Tagged: firefox

Firefox regression?


While going through my feeds today, I happened to land up on the [[http://acidtests.org|ACID tests]] web page, and so I thought “hmm, let me see how Firefox does”. My expectation was that since Firefox is touted to be such a standards compliant browser, it’d pass tests 1 and 2 with flying colors. I already know that it doesn’t pass Acid3 yet, so I wasn’t expecting much anyways.

And so I was quite shocked to see it miserably fail both [[http://acid1.acidtests.org|Acid1]] and [[http://acid2.acidtests.org|Acid2]]. I’m not sure if this is because some extension that I have (unlikely). I’m running Firefox 2.0.0.13 on Ubuntu Gutsy (7.10). Take a look at the results of the test:

A more extensible KDE


First off, I love KDE and I am a long time KDE user. I use GNOME/GTK applications where they good KDE/QT based alternatives don’t exist, but I prefer K-land in general. Don’t get me wrong, KDE is one of most extensible free desktops out there. However, I do think it is missing extensibility in a few key areas, namely the web browser (Konqueror) and groupware (the KDE PIM suite).

The explosive adoption and popularity of Firefox is a testament to the power of having an extensible platform. The ingenuity was in opening up the API and then getting out the way of developers. Even a cursory look at the [[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/|extensions directory]] shows that big and small developers basically just ran with the extension mechanism, using it to enhance the user experience of Firefox in often unexpected ways. And thats the real beauty of the system — it is now self-sustained, with a vibrant, thriving and supporting community. Another huge facilitator was a centralized extension directory and a built-in auto update mechanism.

{{ http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/buttons/header.png|Mozilla Firefox}}

A similar phenomenon has propelled the growth of Thunderbird. While the [[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/|Thunderbird extension directory]] is not nearly as comprehensive as the Firefox one, there is nevertheless a lot of interest and enthusiasm in extending Thunderbird. It also allows users to take advantage of newly enabled functionality without waiting for a proper release to come out. For instance, there is a [[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/4631|provider for Googel Calendar]] which allows read/write access to your Google Calendar from within the Thunderbird UI (using Sunbird or Lightning). Or check out [[http://simile.mit.edu/seek/|Seek]], which builds a completely new search interface (Faceted Browsing) in Thunderbird.

On the other hand, despite having an [[http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=418950|excellent]] [[http://vntutor.blogspot.com/2008/02/10-hidden-features-of-konqueror.html|feature]] [[http://www.konqueror.org/features/|set]] and a proven rendering engine (KHTML, from which WebKit was derived, which in turn powers Safari, among others) [[http://konqueror.kde.org|Konqueror]] never quite hit mainstream. Even today its user base is limited to power browsers or loyal KDE fans. I have myself [[http://floatingsun.net/2005/10/10/konqueror|tried to switch to Konqueror full time]] but always gave up, usually because of lack of functionality compared to Firefox (often enabled due to various plugins I had installed) and bad support for advanced Javascript and most noticeably, Flash.

Konqueror implemented support for Netscape/Firefox plugins as a stop gap measure, but AFAIK that mechanism was primarily meant for Flash, and even then it is quite flaky (it //still// doesn’t work for me). There never was the ability to use any of the regular XPI/XUL based Firefox addons.

{{ http://www.kde.org/stuff/clipart/klogo-official-oxygen-128×128.png|KDE}}

Similarly crippled is the entire groupware suite in KDE, [[http://kontact.kde.org|Kontact]] and all its component applications, most notably [[http://kontact.kde.org/kmail/|KMail]] and [[http://kontact.kde.org/korganizer/|KOrganizer]]. Here are just few of the ways in which I would **love** to extend KMail and KOrganizer, but have no way of doing so, short of downloading the code, making the changes and compiling from source, which makes it all but impossible for the vast majority of users out there:

* allow KAddressBook to synchronize with my Google Contacts
* allow KOrganizer to synchronize with and edit my Google Calendar
* support for arbitrary tags/labels in KMail
* build an attachment browser for KMail
* build email analysis and visualization into KMail

It might be that some of these are better implemented as core features and not as plugins, but thats not the point. What frustrates me is that there is //no// way for me to easily and quickly extend the functionality of my applications, despite the fact that KDE has always had a really clean and modular architecture, so building a plugin mechanism really shouldn’t have been that hard. Case in point: Amarok.

Anywho, with KDE4 and the consequent KDEPIM port/rewrite, we have a chance to fix things. Please, //please// make sure that an extensible plugin based architecture is a first class feature this time. And with the [[http://kross.dipe.org/|Kross]] framework, I should be able to write extensions in several popular languages (btw, I’m not a big fan of XUL/XPI, and the documentation on them is not that great either). It would be so much easier and nicer to be able to write addons in Python or Ruby.

So here’s to a more extensible KDE.

Konqueror Wishlist


I have talked about my [[http://floatingsun.net/blog/2005/10/10/240/|dabblings]] with Konqueror [[http://floatingsun.net/blog/2005/10/11/244/|earlier]]. However, there are still a lot of things I find missing in Konqueror, as a result these days I end up running one instance of both on my desktop :-( Here are some of the things I //really// wish Konqueror had:

* **[[http://del.icio.us]] integration**: Bookmark management in Konqueror is great (I specially love the Kopete bookmark plugin that integrates with Konqueror), but come on, a modern browser **without** social bookmarking support? You gotta be kidding me!
* **Extending Konqueror**: Make Konqueror scriptable, or extendible. Keeping the binary tight and bundling the best features with the core are great ideas, but you can’t please all the people all the time right? So let people extend Konqueror — write plugins, extensions and so on. You know what, just support XUL and Firefox plugins — that way you reduce the barrier to entry for noobs significantly :-)
* **Better multimedia support**: KDE has always been great at doing multimedia stuff. I routinely use kaffeine over mplayer. KDE has also been great at re-using components, and embedding applications. The entire KParts framework is awesome. So why, oh why, is it so hard to view multimedia in Konqueror? Why does it try to use my Firefox Mplayer plugin when it can just potentially embed a Kaffeine part? I want Apple Trailers, Google Video, You Tube, Raaga.com — everything to work **out of the box**.
* Talk to Google: I’m not sure if this is a problem at Konqueror’s end or Google’s, but Konqueror still has a really hard time handling GMail. It just doesn’t look and feel as nice as it does in Firefox. And Maps? My disk starts thrashing, the memory hits the swap and everything just crawls to a grinding halt. Please, Google, KDE folks, talk to each other. Lets see some synergy! :-)

I’ll add more as I think of them.

Konqueror


I’m playing with with [[http://www.konqueror.org/|Konqueror]] as my default browser these days. Its not bad actually.

Actually lately [[http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/|Firefox]] has been a reall memory hog eating up a lot of my RAM. And every now and then I //do// need to fire up Konqueror so I thought why not give it a shot. Besides, I hadn’t really been using Firefox’s themes and extensions so there was not much I was going to miss out.

The advantages of Konqueror’s integration with the rest of the desktop might actually outweight the few things that it still lacks. It has Adblock, uses KDE widgets to render HTML buttons, excellent rendering, its //fast// and lightweight, extremely configurable.

The few cons: javascript support is still not perfect (this is mostly due to the fact that people don’t support Konqueror when they write their applications. Setting the user agent to Safari usually solves the problem — Google map being point in case); I miss the PageRank extension; there is no del.icio.us support right now (but I hear its being worked on).

Besides, having a konqueror window open has its own advantages: its a complete file browser, and combined with KDE’s IO slaves and network transparency, this just rocks. I can read man/info pages, browse the web, check out my TxD account, view powerpoint slides, PDFs, code — all in the same window.

We’ll see how long I last.