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rekonq 0.9: Tech Preview

adjam — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 20:32:08 +0000

Here we are, ready to announce the immediate availability for first technologic preview of rekonq 0.9 (rekonq 0.8.71). Here you’ll find a first view of the impressive list of news ready for the upcoming release.
In this post I’ll try to explain what we cooked for rekonq 0.9: I hope that, given the right testing/cleaning/bugfixing period we can provide the smoother and lighter browsing experience.
Here is the full list of news you’ll find in rekonq 0.9:

rewamped urlbar suggestions mechanism, trying to guess as soon as possible your typed site, but also showing all possible desired sites. I just blogged about here and here and I find it is a nice improvement
refactored User Agent code and UI.
sync support, with a full sync mechanism for passwords, bookmarks and history. sync handler for 0.9 will include just ftp sites (eg: remote owncloud installations), but several people is just working to provide in the next series a lot of alternatives (that are: mozilla sync, remote git repo, google bookmarks, WebDAV, Digg.)
web applications support. Why explain things when you have a video about?
Rewamped webkit settings.
add “tabs” in the rekonq pages, given an easy way to manage tabs. Probably not the best mechanism, but easy and fast.
improves in download management and in the download page, showing when a file has been removed and when it really exists.
icons retrieving fixes, now really working for all sites (you probably have to clear your favicon cache for that)
Access keys, whose code has been imported from Arora and adjusted following konqueror’s implementation.
User session management. So finally rekonq will restart well on KDE session restore.

Here you are. We now have a full month (or more, if needed) devoted to testing, bugfixing and improving rekonq performances. Please, help us testing 0.9 tech preview and reporting all bugs and/or unwanted behavior.

Enjoy rekonq

Filed under: international, rekonq

rekonq: working on “suggestions” 2

adjam — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 11:00:22 +0000

Just a brief update to previous post. I tried following discussion and “suggestions” there and implemented a sort of “mix” of them. I’m quite satisfied from results. A screenshot will let everything being simpler:
.
So, what happened here:
results are (no more than) 10 now. In 0.8 they are no more than 8. You have all sites matching, but the ones “startingWith” are considered more relevant and are listed before. The other relevance criteria (number and last date of visits) are anyway considered and help listing history items.
Compare this screenshot with actual implementation and with first proposal to have a clear idea about.

I tested it all the morning and it really seems “matching” better my needs. So I’m probably going on submitting a review request for.
Last chance to submit comments about

Filed under: international, rekonq

rekonq: working on “suggestions”

adjam — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 16:54:40 +0000

You may be scared a bit I’m blogging so much in this period and you are probably right
But there is an easy explanation for this: holidays!!!
So, working on my preferred browser, I found a couple of bugs/wishes on b.k.o. complaining about our awesome urlbar (c) suggestions mechanism. If you never used rekonq, run installing it and try digiting something in the urlbar. I’m attaching here a picture of suggestions for the word “kde”.

I decided to follow patterns suggested reading reports and I worked an hour about: here is the result.

This is basically the result of 3 commit:

Invert PreviewList item order, showing icon, text (url), preview
Change suggestions order to: History, Bookmarks, Search & Browse, suggestions
Improve site selection by searching just on sites that “startsWith” the typed text

Just let me explain last (first two are self evident): can you see “planetkde.org” result on first screenshot? Do you think an user typing “kde” is searching for a site containing the string “kde” or just for those sites starting with the typed string?

So, what do you think about? What’s the best suggestion mechanism?

Filed under: international, rekonq

Network management idea: proxy settings

adjam — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:34:30 +0000

My wife has a netbook I sometimes “steal” to have a tiny and light pc at work. (My 13 inches need at least a bag, my wife’s netbook stays… everywhere).
At work we have an http proxy that I have to set to browse and I usually forget to reset when I go back home
So, my wife cannot browse with and cannot easily fix the problem herself.
So, my question is: do you have two different network sharing the same proxy settings? Do you know something sharing? Do you know networks enabling/disabling their proxy to access the net? I don’t.
Hence, the idea and the proposal: can our network management code save/set proxy settings together with network (ip, mask, route, dns) ones?

Filed under: aboutme, international

rekonq 0.8.1

adjam — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 23:09:15 +0000

Yes, it seems I’m actually blogging just to announce releases. Free time is a dream in this period for me and I usual relax just on the sofa in front of the tv or reading/writing code
Anyway, as titled, time for the first bugfix release in the 0.8 rekonq browser series: 0.8.1!
You’ll find there a dozen of bugs fixed and hopefully all the translations available. In fact I learnt the existence of the releaseme script, a useful tool to release KDE software. Thanks to the i18n guy pointing that out to me (Burkhard?) and to stikonas and apachelogger on IRC for any help to let it work as desired.
While I’m not sure there will be a 0.8.2 (it depends on the bugfixes “0.8 compatible” available), I’d like to say that everything is going well for next feature release (with web apps support, refactored user agent & download management code and obviously… sync) and you’ll see a first “technologic preview” of it (I ever dreamt to say it!!!) just at the end of this month!

So, have a nice day. And enjoy rekonq!

Filed under: international, rekonq