RVDowning Posted May 10, 2007 Report Share Posted May 10, 2007 (edited) I went to cnn.com and notice that konqueror played the live video streams with no problem. No external plugins were needed to handle the Windows Media Player format. However, for Firefox and Opera, I had to urpmi mplayerplug-in.so to ve able to play the same content. The Linux/Unix mantra was always to "do one thing well." Does konqueror have the ability built in to play handle the Windows Media Player format? That is the old Windows way, to have such capabilities built into the product. It ends up causing bloatware. It is like File Open, File Save, etc. These applets don't get built into the product, but rather exist independently so they can be used by any product that needs such functionality. If instead, konqueror is using an external file like a plugin, then why can't these other products, like Firefox and Opera use it? Don't understand. :unsure: Edited May 10, 2007 by RVDowning Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted May 10, 2007 Report Share Posted May 10, 2007 It's probably because konqueror is a KDE app and you have the necessary plugin installed. Firefox is a GTK app, so more associated with Gnome than KDE, and probably as such, requires the relevant applications for the GTK environment and necessary plugin to get it to work. I don't know what konquerors external plugin is, but Firefox's is mplayerplugin. I assume that Opera is also GTK, and hence why it uses the same plugin. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted May 10, 2007 Report Share Posted May 10, 2007 IIRC, Konqueror uses the same plugins as any of the KDE apps. If you have the plugins installed so you can, say, watch a WMV video in whatever the standard KDE video player is, then konqueror will use it. Firefox and other browsers can't be platform-specific, so they can't depend on plugins that are specific to an environment - KDE or whatever. You can install a plugin for firefox for most of your favorite video players, which will allow it to just call those players and the player uses it's own decoders. Essentially this is what Konqueror does, it just does it more seamlessly. If you think about it, thought, konqueror is very similar to the dreaded "explorer" in Windows. In the next KDE release (4), though, they're going to have a new file browser called dolphin - that looks like a Nautilus ripoff, honestly :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RVDowning Posted May 10, 2007 Author Report Share Posted May 10, 2007 I've tried dolphin which is available on 2007.1. I don't really care for it though. If I wanted a "file manager" of that variety I would just use krusader. Both of these are just midnight commander types of file managers. What I miss about both dolphin and krusader (and midnight cmmander, as far as that goes) is the lack of the tree view, with directories being "exploded" on the right, which is available in konqueror, or in Windows, in both Explorer and Powerdesk. So, I guess I'll just continue using konqueror as a file manager. I've never preferred it as a web browser, though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted May 10, 2007 Report Share Posted May 10, 2007 (edited) If you have a recent kaffeine or kmplayer installed then konqueror will play all supported video/audio formats and streaming media without the need for an mplayer plugin. And I agree that krusader is the best *nix filemanager out there (after mc, of course!), but it had no chances to replace konqueror: no file previews supported. Konqi is the fastest web browser I've ever met, but it's let down by weird rendering of some pages plus the nonexistent embedded rss feeder (you just have to use akregator externally). Edited May 10, 2007 by scarecrow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RVDowning Posted May 10, 2007 Author Report Share Posted May 10, 2007 By the way, a little bit of googling indicates that Opera uses the QT libs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted May 10, 2007 Report Share Posted May 10, 2007 By the way, a little bit of googling indicates that Opera uses the QT libs.QT is only a user interface library, it doesn't handle back-end things like plugins, HTML rendering, etc. - other libraries handle those. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted May 10, 2007 Report Share Posted May 10, 2007 Correct. There's even an Opera version which does not require qt3 to operate (statically built). It's very good for Gnome users who do not wish to "infect" their systems with QT, but in the end they get annoyed because it's quite faster than Firefox while using much less RAM- and so they reject it as non-FOSS software... :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zibi1981 Posted May 18, 2007 Report Share Posted May 18, 2007 Opera is my favorite web browser almost since I've started to use Internet. Its much faster than Konqueror. Unfortunately the latest version - 9.20 - has some unresolved issues with slow GUI on Linux only. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ffi Posted May 18, 2007 Report Share Posted May 18, 2007 (edited) Opera is my favorite web browser almost since I've started to use Internet. Its much faster than Konqueror. Unfortunately the latest version - 9.20 - has some unresolved issues with slow GUI on Linux only. lol i was just trying out different configs trying to solve this problem when I read this thread..... last summer I had 2 distros installed ubuntu (dapper flights) and mandriva 2007 cooker, mandriva was slow (type b behaviou) ubuntu fast (type a) but now they are both slow :sad: Edited May 18, 2007 by ffi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ffi Posted May 18, 2007 Report Share Posted May 18, 2007 Oh and on topic konqueror does 1 thing and does it very well: you click on something and konqueror displays it.... I hope in KDE4 they will keep konqueror useable and updated and not try to turn it into dolphin or nautilus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zibi1981 Posted May 18, 2007 Report Share Posted May 18, 2007 I hope so too. I like Konqi, and use it as my only file manager in KDE. Occasionally also as a web browser. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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