Caffeinated Dreams

This is going to go over the pro’s and con’s I find in both browsers, and some shortcomings or advantages. Annoyances, and can’t-live-withouts. It’s focused strictly on the views of a KDE user, so it’s relevance to anything isn’t much in the world of browsers. Just opinions.

Mozilla Firefox

The thumbnail is a screenshot of what my Firefox looks like on KDE. It is version 1.5.0.1 so things are up to date.

I’ve been using Firefox since the days of Phoenix, version 0.4. So I’ve seen it grow from nothing (it was dififcult to rely solely on it as a browser for awhile) to a browser that has made even Microsoft’s Internet Explorer developers become concerned and make significant changes for Internet Explorer 7. It started out as being a fork of Mozilla, designed to be featureless, lightweight, and most importantly: Fast. The version 1.0 release was one of the most anticpated releases in the open source community. It didn’t dissappoint.

Some Pros

The most commonly mentioned pro’s for using Firefox are tabs and extensions. Tabs were first introduced in the Opera Browser, but no one wanted to pay for it or deal with ads in the free version. Extensions are the other deal sealer. This was to keep it slim and fast, not bloated and slow like the Mozilla browser, and more importantly…customizable to the users desires. Popular extensions include AdBlock, Tab Mix Plus, and NoScript. These are the ones I go for right after a fresh install. Others include the del.icio.us plugin and Something Awful Last Read.

It is cross-platform, and to me that is most important. Not only as a user for convienance, but also as a web developer for less headaches. I know a website should look the same on Linux, OS X, FreeBSD, Windows, or whatever else someone got it compiled on. The exceptions are new Flash websites (Linux/FreeBSD doesn’t have flash 8, and barely flash 7 on FreeBSD) and, obviously, ActiveX or other OS-dependent things.

The browser is in a constant state of active development. Any security holes or bugs get fixed quickly. This isn’t necessarily because it’s Firefox, but rather because it is open source and any large open source project has bugs fixed in a timely manner.

Some Con’s

Version 1.5. Yeah, I said it. A lot of people seem to be having problems with it but keep trying not to admit it. My system is FreeBSD, but I also have similar problems on Windows XP. I asked Lance if he suffers the following problems on Windows at work (he is a FreeBSD user as well), and confirmed that he does. The memory leak issue was finally addressed awhile back in the Firefox blog, and it was described as a feature and not a bug, including ways how to lesson the problems people were experiencing. I tweaked it accordingly and saw some improvements, but it wasn’t enough and still made me yell four-letter words when it hogged CPU/RAM or even crashed.

Crashing was extremely rare in the earlier days of the browsers life. If it crashed, it was almost certainly a website built for IE-only or a faulty extension. In fact, whenever it did crash I didn’t get angry or upset–I was shocked and just started it back up. Sadly, I can’t say the same thing anymore. If I load up a website with a good amount of large (filesize) images, the browser slows down significantly and becomes unresponsive. Sometimes it’ll force it’s way through it and come out fine, but too often it decides to just crash and be done with it. However, it is hard to reproduce this, because I can sometimes go back to the site that caused a crash and it’ll work perfectly. It’s seemingly random. Large images aren’t always the cause, sometimes I can’t even get to the website to see what it has on it before it crashes, yet I know it works in Firefox because others are on it.

This was a lot worse on 1.5, and 1.5.0.1 has lessened it a bit but I’m still nervous when browsing some sites on Firefox.

On FreeBSD/Linux systems Firefox uses GTK for its GUI. I don’t use Gnome, and don’t ever plan to nor want to. I use KDE, because I like Qt. Because Firefox is cross-platform you would expect it to try and fit into whatever you’re using, and become close to a native application in look and feel. Actually, I have no idea why Firefox uses GTK. For those who don’t know, GTK on FreeBSD is a pain to deal with. If GTK gets updated (which happens way too often, and that’s another rant) and you try and update Firefox, it wants you to recompile every single application that is somehow linked to GTK. It isn’t supported on the BSD’s, so I hear this isn’t much of a deal on Linux.

Besides that, GTK dialogues (Open/Save windows) are horrible. I managed to get Firefox’s dialogues to kind of use Qt dialogues, but it isn’t nearly as great.

The biggest problem I have with Firefox is it’s just slow now.

Konqueror

The thumbnail is a screenshot of what Konqueror looks like. It is version 3.4.3, because that is my KDE version. It isn’t up to date.

Konqueror is the file manager and web browser that comes with the K Desktop Environment (KDE) for Linux/BSD systems. Its name is a pun on Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer (Navigator (file management) -> Explorer (browser) -> Conqueror ). Unlike Firefox, it uses it’s own engine, KHTML. The Safari browser for Apple even uses it. The K is because most KDE apps have picked up the habit of using K’s in replace of C’s or or their sounds.

Some Pro’s

Like Firefox, it has tabbed browsing. Its tab handling is superb by default and, like the rest of KDE, is extremely customizable in how you want it to handle them. It opens new window links in a new tab by default, keeping everything in a single-window mode. Javascript windows retain the close functions even in tabs, and pop-ups, if they show up (it has a built in pop-up blocker) will appear in tabs as well.

View Profiles are something I overlooked for a long time until recently. It isn’t the same as user profiles found in other browsers, instead it saves sessions of tabs and how the Konqueror GUI is layed out (one being called Midnight Commander, that has a split window). Extremely flexible.

It’s native to KDE, so it uses Qt, making it fit right in with all of my desktop and not stand out in behaviour. It’s very fast, a cold start up is about 3 seconds opposed to Firefox’s (now) 10 seconds. As for responsiveness, it couldn’t be more snappy. It flies through web pages and nothing has choked it up yet.

The way it intergrates other KDE applications to the browsing experience is wonderful. When I installed Kaffeine (a video player) Konqueror instantly began using it for streaming video. I didn’t have to do anything. In Firefox, I had to install MPlayer for Mozilla and link it to the browser… and it sometimes worked.

Konqueror leaves a very small footprint on my system. For doing so much, it never hogs CPU or RAM, and crashes are usually websites being browser-specific.

Like all large open source projects, it is also in a constant state of active development. It releases a new version with every update of KDE. Bug fixes and patches are released on the side if it is serious enough or has a large outcry by the users.

Some Con’s

Extensions aren’t as easy to manage. Most, if not all, need compiling or some sort of install. It lacks an AdBlock-like extension, which is something I can’t live without. However, in Konqueror 3.5 there is one, so it’s a moot point now.

There is no Search Bar by default. You need to go download one from KDE-Apps.org and install it. It does have a search function, by typing “gg: search string” (gg is for google search) in the URL bar.

Being a niche browser in an already small group of internet users, I sometimes come across websites that won’t let me in, which is reminiscent of the Mozilla Phoenix days. Although this shouldn’t be a browser issue (browser-specific sites of any kind is just bad design to begin with), it is still problematic.

Final Thoughts

I love them both. But to be brutally honest, coming from a veteran Firefox user and fan, the Fox is begining to go downhill, which is why I’ve been using Konqueror a lot more lately. I hope the 2.0 release for Firefox will return to it’s fast nature and stable browsing. Konqueror, on the otherhand, has been improving leaps and bounds in the latest release. When I upgrade to KDE 3.5 I will see for myself, but I might just hold out until KDE 4.0 instead because it’s right around the corner.

On a daily basis, for easy and stress-free browsing, I use Konqueror. If something isn’t working in it, I switch to Firefox. Right now, I use Konqueror probably 40% - 50% of the time, so it’s pretty damn even. The only things holding me back from a full switch are 1) Hope for Firefox getting better and 2) AdBlock, but it’s done now so a full switch will probably happen when I upgrade. :)