Has rekonq 2.x become usable again?

[Shimapan]

A while ago, I had been increasingly using rekonq over Firefox. This went well, and rekonq kept improving... until 2.0.
With 2.0, rekonq usability went to hell in a wicker basket at a ludicrous speed.

The author was now forcing his way to do things while browsing the web onto the users, the most annoying and painful of which was introducing tabs on top :mad:
All that without providing any options to turn all that off and return it to sane standards. The toolbar is now fixed and can't be configured anymore. If you want any icons there that aren't there, or don't want icons there which are there, or move it around - tough luck. You're not supposed to do that anymore.

At the same time, a lot of useful features were axed for no apparent reason, like the bookmark button, or the bookmark sidebar. The error pages have been dumbed down a lot and often aren't any helpful anymore, and the stability has taken a big nosedive as well - especially noteable on pages that have Flash, which cause no problems in Firefox or Konqueror. A lot of bugs have been introduced, like improper cookie handling.

In short, rekonq had become a nightmare with version 2.0. It was as if it had become a Gnome 3 app, where everything is dumbed down, no configuration ability, features are presented in a "Eat or die" manner, useful features are axed... (as in the Nautilus dilemma).
You could only flush rekonq 2.0 down the toilet anymore, which was a real shame, as it was coming along that nicely before. I've switched back to Konqueror then. While a few things were better in rekonq, overall Konqueror still has a much better usability and features than rekonq 2.0.

Now I've seen that new versions of rekonq are out, currently at 2.2.1.
Are there any adventurous people here which are still using rekonq? If so:
- Can you configure things again, e.g. turn off that stupid tabs on top nonsens and customise the toolbars?
- Have the axed features been brought back, e.g. the bookmark button and the bookmark sidebar?
- Are there proper error pages again?
- Has stability improved, especially on Flash pages?
- Have the other bugs been fixed, e.g. are cookies now being handled properly now?

[claydoh]

Seriously?? I rather think it has improved greatly over the years actually. It has been stable for me for some time now. and the basic ui has not changed that much in the past couple of years. I don't ever recall it having a sidebar, so if it did I never used it. Sure tabs moved to the top a while back, but what is so wrong with that, as ff and chrome do the same? I personally hated tabs on the bottom, its such a ui disaster

-The bookmark button is in the url bar, where it was before, iirc.
-I haven't seen a problem with any flash page I've come across so far
-I have not noticed anything wrong with cookies, but then again I ain't looking for any, I guess they haven't manifested themselves to me.
-Spellcheck is finally there, sort of (but I seem to have an issue with that system wide atm - 13.04, so it is likely unrelated to the browser)

I'm not saying Rekonq is the be-all and end-all but it sure is no epic fail, and has stuck to its design principles. imo.
I'll be sticking to my own browser choice for the time being, but do find myself using this one more often lately.

[SteveRiley]

I used to love Rekonq. But not anymore. The developer decided to rewrite much of it, as chronicled on his blog. Some of the more useful features got dropped with 2.0, but they're slowly creeping back. The newest version is 2.2.1.

I've actually found Konqueror with the Webkit kpart to be very useful as a daily driver. Interestingly, on the few pages that don't render correctly, switching to KTHML fixes the problem! I might return to Rekonq, though, if my most important feature returns. That's the ability to configure tabs not to open in the backgroud. Grr, background tabs make no sense to me.

[PaulW2U]

Are there any adventurous people here which are still using rekonq?

It's still set as my default browser so I use it occasionally but I mainly use Opera as I have done for what must now be 10 years or so.

Most of what I wanted to say has already been said but I wanted to point out that the frequent crashes that I experienced with the previous version of rekonq have long gone.

This is the third time that I've started this post, twice with rekonq and now with Opera. I was trying to show that I could reply to you and quote examples of how good I thought rekonq had become. I failed.

For casual browsing of simple web pages rekonq is fine but it seems that it fails dismally with some embedded videos. Sometimes they fail to appear at all, sometimes they are sound only while at other times they are only not centred within the embedded panel correctly so much of the content cannot be seen. When I tried to replay a short video on the BBC News web site just now my entire desktop froze and after a minute or so I had to move to tty1 to force rekonq to close. Each of those videos played fine in Opera by the way.

I have Opera, Firefox, Chrome and Chromium installed on this PC, all of which I do or would use in preference to rekonq for anything other than a quick check of a simple web page.

[Shimapan]

Seriously?? I rather think it has improved greatly over the years actually. It has been stable for me for some time now. and the basic ui has not changed that much in the past couple of years.

Well, it *did* inprove quite a bit over time - but only until it reached 2.0, when it pretty much went to hell for reasons outlined above.

Sure tabs moved to the top a while back, but what is so wrong with that, as ff and chrome do the same? I personally hated tabs on the bottom, its such a ui disaster

If anything's an UI disaster, then it's tabs on top
My Firefox 19 certainly doesn't do it, no idea where you got that from. Using Chrome is a bad idea anyway, as it sends Google a profile of your entire surfing habits and such, and the tabs on top stuff there are one of its major flaws which keeps me from using Chromium-based browsers (others being stuff like pitiful configurability).

I used to love Rekonq. But not anymore. The developer decided to rewrite much of it, as chronicled on his blog. Some of the more useful features got dropped with 2.0, but they're slowly creeping back. The newest version is 2.2.1.

If you'll take a look at the comments, you'll also see that most people didn't like that he shoved rekonq to the meat grinder for 2.0.

I've actually found Konqueror with the Webkit kpart to be very useful as a daily driver. Interestingly, on the few pages that don't render correctly, switching to KTHML fixes the problem! I might return to Rekonq, though, if my most important feature returns. That's the ability to configure tabs not to open in the backgroud. Grr, background tabs make no sense to me.

Indeed, that was also one of the things which seriously annoyed me. With Konqueror, you can have tabs open in the foreground, as it should be. That should at the least be fixed, besides that tabs on top UI disaster, before I try it again.
As my Firefox 19 has now developed a strange habit where my tabs don't work properly sometimes (they don't react when clicked upon), I'm now using Konqueror+webkit for most pages, which works well

This is the third time that I've started this post, twice with rekonq and now with Opera. I was trying to show that I could reply to you and quote examples of how good I thought rekonq had become. I failed.

I think that speaks volumes.

For casual browsing of simple web pages rekonq is fine but it seems that it fails dismally with some embedded videos. Sometimes they fail to appear at all, sometimes they are sound only while at other times they are only not centred within the embedded panel correctly so much of the content cannot be seen. When I tried to replay a short video on the BBC News web site just now my entire desktop froze and after a minute or so I had to move to tty1 to force rekonq to close. Each of those videos played fine in Opera by the way.

Just as I wrote above - rekonq is pretty bad with Flash pages, especially those pages with Flash video (Youtube, the Beeb News player etc.), where it's very crash-prone.
Why don't you try out Konqueror for a bit? When you set it to use the Webkit engine, it works pretty well, actually. Simply open Konqueror's settings, and right on the first page, set "Webkit" as the default web browsing engine.

[SteveRiley]

With respect to Flash... Since Adobe has officially discontinued Flash for Linux, we really shouldn't expect browsers to continue working with the increasingly aging plugin. That some browsers still do is certainly handy, of course. But, in the long run, we should prepare ourselves for the day when none do.

[jlittle]

[QUOTE=SteveRiley;324632]... we should prepare ourselves for ... [flash discontinued] /QUOTE]
I'm using html5 for youtube on firefox, and it works well, and seems much more resilient under network congestion.

Regards, John Little

[SteveRiley]

Yep, YouTube is working fine. Other Flash-based sites seem slow to implement the change, though.

[Shimapan]

Yep, YouTube is working fine. Other Flash-based sites seem slow to implement the change, though.

Yes, let's hope that other Flash sites will implement Html5 soon, especially important site like Youpor... oops... I only visit that site for anatomical studies, ok?