Can Konqueror Compete? A Look at KDE's Browser

May 04, 2009, 16:34 (1 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Joe Brockmeier)

[ Thanks to An Anonymous Reader for this link. ]

"The first test for Konqueror was to just run through browsing the sites I use on a daily basis -- everything from basic news sites like CNN to Google Reader, GMail, Twitter, Gist, and of course I Can Has Cheezburger? for good measure. What I wanted to do is to see how well Konqueror handles a variety of sites using three main criteria: rendering speed, layout, and support for advanced features. In other words -- does Konqueror measure up speedwise? Can it render pages as they're expected to appear in Firefox and IE? And does Konqueror support keybindings in GMail, and other advanced features in Web applications I use day to day?

"Static sites like CNN ran OK, though it seemed that rendering speed was just a bit laggy compared to Firefox. When I loaded GMail, it would initially default to the HTML view of GMail. Konqueror can handle the standard GMail pages, but it's much slower than Firefox. To be fair, the blame may fall on Google's developers just as much as Konqueror's, because there's obviously little or no testing done to ensure that GMail supports Konqueror. However, as an end user, I don't really care a great deal where the fault lies -- just whether or not it works. And though it technically does work, it's distressingly slow."

Complete Story

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