Web Browsers And Packages

Release: 2010-02-05
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KHTML Browsers including Konqueror

KHTML 4.3.5 is a Layout Level web platform featuring KHTML as the layout engine and Frostbyte as the new scripting engine (KJS was the previous scripting engine). KHTML and Frostbyte are part of the K Desktop Environment (KDE).

KHTML 4.3.5 has support for:

  • HTML 4.01 (HyperText Markup Language);
  • HTML 5 'Subset';
  • HTML 5's <meta charset=""> (as of 4.2.3);
  • &apos; named character reference;
  • contenteditable support;
  • canvas Element;
  • Cascade StyleSheets (CSS) level 1, Visual & Interactive and partial Paged level 2.1 provides a realistic way of adding presentation and layout to your document structures;
  • Some main and experimental CSS level 3 features;
  • The ability to style and script with unknown markup;
  • For image support we have GIF89a, JPEG, PNG, Icons (.ico), BMP (Windows Bitmap), XBM (X Bitmap), XPM (X Pixmap);
  • Document Object Model (DOM) level 1 (HTML, XML), Most of level 2 (Core, HTML, XML, CSS, Events, UIEvents, MutationEvents, MouseEvents, HTMLEvents, Traversal and at least bits and pieces of CSS2 and Range) and some of level 3 (bits of Core, Events, UIEvents, TextEvents, MutationEvnts, MouseEvents, HTMLEvents), Bits of DOM 5 HTML exposes the document to scripting interaction;
  • JavaScript 1.6 (without multiple catches);

Canvas feature support includes:

  • Stroke and fill colours;
  • Rectangles;
  • Paths;
  • rgba/hsla colours;
  • Shadows;
  • Linear and radial gradients;
  • Patterns;
  • Translations, rotation and scale;
  • Bring in pixel images;

CSS level 3 features supported includes:

  • hsl(), rgba(), hsla() functions;
  • opacity;
  • most of Media Queries and Multiple Background Images;
  • -khtml-border-radius, box-sizing and some CSS 3 list-style-types using -khtml- prefix.
  • text-shadow, ::selection pseudo-element selector, Structural pseudo-class selectors (like :nth-child, :not, :empty, :first-of-type, etc), :enabled, :disabled and :checked UI state pseudo-class selectors, :target selector;
  • @font-face At Rule with single src values, format() function (support for TrueType and OpenType fonts);

SVG support includes:

  • Groups;
  • Stroke and fill colours;
  • Basic shapes (Rectangles, Rounded Corner Rectangles, Lines, Circles, Ellipses, Polylines and Polygons);
  • Paths;
  • Opacity;
  • Text;
  • Linear and radial gradients;
  • Translations, skews, rotation and scale;
  • CSS support (fill CSS property not supported on SVG text);
  • SVG does not integrate with webpage (has white matte background);
  • Image is displaced within viewport;

In the realm of XML (No native XML support directly in KHTML but typing or pasting an xml or svg uri into the address bar and pressing enter passes to QT):

  • eXtensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 and 1.1 with Namespaces & partial XML-Stylesheet Processing Instruction (PI) (does not support PI's alternate attribute);
  • eXtensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) 1.0, 1.1 (without Ruby Annotation) and Basic 1.0 (Does not support XHTML named entities beyond XML's built-in five.);
  • Some of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 for ultimate 2-dimensional vector image display (does not support hyperlinks, Filters or animation);

provides a good platform for experiencing the World Wide Web.

Konqueror passes the Acid 2 Test which tests Cascade Stylesheet (CSS) support. More about the Acid 2 Test from the Web Standards Project (WASP).

 Konqueror 4.3.5 (KHTML) clocks 89 out of 100, failing 11 tests, for Acid 3 Test which tests DOM, scripting, HTML, SVG and various other technologies for Web 2.0. More about the Acid 3 Test from the Web Standards Project (WASP).

In order to allow users to navigate and use interactive webpage features using the keyboard (part of making webpages accessible) Khtml based UserAgents provide the following: You can tab through links and form controls in general.

KHTML MIME Complication

KHTML 4.3.5 processes XHTML through the XML parser with 'text/xml' and 'application/xml' MIME Types. But incorrectly through the HTML parser with 'application/xhtml+xml' as it executes JavaScript document.write() and document.writeln() functions.

Konqueror Availability

Konqueror is the web browser of KDE (mostly used on Linux and some Unix platforms). It is the flagship application using KHTML.

KDE 4.3.4 for MS Windows is available too (works in Windows 7) with the odd software still in beta.

Native KDE 4 for Apple Mac OS X has collapsed. You can use Fink or MacPorts to install KDE 4.2.x instead.

Features urgently need to be added to KHTML

  • From Web Accessiblity Initiative (WAI):
    • ARIA 1.0 (Accessible Rich Internet Applications);

Features that need to be added to KHTML

  • From CSS3:
    • Some form of CSS3 box-shadow property;
    • Support for multiple src values and the local() function with @font-face;
    • Support for Web Open Font Format (.woff);
  • From HTML 5:
    • Text in canvas;
    • Native Media (video, audio, source, media API);
    • Web Storage's sessionStorage,
    • Persistent Structured Data Storage: (such as any of these:
      • Web Storage's localStorage,
      • Web Database Storage,
      • Gears Database Storage.
      );
    • section, article, aside, nav, hgroup, header, footer, mark, time, progress, meter, figure, figcaption, details and summary elements;
    • Transparent background of SVG Documents brought in with object needs to allow HTML webpage background through instead of white matte;
    • Inline SVG in text/html documents;
  • From SVG:
    • Needs fixing: The position of the image in SVG documents prevents effective display of SVG images especially when referred to using object elements;
    • Support for hyperlinks, Filters, SVG Fonts, embedding raster images and declarative animations;
  • Formats for HTML 5 Native Media:
    • OGG Video (Theora),
    • OGG Vorbis Audio;
  • From Other:
    • Selectors API;
Konqueror (KDE 4).

Copyright ©2005-2010 Legend Scrolls and Peter Davison.
Icons from the Oxygen Icon Theme, LGPL, and PNG version of icons in the Oxygen Icon Theme from kde-look.org, GPL.
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