SilvereX žurnalas

Recently, I have been testing Konqueror web browser instead of Mozilla Firefox on Linux. Here are several things I have noticed:

• Konqueror can ask me if I want to open a new pop-up window. Firefox nowadays has either too strict or too lousy pop-up policy and sometimes does not get it right. Asking me, along with an option to block them always or allow always is the best thing, in my opinion.
• I can configure CPU priority for plugins. I don’t like animated flash ads to make my PC much slower and louder (I have a cheap laptop and I can hear very well if CPU is on 10%, 50% or 100%), so I always set lowest priority for plugins. Firefox, on the other hand, has Flashblock extension. It is definitely a good thing, but sometimes I’d rather see them, but not with 100% CPU load and slowliness of all applications. And Firefox definitely allocates more than lowest CPU priority for plugins.
• Konqueror definitely renders pages faster and uses less CPU for that. On the other hand, Firefox gets very exact font sizes (as IE). Konqueror makes small font sizes too small, and big ones too big, even when I use 96 dpi, with which Firefox on Linux renders font sizes exactly like MS IE on Windows. The closest I could get is medium font size preference set to 11.
• I miss Ctrl+Enter and other shortcuts in Konqueror very much. These are really killer features in Firefox. Konqueror only allows me to choose “www.” prepended to address from a drop-down list, but not when I have visited some page on that site.
• Konqueror can route all plugins sound through KDE’s sound server, so I can enjoy sound in funny flash movies, something which I could not do with Firefox (artsdsp and esddsp).
• Search bar is quite unusable. Though it looks very similar to Firefox one, I cannot put more than one search engine into drop-down list there, and when I press Enter, my input disappears at once. I can select it from history drop-down, but not edit it.
• Konqueror has no such thing as Home page (home button opens home directory), only Start page(s). I am using self-made page with links to my favorite sites and frequently access it. But it’s not that big issue, I got used to not closing my start tab or opening or restarting Konqueror, because it loads really fast, faster than Firefox.

So far, I have been using Konqueror under my GNOME environment. Though it doesn’t look that elegant and clean as other GNOME applications, I am using it as my default browser currently. It’s one of few really good KDE applications which I use under GNOME.

Paskelbė SilvereX (20:42) kategorijoje english