rekonq 0.3.0. Ending point, starting point.

Just a micro blog today to say some facts. In case you live under the rocks, rekonq is a software that has just reached the “perfect social browser” status. In fact all rekonq users tend to try contacting me asking for bugs to fix or features to implement…

Ok, stop joking and let’s see facts:

• rekonq 0.3.0 has been released today. I’m aware that a lot of distro are just releasing some packages about. If yours is not on the list or you prefer compiling code, you can find it through kde-apps or sf.
• With this release I can proudly say I reached my first goal: I feel I’m having “something” in my hands and a lot of people to share with. And I’m really happy about.
• We have a lot of things in our TODO list here and I really can’t wait starting implementing them. So, I really need this release to restart my happy developing nights

Enjoy!

The upcoming rekonq

I’m the worst blogger in the planet, I know.. It’s probably that I have no enough time to and when I have some, I prefer spending on my pet project(s). So here you are the news with the upcoming new rekonq version.

New Icon

Lionel “megabigbug” Chauvin is the rekonq developer that designs it. He started talking about concepts (the “gear”, the “world”, the “dragon”, the “ouroboros”) and came out with this.

I think it’s fantastic. Isn’t it?

A new UI

We like simplicity. And we think a browser has to be simple, exposing all things you need in one click and leaving as much space is possible to the (web) page. So, here is our new UI (quite final, just some elements missing).

In the new UI you’ll find also some “special effects” like the unfocused tab preview and the enhanced notification system (and no more flickering there).

New Tab Home Page

In this release we are proposing also a tech preview of a “new tab page”, a sort of speed-dial inclusing (for now):

• favorites, some sites you always want near your pointer
• last closed tabs, to not browse your history searching them
• bookmarks, a re-proposal of the bookmarks kio-slave
  
• history, simpler searching all history in a full page

We are thinking on some sort of rss support and more for the next versions. And also searching a good name for this feature. has someone something to suggest us?

Session support

rekonq saves now the urls of the actual browsing sites to restore them in the “impossible” case it crashs or to let user restart from them on startup.

Multi Windows

From this release, rekonq can manage more than one window.

Some people asked about, here it is

KIO (full) integration

Thanks to KDE 4.3 KIO improvements, the KIO::AccessManager new class providing integration between QtWebKit and KIO (and some classes “stolen” from kdewebkit, that we’ll find in KDE 4.4) we rich full KIO integration. And saying full, I mean support for:

• KDE proxy setting
• KDE cookie system
• KIO system download

So, quite everything a browser needs to “kde browse” the net. Many thanks to all devs contributing there. As the next rekonq release (0.4, late Q1 2010) will be kdewebkit based, we’ll also start contributing there. At least with our 2 cents.

And last.. the HandBook!

Thanks to Rohan Garg work there, in rekonq 0.3 we also have an handbook. It needs improvements, obvious. But it will be simple improving something we have

 

Here we are.  I did my best and I tried exposing all news about. Expect just another blog in the next weeks to inform you about the 0.3 release and to let me present you the “rekonq crew” !

 

rekonq 0.2

Here we are, after two beta releases, some bug fixing and so on, having our 0.2 release!

Here are the most important changes

• New and unique loading url bar (and expect something better for 0.3..)
• Integrated google search (CTRL+L to have urlbar focus, type ciao, click enter and search google for it!)
• simpler and better UI (again, NOT final!!)
• new experimental notification system
• KDE Web shortcuts support (gg:ciao search google for ciao, wp:ciao search wikipedia for it)
• Improved Contextual actions menu
• KDE cookie system support
• tons of bugs fixed (and someone surely introduced..)

rekonq 0.2 seems a really beautiful release and a huge step forward 0.1. Anyway, it is surely NOT (yet) intended for production.
Perhaps 0.3 will be. Who knows?

As usual, download it from our sourceforge site (waiting for a rekonq.kde.org domain.. ) or from the beautiful kde-apps.

Do it now!
And enjoy!

rekonq 0.0.4! Come on..

Just a little note here, to let you know: rekonq 0.0.4 is out! We are having, as usual, a short changelog, but a lot of fun

rekong has also a new site. So, in case you are interested, please click there to read news (in a while) and to download source tarballs.

And enjoy!

rekonq 0.0.3 is out!

Yeah! A very good new! Anyway.. what IS rekonq??

Rekonq is a (hopefully) lightweight KDE browser based on Webkit. Its code was initially based on Nokia QtDemoBrowser, just like Arora. Anyway its implementation is going to embrace KDE technologies to have a full-featured KDE web browser.

Ah, ok. So it’s a browser. And you’re actually porting code to KDE..

Yes! I started changing ‘Q’ with ‘K’ (not so far from truth ) and I’m doing one release a month to let see changes and features coming. For now rekonq..

• shares konqueror bookmarks
• steals icons from KDE project
• seems a browser (read, has a lot of bugs)

Of course, I’m having a lot of fun playing with it. And now that it is at least acceptable, I’m starting to talk about it. In case you have 5 minutes and you are really free, you can try it downloading code tarball from kde-apps or taking a look at the code from gitorious.

Have fun!