Krishna
Tateneni

    tateneni@pluto.njcc.com

2001-07-24
2.20.00
KDE
KControl
konqueror
browsing

# Browsing With &konqueror;

The &konqueror; Browser module of &kcontrol; allows you to select various options for the appearance and behavior of &konqueror;, the integrated web browser of &kde;.

There are five main tabs in this control center module, which are described in detail in the following sections. Briefly, the five tabs are:

HTML:

  Options for handling of links and images in HTML pages.

Appearance:

  Options for the fonts used in displaying web pages.

Java:

  Options for handling Java code embedded in web pages, as well as the security policies to be applied to such code.

JavaScript:

  Options for handling JavaScript code embedded in web pages.

Plugins

  Options about Plugins

## HTML

The first option you can enable on this page is Enable completion of forms. If you check this box, &konqueror; will try to remember what you answer to form questions, and will try to fill in forms for you with the answers you previously used.

You can configure the number of form items &konqueror; remembers with the slider below labelled Maximum completions

Of course, anything &konqueror; fills in a form with, you can still edit before submitting the form!

The next setting is Underline links. /ou can choose to underline links Always. If this option is selected, any text on web pages that acts as a link will be shown in an underlined font. While many web pages do use color to distinguish text that acts as a link, underlining makes it very easy to spot links.

If you don't like underlined links, you can choose Never, so that no links are underlined. Or you can choose a middle ground, Hover, so that links are underlined when the mouse cursor is resting over them, and not underlined the rest of the time.

Finally there are two last checkbox options. The first is Change cursor over links. If this option is selected, the shape of the cursor will change (usually to a hand) whenever it moves over a hyperlink. This makes it easy to identify links, especially when they are in the form of images.

Finally, the checkbox labeled Automatically load images, allows you to control whether images on web pages are loaded by default. Unless you have a very slow connection, you will probably want to leave this option selected, as there are many web pages that are difficult to use without images. If you don't select the option to automatically load images, you can still view the text on the page, and then load the images if you need them.

## Appearance

Under this tab, you can select various options related to the use of fonts. Although the shapes and sizes of fonts are often part of the design of a web page, you can select some default settings for &konqueror; to use.

The first thing you can set here is the font size. There are two settings which work together to allow you a comfortable browsing experience.

Firstly, you can set a Minimum Font Size. This means, even if the font size is set specifically in the page you are viewing, &konqueror; will ignore that instruction and never show smaller fonts than you set here.

Next you can set a Medium Font Size. This is not only the default size of text, used when the page doesn't specify sizes, but it is also used as the base size that relative font sizes are calculated against. That is, the HTML instruction smaller, it means smaller than the size you set for this option.

For either option, you can select the exact font size in points by using the up/down spin control (or just typing) next to the option label.

The remaining options are for the fonts to be associated with different types of markup used in HTML pages. Note that many web pages may override these settings. If you click anywhere on a control which shows a font name, a list of font names appears, and you can select a different font if you like. (If there are a lot of fonts, a vertical scrollbar appears in the list to allow you to scroll through all of the fonts.)

You can set a font for each type of markup, for each Charset, by changing the character set in the first drop down box, and then selecting a font for each category below. This would take quite some time, so you may just want to set up the fonts for your default character set. Most English speaking users will use iso8859-1

Below this, you can set a Font size adjustment for this encoding. Sometimes the fonts you want to use for a particular encoding or language are much larger or smaller than average, so you can use this setting to bring them into line.

You can set a default encoding that &konqueror; should assume pages are when rendering them. The default setting is Use language encoding, but you can change it to any encoding available in the list. You can even force the use of your default encoding using the Enforce default Encoding charset, in which case &konqueror; will ignore any language or charset from the page or server, and will use your setting.

This setting could render many pages completely unreadable. You should probably only select it if you are sure it's the correct solution to any problems you are having.

## Java

Java allows applications to be downloaded and run by a web browser, provided you have the necessary software installed on your machine. Many web sites make use of Java (for example, online banking services or interactive gaming sites). You should be aware that running programs from unknown sources could pose a threat to the security of your computer, even if the potential extent of the damage is not great.

The checkboxes under Global Settings allows you to turn Java support on for all web sites by default. You can also select to turn Java on or off for specific hosts. To add a policy for a specific host, click the Add... button to bring up a dialog in which you can type the host name and then choose to accept or reject Java code from that particular host, which will add the domain to the list on the left of the page.

You can select a host in the list, and click the Change... button to choose a different policy for that host. Clicking the Delete button removes the policy for the selected host; after deletion, the global settings will then apply to that host. You can import policies from a file by clicking the Import... button. To save the current list to a compressed archive file, click the Export... button.

Finally, the group of controls labeled Java Runtime Settings allows you to set some options for the way in which Java should run. If you select the Show Java Console option, &konqueror; will open a console window from which Java applications can read and write text. While most Java applications will not require such a console, it could be helpful in diagnosing problems with Java applications.

The Shutdown Applet Server when inactive checkbox allows you to save resources by closing the Java Applet Server when it is not in use, rather than leaving it running in the background. Leaving this disabled may make Java applets start up faster, but it will use system resources when you are not using a Java applet. If you enable this, you can set a timeout.

You can either opt to have &konqueror; automatically detect the Java installation on your system, or specify the path to the installation yourself by selecting Use user-specified Java. You may want to choose the latter method, for instance, if you have multiple Java installations on your system, and want to specify which one to use. If the Java Virtual Machine you are using requires any special startup options, you can type them in the text box labeled Additional Java Arguments.

## JavaScript

Despite the name, JavaScript is not related at all to Java.

The first part of this page works the same as the Java page settings.

The checkboxes under Global Settings allows you to turn JavaScript support on for all web sites by default. You can also select to turn JavaScript on or off for specific hosts. To add a policy for a specific host, click the Add... button to bring up a dialog in which you can type the host name and then choose to accept or reject JavaScript code from that particular host, which will add the domain to the list on the left of the page.

You can select a host in the list, and click the Change... button to choose a different policy for that host. Clicking the Delete button removes the policy for the selected host; after deletion, the global settings will then apply to that host. You can import policies from a file by clicking the Import... button. To save the current list to a compressed archive file, click the Export... button.

The final set of options on this page determine what happens when a page uses JavaScript to try to open a new window. You can set &konqueror; to Allow all such requests, Ask each time a request is made, or Deny all popup requests.

## Plugins

There is currently only one option on this page: Enable Plugins globally. If you disable this checkbox, then &konqueror; will not use any plugins. If you enable it, then any installed and configured plugins that it can find will be used by &konqueror;

## Section Author

This section written by:

Krishna Tateneni tateneni@pluto.njcc.com.

Additional material by Lauri Watts lauri@kde.org