Why do people dislike Dolphin?

[Dotan Cohen]

2008/11/5 Willy Hamra <w.hamra1987 at gmail.com>:
> the smart decisiuon would have been to keep konqueror as an excellent
> file manager, and create a new dedicated web browser called dolphin.

That would have introduced another web browser to the already crowded
pool. Besides, believe it or not, Konqueror is respected as a very
good web browser, even if it is not a very usable web browser.

> and that would'nt have been hard since konqueror was already an
> excellent file manager, and they only need a UI for their new browser,
> since it will use khtml as a backend, right? i really wish i can
> understand what the KDE devs were thinking when they took their
> choices.

They were making life easier for web developers. This was not seen as
being at the expense of users, as there was already a want to make a
'friendlier' file manager the default.

> at the very least, know what they were hoping to accomplish,
> assuming that everything went fine and bug-free for them, because no
> matter what, that decision was crazy!
>

I think that it was a good decision:
1) Web devs don't get confused with yet another browser
2) Simple end users get a simple file manager
3) Advanced users can use Konqueror like we always have.

As one who installs Kubuntu for lots of MS converts, the switch to a
simple file manager is a blessing.

> i'm not sure i know of any official kde source stating this, but
> everywhere konqueror is mentioned, the author states how the konq
> developers try to make konq as much standard compliant as possible,
> and refuse to tweak it so non-standard websites (all websites? :-P)
> look better. i know the gmail article you mentioned, it's in the blog
> of one of the konq developers.
> http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/1195
> you surely noticed his attitude? how much he hates to make konqueror
> non standard compliant? hw he hated having to tweak a few stuff to
> make gmail behave better. and that's only because gmail is popular.
> i'm sure he'll never agree to tweak anything in konqueror for other
> sites to work.
> and to be honest, i fully back him, and think he's right. if we have a
> lot more programmers around the world taking his stand, we'll have a
> better standard compliant web. i mean if only a tiny fraction of the
> web is compliant standard, how can we call it "standard" ? what a
> shame, really.
>

The situation is a mess. I haven't seen the post you refer to, but
I'll look for it.

> i'm not very knowledgeable is office formats and their
> implementations. what's wrong with openoffice and odf? firstly, i
> understand from what you said, that ODF is not created by the
> openoffice team? i used to think so, until your sentence confused me
> :-P so who created it? and what are openoffice doing wrong with it?
>

Open Office is not doing anything wrong with ODF. Really. However,
there is no reference implementation of ODF therefore each program
(OOo, Abiword, Koffice) will display things differently (even though
they are all to spec). Now that MS Office 2007 SP1 will support ODF it
will undoubtably become the reference spec as it is very widely
distributed. And there is opposition to working with MS in having ODF
render similarly across both apps from what I understand.

-- 
Dotan Cohen

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