Web Browsers And Packages

Release: 2008-05-11
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KHTML Browsers including Konqueror

KHTML 3.5 and KHTML 4 are Layout Level web content rendering engine featuring KHTML as their layout engines and KJS as their scripting engines. KHTML and KJS are part of the K Desktop Environment (KDE).

KHTML 3.5 has support for:

• HyperText Markup Language (HTML) 4.01;
• HTML 5 'Subset';
• Web Forms 2.0's autocomplete attribute;
• eXtensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 and 1.1 (since KHTML 3.2) 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;
• Partial XML Document Type Definition support;
• Most of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 for ultimate 2-dimensional vector image display (Using KSVG plugin);
• Cascade StyleSheets (CSS) level 1, most of Visual, Interactive and partial Paged level 2.1 and CSS3's box-sizing provides a realistic way of adding presentation and layout to your document structures;
• Document Object Model (DOM) level 1 (HTML, XML), some of level 2 (HTML, XML, Events, UIEvents, MutationEvents, MouseEvents, HTMLEvents and at least bits and pieces of CSS, CSS2) and some of level 3 (Events, UIEvents, TextEvents, MutationEvnts, MouseEvents, HTMLEvents) and JavaScript 1.4 adds advanced user interaction;
• For image support we have GIF89a, JPEG, PNG, Icons (.ico, .png, ...), BMP (Windows Bitmap), XBM (X Bitmap), XPM (X Pixmap) and SVG (using plugin);
• As of KHTML 3.4 support increases with all CSS2.1 list types, content counters and some CSS level 3 including selectors and some CSS 3 list-style-types using -khtml- prefix.
• KHTML 3.5 finally adds support for CSS3 Namespaces and Multiple Background Images (but has a background-color bug with this).

provides an excellent platform for experiencing the World Wide Web.

KHTML will only process native XHTML through the XML parser with the 'text/xml' and 'application/xml' MIME Types – otherwise it incorrectly processes 'application/xhtml+xml' as HTML – which is incorrect for that document type.

KHTML 4 has support for:

• HyperText Markup Language (HTML) 4.01;
• HTML 5 'Subset';
• Web Forms 2.0's autocomplete attribute;
• eXtensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 and 1.1 through the HTML Parser!?! No Namespace or XML-Stylesheet Processing Instruction (PI) support;
• eXtensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) 1.0 (purely as HTML-Compatible);
• Cascade StyleSheets (CSS) level 1, almost all of Visual & Interactive and partial Paged level 2.1 plus CSS 3 Selectors, Opacity and Multiple Background Images (with background-color bug still), box-sizing and some CSS 3 list-style-types using -khtml- prefix provides a realistic way of adding presentation and layout to your document structures;
• Document Object Model (DOM) level 1 (HTML, XML), Most of level 2 (HTML, XML, Events, UIEvents, MutationEvents, MouseEvents, HTMLEvents, Traversal and at least bits and pieces of CSS, CSS2) and some of level 3 (Events, UIEvents, TextEvents, MutationEvnts, MouseEvents, HTMLEvents) and JavaScript 1.4 and some 1.6 (without multiple catches) adds advanced user interaction;
• For image support we have GIF89a, JPEG, PNG, Icons (.ico, .png, ...), BMP (Windows Bitmap), XBM (X Bitmap), XPM (X Pixmap).

provides an fair platform for experiencing the World Wide Web.

KHTML 4 seems to process XML and XHTML through the HTML parser with any of 'text/xml', 'application/xml' and 'application/xhtml+xml' MIME Types – which is incorrect for those document types. Plus CSS no longer works on 'text/xml' and 'application/xml' documents.

At least according to my tests of KHTML 4.0.3 in Kubuntu 8.04 KDE4 Refresh.

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

Features that need to be added to or improved in KHTML:

• From CSS3:
  • Remove background-color bug from Multiple Background Images,
  • Some form of border-radius,
• From Web Forms 2:
  • <input type="email">,
  • required and pattern attributes for <input>,
  • required, pattern and maxlength attributes for <textarea></textarea>,
• From HTML 5:
  • The Storage API.

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 3.5 also crashes from the Acid 3 Test which tests DOM, scripting, HTML, SVG and various other technologies for Web 2.0. Konqueror 4 clocks 65 out of 100 for Acid 3. More about the Acid 3 Test from the Web Standards Project (WASP).

Copyright ©2005-2008 Legend Scrolls and Peter Davison.
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