Thanks for Firefox 2.0 ... well and also thanks for IE 7.0.
These two browsers really create a hugh bow wave. Yet, I still prefer this KDE
browser called Konqueror that matures in their slipstream. You may be inclined to call me a pighead. Permission granted.
Any improvements in browser technology is good news to web developers, especially if a new release is so long overdue as in IE's case.
I am not about to compare IE to Firefox here as this has been done already
enough for my taste and I will have to find out the new quirks in these
browsers the hard way by my self anyway. However, let's compare
Firefox 2.0 to Konqueror on some little details ... not the big picture
but only on some details I find important: the usability of editting in
textareas.
So far I really appreciate the new
spell checker and
searching in textareas. This is great news for wikis! Sorry, but I
have to tell you, who most probably never tried Konqueror, that it
has spell checking and searching in textareas for ... I don't know for how long.
Au contrair: I was very astound when I found out that I was
not able
to search in textareas in previous releases of Firefox. A further comparison
between Firefox and Konqueror shows that while both can search, only the
latter can also
search+replace in textareas, a feature I am very used to.
The
right-click menu of textareas in Firefox does not show the ability
to start a search. You have to go to "Edit" in the menubar to do so or hit
the keyboard shortcuts (ctrl+f). While Konqueror
does show the "Find" in both places - the right-click menu as well as in
the "Edit" menu of the window - Konqueror fails to search in the right
place, that is the textarea which has input focus currently. It just takes
some arbitrary other input field in the window. Firefox will always
search the complete page including all textareas and will start the
search from the cursor position, i.e. in the textarea where I am editting currently. This is perfect. Konqueror will do so too but don't continue search
on the rest of the page and in other text fields. You have to click
onto each to change the input focus and start a new search there. But unfortunately changing input focus will also lose search history (the list
of terms I searched for recently). So I have to type in the same query once
again.
Apropos
spell checking. Both show their ability to do so in the
right-click menu. I really like the easiness how to switch between
dictionaries using Firefox. I also love to right-click on misspelled words
and get suggested corrections including the ability to add a word to
the dictionary. I can't right-click on misspelled words in textareas in
Konqueror and I can't understand why as I this feature
is present in
other text components in KDE, e.g. KMail.
Firefox highlights misspelled words using a red curly line underneath
just the way we are used to in fullfledged word processing programs.
For some people this red line may be too invisible to be noticed.
It is OK for me but in general it could be a little more visible.
Konqueror colors the complete word in red which is much more visible but
may get a bit obstructive if you edit wiki markup and lots of words that are
not in the dictionary and you won't add them ... as they are simply markup.
What I have not found out so far is if there is a way to change the way
spelling errors are displayed, maybe using css.
Another difference in that area is that while Konqueror has a separate
dialog to start a complete top-down spell checking session on the complete
textarea there does not seem to exist a similar feature in Firefox. For
now I have to scroll down the text and watch out for little red curly lines
and right-click on each of them. No good. But Konqueror's spell checking
dialog is really a mess of a widget layout ... and this envisaging bug
exists for ... in don't know for how long. Missing also is a kind of summary
of all existing spelling errors before I start corrections one after the
other and a way to repeat my correction on same instances of misspelling.
Am I demanding too much? Don't think so as this feature is already present
in the KDE framework elsewhere and hey this is all about recycling components, isn't it.
Alright, nobody is perfect, some are better, best or even
bester. Konqueror is still my first choice ... which may not be justified given the above comparison.
