rekonq 2.4.0

Here we are again, after a tiny pause, ready for a new release! Rekonq 2.4.0 has been released to the wild! What’s new in this release?
Here is a short summary of the most interesting things:

• added a simple ssh sync handler, so that you can sync history, bookmarks and password over ssh
• adblock improvements: faster startup setting load and domain-specific hiding support!
• a general work on startup settings: changed some defaults about HTML5 and WebGL, automatically loaded if available. Also, some small improvements on startup speed
• bugfixing

This is the first rekonq release after Bluesystems stopped funding me for rekonq development. I have to thank them a lot for this year together playing to realize the best open source software in the World! I heard they are concentrating their strengths now in the plasma workspace: hope them best luck 🙂
Anyway, what about rekonq future? I’m currently involved in a new project in my job and I’m planning to restart the usual development in rekonq from christmas on. I’m actually evaluating just a new tiny feature about a random password generator. You’ll see if it will fit in 😉
My main concern is actually about the direction the development should go: the most important decision is about the underlying web library to adopt. We are actually based on QtWebkit for Qt 4.x. But this is quite old and basically “unmaintained”. And this for our users mean just one thing: crash bugs!
The same library in Qt 5, the so called qtwebkitwidget library has some improvements about javascript and performance in general, it’s not so old, but as far as I understood, it is the “less possible” maintained. It will be surely easy move from the actual one we use to this, but I don’t think it can be more than a “point of passage” from Qt4 to Qt5.
Next option is the QML/Qt5 web library based on the so called “webkit2”. Well… this is born right now and it will basically die in Qt 5.2. So, you cannot even consider it.
Last option is the Qt WebEngine. It will be based on Chromium/Blink. References about what will happen in Qt are here. If you have read it, you probably noticed that there will be no usable Qt WebEngine release (for a browser) until Qt 5.4. So, something around 20 months from now.

All this to state: I no more want to release Qt4 based versions, but I cannot (yet) release serious Qt5 ones. I had to use this time to work on code refactoring, GUI/feature separation and so on. I’ll try to insert your preferred (tiny) feature here and there, in the while.
Hope you’ll like it 😉

Enjoy rekonq!