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> Falkon is a KDE web browser using QtWebEngine rendering engine, previously known as QupZilla. It aims to be a lightweight web browser available through all ma

by Y_Y 2y ago

> Falkon is a KDE web browser using QtWebEngine rendering engine, previously known as QupZilla. It aims to be a lightweight web browser available through all major platforms. This project has been originally started only for educational purposes. But from its start, Falkon has grown into a feature-rich browser. While I applaud competition among browsers, I think that the renderer/webengine is such a big external component nowadays (especially if you lump in the JavaScript engine) that it might be more accurate to say that you're providing a skin, rather than a new browser. Anyway I miss Konqueror and am happy to see any of its descendants carry on its legacy. (QtWebEngine is derived from Chromium - https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qtwebengine-overview.html https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qtwebengine-overview.html )

okanat 2y ago
Qt doesn't upgrade WebEngine often enough. So it is possible to have lingering vulnerabilities in Falkon.
notpushkin 2y ago
I’d really love to see a KDE-native browser based on Gecko instead of Chromium or WebKit.
- dismalaf 2y ago
  I mean, WekKit started life as a fork of KDE's web engine so only makes sense they'd use it...
  - notpushkin 2y ago
    I’m not saying they shouldn’t use it, of course! I just want there to be an alternative, too :-) (It could be a part of KDE – they do have multiple media players, why not multiple browsers as well? But it could also be an independent project. I might tinker with this idea sometime, although I don’t have a KDE setup right now as my main laptop broke down.)
- cosmic_cheese 2y ago
  Not likely unfortunately thanks to Mozilla, which in all its wisdom, dropped embedding support from Gecko. This means it effectively cannot be hosted outside of Firefox/Seamonkey and forks thereof. This is contrasted by WebKit, which is largely UI toolkit agnostic and can be dropped in just about anywhere. Funny thing, Epiphany (now known as GNOME Web) was originally built around Gecko, but when Mozilla axed embedding, the project had no choice except to switch web engines and so it’s now built around WebKit instead.
  - jeroenhd 2y ago
    I think that was a fine decision by Mozilla, even if I'm not happy with it. Firefox is already a web browser with barely enough market share to support it. Wasting resources on making even smaller special purpose web browsers integrate with the engine is not a move for a company that has been struggling with a lack of independent funding for years now. Of course the decision was made back in the Firefox 5 days, but back then Chrome was rapidly growing, mostly at the cost of Firefox. Had Firefox remained embeddable, I think it would've only been held back in important performance areas like threading and rendering because of the API around the web view. Interesting enough, with the Firefox for Android rewrite, Mozilla actually went back to making Gecko embeddable: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/GeckoView https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/GeckoView This design decision is also claimed to be the reason for them to disable about:config in production builds, because misconfiguring geckoview can disconnect it from the app and leave users with a broken browser (apparently). So now there is an official way of embedding Gecko in your application, but it's limited to Android only.
    - homarp 2y ago
      >Wasting resources talking about Mozilla wasting resources is quite funny. Do you think having a competitor to Electron would be worse than + Pocket + LLM + VPN + https://mozillalifeboat.com/ https://mozillalifeboat.com/
      - EasyMark 2y ago
        any proof that they are losing money on VPN or Pocket? That's my only concern, if they're profitable they should live, if they are cost centers, drop them (obviously they're outside core mission of the browser, internet standards, internet freedom)
bitwize 2y ago
> While I applaud competition among browsers, I think that the renderer/webengine is such a big external component nowadays (especially if you lump in the JavaScript engine) that it might be more accurate to say that you're providing a skin, rather than a new browser. Makes me think of NeoPlanet. That was an online trend that ripped through my university[0]. NeoPlanet was billed as the "world's first skinnable browser", and Wikipedia attributes the coining of the term "skin" (in the UI sense) to NeoPlanet's developers[1]. But NeoPlanet itself was pretty much a skin over Internet Explorer's browser engine, embedding a COM component of the browser into itself. So to me at the time, it didn't count as a separate browser, just a UI for internet explorer. [0] Alongside AllAdvantage, which inspired some of the first mouse-jiggling simulation software because it paid users for active internet time while displaying ads on their screen. There was a whole universe of 90s Windows crudware that I wasn't all that privy to. [1] I think Winamp's use of "skin" preceded NeoPlanet's, by analogy with Quake "skins", textures that could be applied to your player character in the QuakeWorld online multiplayer service, which could be used to indicate clan affiliation, etc.
Neikius 2y ago
This is so funny. So chromium came from WebKit, which in turn came from KHTML which was ... a KDE web engine :D

by Y_Y 2y ago

okanat 2y ago

Qt doesn't upgrade WebEngine often enough. So it is possible to have lingering vulnerabilities in Falkon.

notpushkin 2y ago

I’d really love to see a KDE-native browser based on Gecko instead of Chromium or WebKit.

dismalaf 2y ago
I mean, WekKit started life as a fork of KDE's web engine so only makes sense they'd use it...
- notpushkin 2y ago
  I’m not saying they shouldn’t use it, of course! I just want there to be an alternative, too :-) (It could be a part of KDE – they do have multiple media players, why not multiple browsers as well? But it could also be an independent project. I might tinker with this idea sometime, although I don’t have a KDE setup right now as my main laptop broke down.)
cosmic_cheese 2y ago
Not likely unfortunately thanks to Mozilla, which in all its wisdom, dropped embedding support from Gecko. This means it effectively cannot be hosted outside of Firefox/Seamonkey and forks thereof. This is contrasted by WebKit, which is largely UI toolkit agnostic and can be dropped in just about anywhere. Funny thing, Epiphany (now known as GNOME Web) was originally built around Gecko, but when Mozilla axed embedding, the project had no choice except to switch web engines and so it’s now built around WebKit instead.
- jeroenhd 2y ago
  I think that was a fine decision by Mozilla, even if I'm not happy with it. Firefox is already a web browser with barely enough market share to support it. Wasting resources on making even smaller special purpose web browsers integrate with the engine is not a move for a company that has been struggling with a lack of independent funding for years now. Of course the decision was made back in the Firefox 5 days, but back then Chrome was rapidly growing, mostly at the cost of Firefox. Had Firefox remained embeddable, I think it would've only been held back in important performance areas like threading and rendering because of the API around the web view. Interesting enough, with the Firefox for Android rewrite, Mozilla actually went back to making Gecko embeddable: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/GeckoView https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/GeckoView This design decision is also claimed to be the reason for them to disable about:config in production builds, because misconfiguring geckoview can disconnect it from the app and leave users with a broken browser (apparently). So now there is an official way of embedding Gecko in your application, but it's limited to Android only.
  - homarp 2y ago
    >Wasting resources talking about Mozilla wasting resources is quite funny. Do you think having a competitor to Electron would be worse than + Pocket + LLM + VPN + https://mozillalifeboat.com/ https://mozillalifeboat.com/
    - EasyMark 2y ago
      any proof that they are losing money on VPN or Pocket? That's my only concern, if they're profitable they should live, if they are cost centers, drop them (obviously they're outside core mission of the browser, internet standards, internet freedom)

bitwize 2y ago

> While I applaud competition among browsers, I think that the renderer/webengine is such a big external component nowadays (especially if you lump in the JavaScript engine) that it might be more accurate to say that you're providing a skin, rather than a new browser. Makes me think of NeoPlanet. That was an online trend that ripped through my university[0]. NeoPlanet was billed as the "world's first skinnable browser", and Wikipedia attributes the coining of the term "skin" (in the UI sense) to NeoPlanet's developers[1]. But NeoPlanet itself was pretty much a skin over Internet Explorer's browser engine, embedding a COM component of the browser into itself. So to me at the time, it didn't count as a separate browser, just a UI for internet explorer. [0] Alongside AllAdvantage, which inspired some of the first mouse-jiggling simulation software because it paid users for active internet time while displaying ads on their screen. There was a whole universe of 90s Windows crudware that I wasn't all that privy to. [1] I think Winamp's use of "skin" preceded NeoPlanet's, by analogy with Quake "skins", textures that could be applied to your player character in the QuakeWorld online multiplayer service, which could be used to indicate clan affiliation, etc.

Neikius 2y ago

This is so funny. So chromium came from WebKit, which in turn came from KHTML which was ... a KDE web engine :D