are there, but like before - I haven't tested them.

Of course things differ from the experience you're accustomed to. But trying out different apps allows to see what things 'the app you can't live without' really misses. For me, such a feature in Konqueror is the built-in spellchecker (notice, I make less errors lately ). There are extensions available for FF, but they look more like a dirty hack rather than a full-blown solution. In Konqueror it just works.. and works great But I still miss Sage...

lucke · 2006-01-10 16:08:20

Wouldn't the newsticker in left-side menu be enough for you?

Neuro · 2006-01-10 16:53:26

lucke wrote:

Wouldn't the newsticker in left-side menu be enough for you?

Nope, not really I like simple things but this is just too. It doesn't even trace which things were read already, which are new, and which weren't touched at all.

To me Sage is the perfect balance. I've already looked at kde-apps.org for something similar but no luck

Locri · 2006-01-10 18:35:55

I've actually found Konqueror to be quite a worthy browser for a lot of things, however I have two main issues with it:

1. When I click the "Home" button, it takes me to my "Home" directory, not a Homepage.. sure, I can set that to something different, but then if I click "Home" when I'm using it as a file manager, it goes to a website instead of my Home directory, arg!

2. Gmail. It still doesn't work in full ajax glory, I really hope this gets fixed soon, but I'm not expecting anything major until KDE 4 comes out :?

As far as RSS feeds go, I'm finding it is nice to just use Akregator (sp?) because the integration works quite well. Then again I'm rather new to the whole RSS thing, so maybe I just don't know what works best.

-Locri

pbw · 2006-01-10 20:49:41

Locri wrote:

1. When I click the "Home" button, it takes me to my "Home" directory, not a Homepage.. sure, I can set that to something different, but then if I click "Home" when I'm using it as a file manager, it goes to a website instead of my Home directory, arg!

Why dont you just add a new toolbar button for either your homepage or home directory?, that way you can have either at any time.

I'ma big konqueror fan myself, very customizable. It's my main browser, only using firefox if a page doesnt seem to display correctly (which seems to be pretty rare these days).

Neuro · 2006-01-10 21:25:17

Looking at the whole thing from a different point of view... it's sad to see how FF went wrong. I don't say that it's bad for everybody, I say that it just doesn't work for me anymore.

You see, when I switched from IE 6.0 to FF (it was called Firebird back then), it was like heaven and earth. And, despite the leading 0. in the version number and the 'beta' stage... it was stable. Everything was just as fine in version 1.0.x, but got completely wrong in 1.5. I mean, it had issues in the Release Candidates, people reported memory hogging and crashes, but they released it nonetheless.

Don't get me wrong. I really like Firefox. I love the extensions, speed, etc. I loved the way I could share the profile betwen it's Linux and Windows instances. Half a year ago I would consider myself a FF fanboy... But it's stability that matters. And while for others FF might not crash and appear stable, it isn't the case for me. I think I'd be sticking to Konqueror for a while from now. Especially that I got to know it well, learned all these hidden tricks and goodies (like the great spellchecker integration).

Once again the FOSS philosophy proves true: choice is a good thing.

mic64 · 2006-01-12 07:04:10

well I like Konqueror also
but it is sooo slow.
Not the start up, but opening pages.
I already added KDE_NO_IPV6=TRUE to /etc/profile
but this didnt help either

What can this be?

thanks
mic

codemac · 2006-01-13 00:18:10

bloglines is decent for a web based rss reader. There are fancier ones out there, but none seem to be as on top of updates as bloglines.

Locri · 2006-01-13 20:32:00

Oh, a nice little tidbit that I found out.

In regards to my complaint about Gmail, at least in KDE 3.5 you can set your user string for mail.google.com to "FireFox" and it will work just fine with all the bells and whistles. I'm one step closer to not having to use FireFox on Linux (yay!).

-Locri

Gullible Jones · 2006-01-17 00:49:07

mic64 wrote:

well I like Konqueror also
but it is sooo slow.
Not the start up, but opening pages.
I already added KDE_NO_IPV6=TRUE to /etc/profile
but this didnt help either
What can this be?
thanks
mic

It should be

export KDE_NO_IPV6=true

And *exactly* that, no differences *at all*. Putting quotes around true, for example, will nullify it. At any rate, if you disable IPv6 in *exactly* the above fashion, Konqeror's performance should double or triple.

qwerty · 2006-01-17 02:04:25

Kmplayer + konqueror roXX!!

Neuro · 2006-01-17 08:51:22

Being happy with the move from Firefox to Konqueror I decided to do something about Thunderbird.

Thunderbird is a great app, but starting it up took waay too long. I mean I have a lot of mail messages, with archives in separate "folders" and such.. It took 30-40 seconds to start. Kmail on the other hands starts (together with a bit stripped down Kontact) in just 9 seconds.

The move to Kmail/Kontact was a bit painful. At first, Kmail appeared as a hostile, unknown territory. No separate "folders" for each account, everything went to the common inbox folder. Though I could move my old messages with ease, I had to configure the accounts manually. Also the address book made some issues. I could migrate it using CSV files, but the 'show as' field disappeared. I had to reconfigure it manually again But after I've done the hard part, everything went downhill frpm now on.

I discovered the great identity manager, the thing I've been used to in TB. I mainly use POP3 accounts, so being able which "personality" I use currently is a good thing. Furthermore, being able to group 2 accounts under one identity gave me a pleasant suprise.

Apart from that, the spell checker. Comparing to the KDE's integrated spell checker, the solution in TB simply sucks. Error highlight, different language for different identify. Just superb. And don't forget about the mime integration - the thing I've been missing in TB for a looong time.

The downside of the move was spam filtering. I mean, on one of my accounts (dating back to 2000 ) I get loads of spam, ~110 each day. I can honestly say that TB's junk mail control is better than Kmail's external filtering (I'm using bogofilter, spamassasin used too much CPu power). Although I can live with it, it's slower... noticeably slower.

I've decided to put my mail into 'maildir' format. I don't know if it's a good choice, but I've read somewhere that it's also used by Evolution and other apps. Anyone can confirm?

mic64 · 2006-01-17 11:53:38

[/quote]

It should be

export KDE_NO_IPV6=true

And *exactly* that, no differences *at all*. Putting quotes around true, for example, will nullify it. At any rate, if you disable IPv6 in *exactly* the above fashion, Konqeror's performance should double or triple.[/quote]

aah thanks. Will try this out later

mic64

eyolf · 2006-01-23 17:47:18

I've not moved from FF to Konq, but I must say that I'm entirely happy with my move from Thunderbird to Kmail/Kontact. Some of the reasons are the ones you mention (the profile handling - it's great), but also the keyboard navigation, which is odd at first, but very handy once one gets used to it; the integration within the whole Kontact suite; AND the spam filtering.

Neuro wrote:

The downside of the move was spam filtering. I mean, on one of my accounts (dating back to 2000 ) I get loads of spam, ~110 each day. I can honestly say that TB's junk mail control is better than Kmail's external filtering (I'm using bogofilter, spamassasin used too much CPu power). Although I can live with it, it's slower... noticeably slower.

It may be slower - perhaps it is, but I haven't noticed anything. Where it is superior, by far, is the catch rate, because of the configurability. TB also uses as bayesian filter, and it works fine out of the box, but there's really nothing much one can do with it, and usually 5-10 spam mails got through each day (I have more or less the same amount of spam as you - c. 100 a day). With a bogofilter tuned with a base of 2500 spam and 1000 ham messages, I have one or two wrong attributions a week. I still go through the spam folders once in a while, but I rarely find anything there.
I have only had two reasons to complain about Kontact so far. One has been a bug with remote calendar files. After a quick chat with one of the developers in the irc channel, that bug was fixed, as I was talking to him (amazing efficiency!), and will be in place for 3.5.1 (another reason to prefer Kontact over TB - I can't imagine anything like that in TB). The other is that one can't easily delete attachments (there is a workaround, but it takes a few more steps). I can live with that, though.

Arch Linux

#1 2006-01-09 21:23:13

Firefox > Konqueror move

#2 2006-01-09 22:10:31

Re: Firefox > Konqueror move

#3 2006-01-09 23:17:10

Re: Firefox > Konqueror move

#4 2006-01-10 08:02:15

Re: Firefox > Konqueror move

#5 2006-01-10 13:37:22

Re: Firefox > Konqueror move

#6 2006-01-10 15:54:02

Re: Firefox > Konqueror move

#7 2006-01-10 16:08:20

Re: Firefox > Konqueror move

#8 2006-01-10 16:53:26

Re: Firefox > Konqueror move

#9 2006-01-10 18:35:55

Re: Firefox > Konqueror move

#10 2006-01-10 20:49:41

Re: Firefox > Konqueror move

#11 2006-01-10 21:25:17

Re: Firefox > Konqueror move

#12 2006-01-12 07:04:10

Re: Firefox > Konqueror move

#13 2006-01-13 00:18:10

Re: Firefox > Konqueror move

#14 2006-01-13 20:32:00

Re: Firefox > Konqueror move

#15 2006-01-17 00:49:07

Re: Firefox > Konqueror move

#16 2006-01-17 02:04:25

Re: Firefox > Konqueror move

#17 2006-01-17 08:51:22

Re: Firefox > Konqueror move

#18 2006-01-17 11:53:38

Re: Firefox > Konqueror move

#19 2006-01-23 17:47:18

Re: Firefox > Konqueror move

Board footer