KDE's Konqueror Is In Need Of A New Maintainer

[TheBlackCat]

Hmm, I don't have bookmarks in the file manager profile anymore, places replaced that for both Konqueror and Dolphin for me.

Whether you use it or not, it is still there cluttering up the UI. Dolphin doesn't even have a "bookmarks" menu.

I don't know what that download manager is but since I can access remote files wouldn't that be useful there as well?

You can access and drag-and-drop remote files with kio, which is the normal way to access remote files when doing file management. The download manager is more for bulk downloading off of web pages. It even says "list all links" when in file manager mode.

Not sure about the context menu, I seem to have pretty different ones in the two profiles. At least I can't see any file manager specific ones in the web profile or vice versa.

I get stuff related to svn and git repo management, kdiff3, archive extraction (with q7z), and krename when right-clicking on the body of an html page. It also has redundant "view document source" and "open with -> [lots of text editors]" because it is seen as both a web page and an html file (the latter of which is seen as a special type of text file).

As another example, you have two homes in konqueror, one web page and one file manager. You also have file management and web browser history mixed in together in the sidebar, and and web site and network drives mixed in together in the "network" sidebar panel.

As for other potential profiles I've never configured any of those, so my experience is solvely filemanager and browser and these seem to work equally well.

Yes, they work equally well to each other, but they don't work equally well to a purpose-built file manager or a purpose-built web browser. You don't get all this browser-related stuff in dolphin, and you don't get all this file manager-related stuff in rekonq, and you definitely don't have both in the same menu or sidebar panel.

Again, that is not to say it is bad. It is a great tool for certain work-flows. But in order for it to be what it is it has to make some compromises, particularly in the design of the UI.

[anda_skoa]

Whether you use it or not, it is still there cluttering up the UI. Dolphin doesn't even have a "bookmarks" menu.

Ah, you are referring to the menu. I haven't tried but since the menu structure is loaded from file I wouldn't be surprised if one could remove it as well.
Haven't even thought about the menu since I never used it in browsers either, accessing bookmarks always through the toolbar.

You can access and drag-and-drop remote files with kio, which is the normal way to access remote files when doing file management. The download manager is more for bulk downloading off of web pages. It even says "list all links" when in file manager mode.

I've been using Konqueror as my main browser for over a decade but I have never come across this download manager. How does one access it?

I get stuff related to svn and git repo management, kdiff3, archive extraction (with q7z), and krename when right-clicking on the body of an html page.

Don't have any of these in browser profile.

It also has redundant "view document source" and "open with -> [lots of text editors]" because it is seen as both a web page and an html file (the latter of which is seen as a special type of text file).

I guess one could argue that view source could be hidden if a text editor component is available, but I guess the entry is there for "mental compatibility", i.e. people would be looking for it and not necessarily realize that open in a text editor would be technically equivalent.

As another example, you have two homes in konqueror, one web page and one file manager.

Not sure what you mean with that, each profile has its own home as expected.
/home/$user for the filemanager and KDE's homepage for the browser in my case.

You also have file management and web browser history mixed in together

True, never realized this before.
Not using the history much for browsing and praktically never for filemanagment.

and and web site and network drives mixed in together in the "network" sidebar panel.

You mean in file management profile?
Hmm, true, but I never use that panel, places works nicely for me.

Yes, they work equally well to each other, but they don't work equally well to a purpose-built file manager or a purpose-built web browser. You don't get all this browser-related stuff in dolphin, and you don't get all this file manager-related stuff in rekonq, and you definitely don't have both in the same menu or sidebar panel.

Again, that is not to say it is bad. It is a great tool for certain work-flows. But in order for it to be what it is it has to make some compromises, particularly in the design of the UI.

I guess my scepticism of the critique comes from the fact that I use Konqueror primarily, basically exclusively, in Browser mode, and there it is no different than Firefox which I use occasionally for sites that live in the past and absolutely require Flash.

Haven't tried Rekonq yet so I don't know how it compares.

Cheers,
_