[SOLVED] Recommendation for Qt/KDE web browser?

gargamel · 12-07-2013, 11:14 AM

Hi everyone,

I am looking for a native Qt/KDE web browser, that is able to render this page of the German Honda web site correctly.

I have tried Konqueror with KHTML and Webkit, Rekonq, Arora and Qupzilla. Unfortunately, none of them is able to start any of the two videos on this page, whereas Mozilla Firefox, Seamonkey and Chromium on both Linux and Windows as well as MS Internet Explorer have no problems with it.

I know, that Firefox can use KDE file dialogs and adopt the current KDE theme, but I still would prefer a native KDE or (at least) Qt application. Any recommendations beyond the ones I have tried and disposed already?

Thanks everyone!

gargamel

BTW, I am not in any way affiliated with Honda, I just use this page as an example for the issues of Qt/KDE based web browsers.

cwizardone · 12-07-2013, 11:57 AM

Well, that site is running, video and audio, in another tab inside of Konqueror, as I type this, but I do think it ran a little "smoother" in Opera 12.16.
My DE at the moment is Xfce. Konqueror is from KDE 4.11.4 and is using webkit.

Edit in: I've switched the DE to KDE and went to the same site (using Konqueror, of course). This time it took the videos considerably longer to load, but they did, eventually, load and play.
Back to Xfce.

gargamel · 12-07-2013, 01:59 PM

Interesting, thanks for checking this out!
I just tried it again, and Konqueror loads the page, but doesn't play the videos. It obviously tries to play them, but all I see is the animated AJAX circle (is that the correct term for the circle that appears when content is being loaded?), and it goes on forever.

EDIT: I should also mention, that most of the time audio and video work well, if a bit slow at times, in Konqueror. Other pages of the Honda web site are rendered correctly, including audio and video. It's just a couple of pages related to the Civic that don't work as they should with Konqueror.

As other browsers have no problem with the videos, and as it works for you, but not here, I come to think that there might be some difference in my Konqueror settings compared to yours. I just have no idea, what to look for, so I'll try a few things out. Another option would be some kind of timeout in the communication between the respective browser and the web server.

Any advice appreciated!

gargamel

Alien Bob · 12-07-2013, 02:23 PM

Same here gargamel. The page does not play in Konqueror - only the "loading" circle is visible. This is Slackware64-current with KDE 4.11.4.

Eric

kikinovak · 12-07-2013, 02:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gargamel

Hi everyone,

I am looking for a native Qt/KDE web browser, that is able to render this page of the German Honda web site correctly.

According to the W3C validator, the page has no less than 43 HTML syntax errors. Bad rendering is not your browser's fault.

cwizardone · 12-07-2013, 03:31 PM

Here it is again. Konqueror running in Xfce with that web page displayed and playing the first video. In the background is Opera 12.16 with the this forum displayed.

gargamel · 12-07-2013, 04:52 PM

Thanks!

@Alien Bob: Thanks, good to know that you can reproduce it. My system is Slackware64-14.1 with your KDE 4.11.4 (thanks a lot!).

@Kikinovak: On the one hand I fully agree with you, but on the other hand that's, unfortunately, reality. You'll find very few pages without such errors. Also, other browsers can cope with such problems and play the videos, and, while Konqueror used to score high in support of W3C standards, it has been surpassed by competition, such as Chromium, in this respect.
The Honda page is just one example for all this. Internet banking with some banks is another one, where Konqueror (and all the other Qt/kDE web browsers I have tried) sometimes (!) just doesn't let me click on a certain button etc., while it works quite well with other pages of the same bank or with the web pages of other banks. It's just not predictable and therefore not reliable.
Finally, for cwizardzone, at least, even Konqueror can do this...

@cwizardone: Amazing, thanks again. I wonder what the difference is caused by... Are you using default settings for Konqueror, or did you change anything? Do you use a proxy? Or a firewall? Do you connect directly to the internet from your system or via a gateway or router?

gargamel

cwizardone · 12-07-2013, 06:27 PM

@gargamel,
Only changes to the Konqueror are to the size of the fonts, zero URLs (history), only cookies from originating server, accept sessions cookies, accept until end of session.
No proxy.
The firewall is Alien Bob's "simple firewall."
Connected to the 'Net via a wireless router.
Oh! I do have a "hosts" file that weeds out most banner ads, etc.

gargamel · 12-07-2013, 08:14 PM

@cwizardone, thanks a lot. Your setup is very similar to mine. Differences: I use the firewall of my DSL router/gateway, I connect via cable to this device and I don't have a "hosts" file. Hard to tell, if any of the differences mentioned causes the issue with Konqueror not playing some videos, here.

In the meantime I tried it with several different Konqueror setups, but to no avail, unfortunately. I'll continue with this, anyhow. In the meantime any advice or hint helping to track the problem down, is much appreciated, of course!

gargamel

mlangdn · 12-07-2013, 08:52 PM

I get the same thing as well gargamel. I'm also using -current with Alien's 4.11.4. I did open Konqueror via a terminal and opened the page in question. This is the output whilst waiting for the loading circle:

Code:

michael@darkstar:~$ konqueror
[PIPELIGHT:LIN:unknown] attached to process.
[PIPELIGHT:LIN:unknown] checking environment variable PIPELIGHT_SILVERLIGHT5_1_CONFIG.
[PIPELIGHT:LIN:unknown] searching for config file pipelight-silverlight5.1.
[PIPELIGHT:LIN:unknown] trying to load config file from '/home/michael/.config/pipelight-silverlight5.1'.
[PIPELIGHT:LIN:unknown] trying to load config file from '/etc/pipelight-silverlight5.1'.
[PIPELIGHT:LIN:unknown] trying to load config file from '/usr/share/pipelight/pipelight-silverlight5.1'.
[PIPELIGHT:LIN:silverlight5.1] GPU driver check - Your driver is supported, hardware acceleration enabled.
[PIPELIGHT:LIN:silverlight5.1] using wine prefix directory /home/michael/.wine-pipelight/.
[PIPELIGHT:LIN:silverlight5.1] checking plugin installation - this might take some time.
[install-dependency] wine-silverlight5.1-installer is already installed in '/home/michael/.wine-pipelight/'.
[install-dependency] wine-mpg2splt-installer is already installed in '/home/michael/.wine-pipelight/'.
[install-dependency] wine-wininet-installer is already installed in '/home/michael/.wine-pipelight/'.
preloader: Warning: failed to reserve range 00010000-00110000
[PIPELIGHT:WIN:silverlight5.1] windowless mode       is off.
[PIPELIGHT:WIN:silverlight5.1] embedded mode         is on.
[PIPELIGHT:WIN:silverlight5.1] usermode timer        is off.
[PIPELIGHT:WIN:silverlight5.1] unity hacks           is off.
[PIPELIGHT:WIN:silverlight5.1] window class hook     is on.
[PIPELIGHT:WIN:silverlight5.1] render toplevelwindow is off.
[PIPELIGHT:WIN:silverlight5.1] replaced API function CreateWindowExA.
[PIPELIGHT:WIN:silverlight5.1] replaced API function CreateWindowExW.
[PIPELIGHT:WIN:silverlight5.1] replaced API function TrackPopupMenuEx.
[PIPELIGHT:WIN:silverlight5.1] replaced API function TrackPopupMenu.
fixme:advapi:RegisterTraceGuidsW (0x7b8d1f87, 0x7b970118, {aa087e0e-0b35-4e28-8f3a-440c3f51eef1}, 1, 0x65f6a8, (null), (null), 0x7b970118,): stub
[PIPELIGHT:WIN:silverlight5.1] init successful!
[PIPELIGHT:LIN:silverlight5.1] using thread asynccall event handling.
java version "1.7.0_45"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea 2.4.3) (Slackware)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 24.45-b08, mixed mode)
bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111)

Hopefully, this might help someone with a bit more knowledge than me.

cwizardone · 12-07-2013, 09:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gargamel

@cwizardzone, thanks a lot. Your setup is very similar to mine. Differences: I use the firewall of my DSL router/gateway, I connect via cable to this device and I don't have a "hosts" file. Hard to tell, if any of the differences mentioned causes the issue with Konqueror not playing some videos, here.

In the meantime I tried it with several different Konqueror setups, but to no avail, unfortunately. I'll continue with this, anyhow. In the meantime any advice or hint helping to track the problem down, is much appreciated, of course!

gargamel

BTW, I'm not using wine-pipelight as it appears mlangdn is using and, I would imagine, Alien Bob is also using pipelight.

dugan · 12-08-2013, 02:23 AM

Maybe try manipulating the user-agent string? For example, can you try setting Konquerer's user-agent to that of the Linux version of either Firefox or Chromium (since those browser work with that site)?

mlagdn's post makes me wonder if Konqueror's user agent is causing it to be sent the Silverlight version of the site.

Also, when I load the site with Chrome on Windows, the videos are HTML5, not Silverlight. It serves up MP4, OGV and WEBM versions of the videos, so if Konqueror can play HTML5 video at all, it should be able to play them, so long as they are served as HTML5.

gargamel · 12-08-2013, 03:56 AM

Ok, thanks for all your help.

@dugan. I changed the browser id string to Firefox 3.5.6, as can be selected from a menu in Konqueror. Unfortunately I was unable to modify that string for a more recent Firefox version (current version is something 24.x). No change, videos are never played.
Thanks for checking the supported video streaming formats of the site. Konqueror should be supporting HTML 5 with KHTML as rendering engine according to this page describing its features, and Webkit should support HTML 5, anyway. In fact, Webkit was leading in HTML 5 support for quite some time, AFAIK.

@cwizardone. No Pipelight here. As it works for you and not for the rest of us, and as we use the same version of Konqueror, I think the problem is not caused by internal features of Konqueror.
Looking at mlangdn's post I wonder why Java is mentioned, at all, and what the refused audio connection might mean. Do you have OpenJDK or Oracle's Java installed on your system?

@mlangdn. Thanks! I see Java mentioned at the end of the log, see above.

Hmm, as it works for cwizardzone I would conclude the problem that we others see is not related to supported or missing internal features of Konqueror. More likely it has to do with settings or modules (extensions/plugins).

gargamel

cwizardone · 12-08-2013, 10:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gargamel

...Do you have OpenJDK or Oracle's Java installed on your system?...

Alien Bob's OpenJDK package.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dugan

...so if Konqueror can play HTML5 video at all...

It can.

vdemuth · 12-08-2013, 02:36 PM

I know it's not much help. But I have just tried that site and it works well here. Loading is a little slower in Konqueror, maybe by 1/2 a second or so, but runs smooth once loaded. Even had both videos playing simultaneously. I do have Konqueror set to use the Firefox plugins. Don't know if that has any bearing on it.