10
A C C E S S I N G T H E W E B
KDE offers many tools that you can use to browse the Web.
In Chapter 3, you learned how to use Konqueror as a file
manager. In this chapter, the topic is using Konqueror as a web
browser, along with other browser possibilities such as Netscape and
Opera. The focus is how to take advantage of the many customization
options Konqueror offers, so you can make the browser serve your needs and
preferences. At the end of this chapter, you will find a discussion of ways to cre-
ate your own web pages, using word-processing applications and Quanta Plus.
Before diving into web browsing, shortcuts, bookmarks, and so on, let's go
over a few basic terms you should know to use the Web effectively and to under-
stand the rest of this chapter. If you're a web- browsing pro, feel free to skip to
the next section, "Konqueror in Detail."
·
Internet: a decentralized, global network that connects millions of
computers for the purpose of exchanging data, information, news,
opinions, and so on.
·
Web: short for World Wide Web, a system of internet servers that supports
specially formatted documents.
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·
Web browser: a software application that displays web pages on your
computer.
·
Website: a location on the Web owned and managed by a person, group,
company, or organization. It may contain a single web page or many files,
graphics, and other information, usually on a related topic.
·
URI: Uniform Resource Indicator, the generic term for all types of names
and addresses for objects on the Web.
·
URL: Uniform Resource Locater, the specific address for a web page on the
Web.
·
IP address: an identifier code assigned to each computer and device on a
network.
·
Domain: a group of computers and devices on a network that are adminis-
tered together, for example, mail.example.com and www.example.com.
·
Network: two or more computers linked together.
·
HTML: HyperText Markup Language, the common language used to create
documents for the Web. Tags and attributes for elements such as headings,
font size, and colors are used to create documents that can be viewed by any
web device or browser.
·
Online: The status of your computer when it is connected to the network or
the Web.
·
Protocol: An agreed-upon or standard method for transmitting data
between two machines.
Konqueror in Detail
You've learned that Konqueror automatically opens to your home page when it
launches. By default, this is the file listing of your home directory, but the sys-
tem administrator may have changed it to another web page. Some offices set
the home page as a company page. The address of the website, or the URL,
appears in the Location bar.
The Basics of Getting Around
Start your navigation by entering the URL, or address, of a website in the
Location bar (something like http://www.linuxjournal.com, for example) and
press
ENTER
. Notice that the left arrow above the Location bar becomes active
as you move to the new page. This is the Back button, and clicking it returns
you to the previous page. Now the Forward button, or right arrow, is active, and
you can click it to get to the second web page you visited.
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One of the great features of web pages is their ability to direct you to
related material by the use of hyperlinks. Hyperlinks are specially formatted
words and images (image maps) that, when clicked, automatically take your
browser to another web page. You can usually recognize hyperlinks because they
are underlined by default and often appear in a differently colored font. You
can also spot both hyperlinks and image maps by moving your mouse pointer
over them; if the arrow changes to a hand, it's a link.
Sometimes links open in a new browser window, but often your main
Konqueror page follows the link, and the original page is lost. You can usually
use the back arrow to return to the previous page, but this can take a long time
(each page will load again). Plus, sometimes you can go back only so far, and
sometimes you may want to see both pages at once. In these cases, you will want
to open a link in a new instance of your browser, so move your mouse pointer
over the link and right- click. From the menu that pops up, click New Window.
This will launch a new instance of the browser that follows the link.
Links are primarily used to access other web pages, but they can also be
used to access different types of files, such as streaming audio and video, PDFs,
and downloads. When you click a link to one of these other file types,
Konqueror will try to choose the proper application to open them. See Chapter
11 for information on how to help Konqueror choose which application to use
with different file types.
Figure 10.1: Launching the KDE Browser to the Home Page
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If you need to stop the loading of a web page because it is taking too long,
or you need to browse elsewhere, click the Stop button. Konqueror loads text
first and then images, so stopping a page while loading will generally make the
text of the page visible but show broken image links.
The Reload button (located next to the Stop button) is useful for checking
whether a page (a news or discussion site, for example) has been updated. It is
also useful if you are developing your own web page and want to see changes as
you make them.
T I P
The marvels of the
ALT
-F2 Run box continue. It works much the same as the Konqueror
Location bar by launching Konqueror and displaying the web page of any URL you enter.
If you stopped a page from loading, or if it did not load properly, you can
click the Reload button to try again. Reloading the page still may not display the
page properly; this may be the result of poorly written HTML, broken image
links, or network congestion.
Getting to Know Your History
You learned how to use the Location bar and its AutoComplete feature in
Chapter 3, and the Back and Forward buttons were just discussed. Another
option for navigation that Konqueror provides is the Go menu.
The Go menu maintains a list of up to 11 URLs: the current URL you are
browsing and the URLs of the ten pages you visited prior to this one. The page
you are viewing currently will have a check in the box next to it. To revisit one
of the last ten URLs, open the Go menu and click the page you want to visit.
Unfortunately, the Go menu provides the title of the page, so if the website you
are visiting uses the same title for each page (like "Welcome to www.site.com"),
this feature will not be too useful.
Figure 10.2: The Go Menu
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Searching the World Wide Web
Searches are a big part of web browsing, and people have different search pref-
erences. Search engines such as Lycos, Yahoo, and Google are popular sites you
can visit to conduct a search. To save time, Konqueror offers two shortcuts for
web searching: internet keywords and web shortcuts. Because they can help
make your search more economical, let's talk a bit about each.
Internet keywords are words or phrases typed into the Location bar that
redirect your browser to a related site. Companies often pay for internet key-
words to drive traffic to their sites with these redirects. For example, you could
simply type
CNN
in an empty Location bar and be taken directly to www.cnn.com.
If Konqueror fails to match an internet keyword, however, it will automatically
use the search engine you have designated in the Configure Konqueror menu as
the default (to be explained shortly).
A web shortcut is a form of shorthand for requesting a web search of a spe-
cific topic on a specific search engine from the Location bar. In Konqueror, the
syntax for using a web shortcut is shortcut:string, where shortcut is the abbrevia-
tion for the search engine and string is what you are searching for. For example,
if you want to search Google to find out more about Mars, you can type
gg:mars
in the Location bar. Konqueror will recognize your web shortcut and display the
resulting matches for Mars found by the Google search engine.
To configure your system's setup for internet keywords and web shortcuts,
go to Konqueror's Settings menu and choose the last option, Configure
Konqueror. A list of icons will appear in the left sidebar of the Configure menu.
Click Enhanced Browsing. The right window will display two main sections:
Internet Keywords and Web Shortcuts.
Figure 10.3: Enhanced Browsing
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The Keywords section includes a check box that enables the use of internet
keywords, as well as a drop- down box that lets you set the search engine of your
choice as a backup, should the keyword search return nothing. In other words, if
you were to type a word in the Location bar that no one was paying for as an
internet keyword, your browser would direct you to the designated search engine.
If you disable internet keywords, the selected search engine will also be dis-
abled. Unfortunately, if the website that sponsors the specified internet keyword
is unavailable, Konqueror does not switch to the search engine backup.
A variety of shortcuts should be present already in the Enhanced Browsing win-
dow. To add a web shortcut, you need to know how your favorite site turns your
query into a URL. Google is easy; it puts your search after ?q=. If you want to search
for Linux, for example, the URL is http://www.google.com/search?q=Linux. That's
called a GET, and it's the most common kind of web search.
Other sites, such as the Linux Journal site, are trickier because they use
a different type of form, called a POST, that doesn't put your search query in
the URL.
You can almost always make a web shortcut for POST forms by faking them
out with a query embedded in the URL and making them perform a GET. Use
View Source on the search form, and look for the input tag that specifies the
search box. It will look something like this (from the Linux Journal site):
<input type="text" name="query" size="14">
Figure 10.4: Using Shortcuts
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The name query is what we want. Just put it at the end of the URL of the
search results page (not necessarily the same as the URL of the search form)
like this:
http://linuxjournal.com/search.php?query=
Finally, add the magical name \1. What does \1 do? Konqueror knows to
replace it with your search term. So the Search URI is
http://linuxjournal.com/search.php?query=\1
Now that we have the information we need, go back to the Configure
Konqueror menu, select the Enhanced Browsing dialog box, and click Add. Fill
in the New Search Provider dialog box like this:
Search Provider Name:
Linux Journal
Search URI:
http://linuxjournal.com/search.php?query=\1
URI shortcuts:
lj
Charset:
default
Click OK. Then click OK again to leave Settings.
Now press
ALT
-F2 and type
lj:kde
. There's your search result window,
already full of KDE news from everyone's favorite Linux publication.
If you want to change a web shortcut, select the shortcut and click the
Change button. Once you have made your changes, click Apply, and then OK.
You can test your changes by entering the new shortcut in Konqueror's Location
bar. Web shortcuts can be disabled using the check box, but the search engines
will still be available in the Keywords section.
Setting a New Home Page
Changing what appears as your home page is probably one of the first things
you will want to do when you are comfortable using Konqueror. In a corporate
environment, you will want to select the home page that gives you the widest
access to the internal documents you use most often. Many companies set up a
corporate page as the default home page for employees. For personal use, think
of the web page that provides the most entertainment or information for you.
The goal is to reduce the number of times you must enter a URL manually in
the Location bar to retain access to all the information you need. You'll learn
how to create a simple web page you can use as a personal home page later in
this chapter.
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The process for changing your home page is a simple one that can be done
at any time. Select the Settings menu and choose Configure Konqueror. The
Settings dialog box will pop up, and in the middle of the right window, you will
see a field titled Home URL. The default is
~
, which is how your computer
thinks of your home directory. To change your home page, type the new URL,
remembering to keep the http:// in the Home URL field, and click OK. If you
ever want to change back to the default, you can click Use Default or type
~
in
the Home URL field and click OK.
Using Bookmarks
If you are familiar with the idea of bookmarks from using other web browsers,
skip to the next section to learn how to import any bookmarks you might have
already.
Like their real-world counterparts, Konqueror bookmarks are placeholders,
allowing you to access web pages rapidly without having to remember the URLs.
Using the Bookmarks menu, you can add and edit bookmarks at will and store
them within folders, or submenus, and move them around so they suit you best.
Bookmarks were designed with ease of use in mind, and you will find that they
can be great time-savers. While you can access your bookmarks through
Konqueror's Bookmarks menu, you'll find that the Bookmark toolbar allows you
to access your bookmarks directly on the desktop. We'll get to the bookmark
toolbar shortly.
Figure 10.5: Changing the Home Page
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Creating Bookmarks
Before you can do anything fancy with your bookmarks, you must actually have
some. Think of a web page you visit often (or would, if only you could remem-
ber the URL), and go to it. For example, if you have an interest in space explo-
ration, you might go to http://www.jpl.nasa.gov, which is a NASA web page on
the subject.
Once the desired page is in your browser, open the Bookmarks menu (on
the menu toolbar) and click Add Bookmark. Selecting the Bookmarks menu
again will display the NASA URL at the bottom of the menu. Subsequent book-
marks will be added below the existing ones.
Planning ahead can save you a lot of time when it comes to locating the
bookmarks you've created. The Bookmarks menu has a New Folder option that
is helpful for organizing them. Using this option, you can place your bookmark
in the appropriate folder, along with those for other related sites. Creating a
folder called News and adding only news- related websites will let you locate
news links faster and keep your main Bookmarks menu uncluttered.
Unfortunately, you cannot move or delete your bookmarks directly from the
Bookmarks menu. For that you'll need to open the Bookmark Editor.
T I P
Try to keep folder themes general; 20 folders for 21 bookmarks may provide more of a
hassle than a benefit.
Figure 10.6: Creating a Bookmark
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The Bookmark Editor
The Bookmark Editor is a simple application that lets you manage the layout
and content of your bookmarks. If you want to make any significant changes to
your bookmarks, you will need to use it. It can be accessed by selecting Edit
Bookmarks from the Bookmarks menu (on the toolbar) once you have launched
Konqueror. The primary uses of the Bookmark Editor are to organize, rename,
and delete your current bookmarks. Additionally, you will use the Bookmark
Editor when importing or exporting bookmarks to or from other browsers.
T I P
Remember that you must save any changes you make in the Bookmark Editor.
Organizing Bookmarks
The Bookmark Editor provides a few options to help maintain your bookmarks
and keep them organized. Like the Bookmarks menu in Konqueror, the Insert
menu in the Bookmark Editor provides the option to create a new folder.
However, the Bookmark Editor also allows you to choose where you want the
folder. New folders will appear below whichever line you have selected in the
editor window with your mouse pointer.
Figure 10.7: The Bookmark Editor
Figure 10.8: Creating a New Folder
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You can move both folders and individual bookmarks using the drag-and-
drop feature. Select the item you want to move, and hold down the left mouse
button. Move the mouse pointer to the intended destination and release.
Remember that changes must be saved before they will become apparent.
Figure 10.9: Adding a Separator
The Separator bar is another option for organizing your bookmarks. Select a
bookmark somewhere in the middle of the editor window, and click Insert
Separator on the File menu. A red, white, and blue bar will be inserted into your
list of bookmarks. Once you save your bookmarks, go back to the Bookmarks
menu in Konqueror, and you will see the thin separator line you added.
T I P
If you are using the bookmark toolbar, do not use separators.
Separator bars are an easy way to set apart bookmarks visually. The ability to
add separators, combined with the abilities to create folders and move bookmarks,
allows you to arrange and organize your bookmarks in the most convenient way.
If you prefer basic organization, like bookmarks arranged in alphabetical
order, select the bookmark folder you want to adjust, and select Sort
Alphabetically from the Edit menu.
Editing Bookmarks
Suppose you accidentally delete a bookmark; can you get it back? As with other
areas of Konqueror, Undo and Redo buttons let you reverse any changes you
have made since you opened the Bookmark Editor or since you last saved your
work. This is a very important point to remember: you must save your work to
see it in Konqueror, but doing so disables the Undo and Redo buttons until you
make new changes that have yet to be saved.
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When you add a bookmark, the default value for the bookmark's name is
the title of the web page you are bookmarking. Often these titles can be very
long or not particularly useful, and renaming them to something easier for you
to remember will make them much more useful. In addition, should the URL
associated with one of your bookmarks change, you can make the alteration by
selecting Change URL in the Bookmark Editor.
Many ways are available to rename your bookmarks, all of which are simple
and intuitive. The simplest way is to double- click the name or URL of the book-
mark, which will make that area available for editing, then enter a new name or
URL. When you have renamed the bookmark, either press
ENTER
or click the
mouse somewhere away from the bookmark to get out of Edit mode. Remember,
you have to save your changes before they appear in Konqueror.
If you are in the Bookmark Editor and want to open a bookmark directly,
click Open in Konqueror in the Bookmarks menu of the Bookmark Editor, and
you will launch a new instance of Konqueror open to that bookmark. This is
helpful because it allows you to view changes to your bookmarks before you save
them.
Each bookmark on your list probably has an icon next to it. Many of these
icons are set automatically by their respective websites; they're often the logo of
the site or company. Changing the icon associated with a bookmark is another
easy way to set apart visually a subset of bookmarks. To do this, click the book-
mark and select Change Icon either from the Edit menu or from the menu that
appears when you right- click. The Filesystem icons are the defaults to choose
from, but you can adjust the icons you see by changing the category in the drop-
down box at the upper right.
Figure 10.10: Changing a URL Association
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If the icon you want to use is not among the available options, select Other
Icons. This will enable the Browse button and let you navigate your directories
to find the icon you want to use. If you need a review of how to navigate your
directories, see Chapter 3.
When you find that you're overrun by bookmarks, many of which you no
longer use, it's time to clean house. You can delete a bookmark, or folder con-
taining multiple bookmarks, simply by selecting it and pressing the
DELETE
key.
If you have not yet clicked Save after deleting a bookmark, you can click the
Undo button to bring it back.
Importing and Exporting Bookmarks
For users of the Netscape or Mozilla web browser who are moving to Konqueror
and already have bookmarks, the Bookmark Editor allows you to import your
existing bookmarks instead of manually recreating them. Open the File menu
and select Import Netscape Bookmarks or Import Mozilla Bookmarks, and
Konqueror instantly will bring over your existing bookmarks.
Figure 10.11: Changing a Bookmark Icon
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You can choose to add the imported bookmarks to the ones already created
in Konqueror, or you can replace your existing Konqueror bookmarks entirely.
Once you have imported your bookmarks, remember to save. And don't worry;
your bookmarks will not disappear from the other browser.
Figure 10.12: Importing Bookmarks
Exporting your bookmarks from Konqueror to Netscape or Mozilla is as
easy as importing and only one click away. Open the File menu and select
Export to Netscape Bookmarks or Export to Mozilla Bookmarks. There will not
be any confirmation, but you can launch the other browser to make sure your
Figure 10.13: Imported Netscape Bookmarks
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bookmarks arrived. If you have your Netscape browser open when exporting
bookmarks from Konqueror, Netscape will warn you that your bookmarks have
changed and ask if you want to reload them; say yes. Exporting bookmarks does
not mean they disappear from Konqueror.
Konqueror also allows you to access bookmarks in Netscape without import-
ing them. On the Settings menu, select Show Netscape Bookmarks in
Konqueror Windows. This will place a check mark by the option. Click the Save
button, and open the Bookmarks menu in Konqueror. Just below New Folder,
you will notice that a new section for Netscape Bookmarks has been added. You
will not be able to edit, move, or delete your Netscape bookmarks through
Konqueror or the Bookmark Editor using this option, however, because your
Netscape bookmarks are still in Netscape.
The Bookmark Toolbar
The bookmark toolbar is located at the top of your browser window, with all the
other toolbars, and is dedicated solely to bookmarks. A few steps are necessary
to set up the bookmark toolbar, but if you regularly visit the same sites, it is
quite useful. You can make it appear by choosing the Show Bookmark Toolbar
option in the Konqueror Settings menu. If you have not created any bookmarks,
a large, empty toolbar will appear beneath your Location bar. If your Bookmark
toolbar is empty, but you have already created some bookmarks, then you have
not selected a toolbar folder.
To select a toolbar folder, launch the Bookmark Editor. Within the main
window, select the folder that contains everything you want on your toolbar,
then click Set as Toolbar Folder in the Edit menu. This option is available only if
you have selected a Folder icon. Once you save, your Bookmark toolbar will
refresh to show any changes.
Figure 10.14: Setting the Bookmark Toolbar
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When using the bookmark toolbar, it is important to remember that separa-
tors should be removed from your toolbar folder in the Bookmark Editor, as
they will clutter the toolbar. This comes at the expense of the visual-aid separa-
tors offered in the Bookmarks menu. Additionally, items appear in your book-
mark toolbar in the same order as they appear in your toolbar folder--you
cannot have the two in different orders.
Using Plugins
Some websites use file types that are not known to your web browser (Flash or
Shockwave files, for example). Often, they will have a link from which you can
download an application known as a plugin to read this file type. When these
files appear, click the link, follow the download instructions, and install the
application, which will automatically associate itself with the file types it can
access. Many times office users do not have the permissions needed to install
plugins, so be sure to consult your system administrator.
By and large, using plugins provides more enjoyment of the Web because
they allow you to access more types of files. You may find, however, that due to
your browsing habits, you are always being forced to turn on plugins you could
get by without. Because plugins take up space on the hard drive and in the
memory, having a lot of plugins may slow down the entire machine.
Konqueror provides a basic on/off check box for plugins. In Konqueror's
Settings menu, click Configure Konqueror, and select Konqueror Browser from
the pop-up menu. The fifth tab of this Konqueror Browser menu is titled
Plugins, and it provides a simple check box for enabling or disabling plugins.
The default allows plugins and, if you do not have any specific plugin problems,
can be left alone.
Figure 10.15: Setting the Toolbar Folder
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The Netscape Plugins section of the Configure Konqueror menu, back on
the vertical Settings menu, gives you several options for managing any Netscape
Plugins you may already have. You will notice that this area is divided by two
tabs: Scan and Plugins.
T I P
When downloading a new plugin, it is unlikely that you will find one specifically for
Konqueror. Install the Netscape version, and then click Scan Here.
The main window on the Scan tab displays the directories from which
Konqueror currently is accessing your Netscape plugins. It is unlikely that you
will need to make any changes, as these are the default directories Netscape
uses. You can click the Scan for New Plugins button if you have added any new
plugins to Netscape and want Konqueror to take full advantage of them. While
you can enable Konqueror to scan each time KDE restarts, it is not necessary if
you do not add new plugins to Netscape with any regularity.
The primary use of the Plugins tab is to show which plugins you have and
with which file types they are associated. While you do not need to change any-
thing here, if you are ever asked if you have access to a particular plugin, this is
the place to look. You might find it easiest to ask which extension the file type
uses to see if you have a plugin for it. Extensions are normally three characters
and are easy to spot in the main window. They are also called suffixes, for exam-
ple, .sdw or .pdf.
Figure 10.16: Scan for Plugins
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Saving Web Pages and Images
The Web is full of information and images that you will want to keep for later
reference. Although you can set bookmarks for easy access to websites online,
you need to save them to your hard drive to access while offline or in case the
site or page comes down. Konqueror allows you to save websites and images to
your hard drive in the same way you save a regular file.
Go to the web page you want to save to your hard drive. Once there, open
the Location menu and select Save As, which will open a dialog box. You will
see that the filter is set to HTML files, and the location is the name of the web
page you want to save. If you like, you can alter the name of the web page and
save it as a file, as you learned in Chapter 3. Doing this will save the page itself
to your hard drive, but images are files of their own and, unless they are embed-
ded in the page, will appear as broken links in your local copy.
Figure 10.17: Saving a Web Page
Figure 10.18: Saving an Image
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Saving images from the Web to your hard drive is equally easy. Find the
image on the web page, right- click on it, and select Save Image as. The image
will be saved to your hard drive in the usual manner.
To open the files you've saved on your hard drive, follow the same proce-
dures you learned for regular files back in Chapter 3. Click the Location menu,
select Open Location, change directories to the one containing the file, and
click OK. The page or image will be displayed.
T I P
New for KDE 3.0 is the Archive Web Page option under the Tools menu. It'll save
selected web pages quickly and easily.
A word of warning: when a web page displays images, it looks for them in a
specific place, based on the pathname listed in the text file. This pathname
most often reflects where the images were stored on the website. Therefore, you
may need to change the pathname in the web-page file to reflect the path where
the images are stored in your directory.
Printing a Web Page
Printing information from the Web is a common and useful task. You learned
about printing in Chapter 3, and printing web pages is no different from print-
ing anything else. Open the page containing the information you want, and
select Print from the Location menu or click the Print button on the toolbar.
A dialog box will appear that lets you choose the correct printer to use and
adjust the number of pages that will be printed. The Properties button leads to
a small menu where you can change the page layout from portrait (vertical) to
landscape (horizontal).
Should you want to see the web-page information in plain text (source text)
instead of HTML, simply right- click a web page, and a dialog box will come up
that contains the option View Document Source.
Figure 10.19: Viewing the Source
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Some sites use frames, which means that what you are seeing is multiple
pages that have been "framed" to look like one page. You often see this where a
scrollbar exists independently of the main window on a site. For these sites,
when you select the View menu, you will notice that View Frame Source has
been enabled. View Frame Source will display only the text in the frame of the
site that contains your mouse pointer. View Document Source, however, will dis-
play the text for the entire page and all of its component frames.
Other Options
With KDE 3.0, Konqueror adds a few new web options that can be found on the
Tools menu. These options include Translate Web Page to and from the various
listed languages and Validate Web Page to confirm that a page meets WWW
standards, which is useful if you write anything that will be viewed on the Web.
Customizing Konqueror
Konqueror offers many ways to customize its appearance and functionality,
based on individual preferences and needs. A single area within Konqueror has
been designed for managing most aspects of its operation, the KDE Control
Module. You can access it from the Settings menu by choosing a submenu titled
Configure Konqueror. Selecting this option actually launches the Settings mod-
ule. Apart from allowing you to adjust your home page, search engine, and plug-
ins, as you have already learned, this module also lets you adjust the way that
your browser displays links and fonts, interacts with Java, and manages cookies
from the sites you visit.
Figure 10.20: KSettings
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Konqueror Browser Setup
Selecting Konqueror Browser from the list of icons in the column on the left
will change the right window. Five tabs are displayed: HTML, Appearance, Java,
JavaScript, and Plugins. We have already covered plugins in this chapter, so let's
talk about the rest.
HTML
The HTML section provides basic management options that control how
Konqueror interacts with hyperlinks, style sheets, and other items. (Style sheets
are parameters for page layouts, including font size, page size, and the like.) The
default setting will change your mouse pointer to a hand when it is over a link
within a web page. The link itself will become underlined at the same time.
Some people choose to have either the mouse pointer change shape or the links
be underlined, but not both. As you become more familiar with browsing,
experiment to see what feels most comfortable to you. If you find you are hav-
ing trouble identifying links by the default settings, go here to make links always
appear underlined.
Image files are larger than plain text files, and they can slow down the
speed with which Konqueror can load a page. If you are interested in loading
image-heavy pages quickly, consider unselecting the Automatically load images
option. Once you apply the changes, an icon will appear in your main toolbar
that looks like a drop of red, blue, and green paint with a green plus sign in its
lower right corner. Now, loaded pages will display images as empty boxes. If you
want to load images on the specific page you are browsing, clicking this icon will
reload the page with images. Using the Reload button will load the page without
images once again.
Figure 10.21: Configuring HTML
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Automatically loading images may be nice, but it can increase the time it takes to load
the page.
Style sheets allow you to create web-page layout preferences that will over-
ride a website's own design. This can be handy in an office where people share
computers. Say five people who have different preferences as to how the
browser should display a web page take turns using the browser. Each can select
a particular style sheet, instead of adjusting the individual settings when it is that
person's turn to use the browser. The creation of style sheets, however, is
beyond the scope of this book. If you find that you rarely or never change your
settings, then creating style sheets is probably unnecessary for you.
Appearance
The Appearance section allows you to set default information about how fonts
are displayed in Konqueror. The size of the font is defined by a number, and the
style of the font is defined by its style name. The Font Size section of
Appearance is not an absolute setting for your system; it is relative and depends
on the specifications of the sites you visit. This means that if you choose
Medium, the size displayed will be whatever the website tells your browser to dis-
play; it simply takes the website's font as is. Experiment with different fonts to
find something that allows you to view pages comfortably.
Figure 10.22: Configuring Appearance
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Java and JavaScript
Java and JavaScript are programming languages that build applets and embed-
ded code and allow web developers to make their web pages more detailed.
They also introduce some security issues. Konqueror defaults disable Java across
all sites and enable JavaScript. You can adjust the settings based on your security
concerns, but these are mostly the concerns of your system administrator.
Cookies
Cookies are little files stored on your computer's hard drive that websites use to
manage information about your visit to their sites. Cookies are often feared
because they allow a website to track some information about you, but if you
take an active role in their management, cookies can enhance your browsing
quite a bit. Cookies allow a site to remember you from one visit to the next or to
maintain your information while browsing a website. You will want to consider
what information is being used and who is using it when you decide how to
interact with cookies. Konqueror provides great flexibility in managing who you
allow to put cookies on your hard drive, as well as giving you a look at what
information is being stored in the cookie.
Cookie Policy
The first thing you need to decide is whether you want to allow cookies. If you
do want to allow them, leave the Enable Cookies option selected. Otherwise,
unselect it to disable the use of cookies entirely. Disabling cookies will disable
the Policy tab, but it does not affect cookies already on your hard drive. Skip
ahead to the next section, "Cookie Management," to learn about any cookies
already on your hard drive.
Figure 10.23: Setting Cookie Policy
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The simplest option for cookies, other than disabling their use, is to accept
them by default. This option allows great ease of use, as any site you browse that
uses cookies can leave one on your hard drive. By design, then, that site inter-
acts with you differently based on your previous visits, without any further inter-
action required on your part. Recognize, however, that accepting cookies by
default also means that you have no control over who puts a cookie on your
hard drive. Visiting one site might result in multiple cookies not only from the
site itself, but from advertisers and third parties as well. Some advertisers, for
example, can collect information about the sites where you have collected their
cookies and develop a demographic model based on your web- browsing habits.
This model can then be used to target you for specific types of advertising. This
is not to say that any advertisers or websites owned by the same parent company
are using cookies for this purpose. However, it is important to realize that you,
the user, are an important commodity to the site you are browsing.
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Be aware that while you interact with a site, it is also interacting with you.
A third option for your cookie policy lets you control which sites you allow
to leave cookies on your hard drive. With this option, you will be asked each
time you go to a new site whether to accept or reject a cookie. How you answer
determines your ongoing policy for cookies from that site.
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If the domain asking to give you a cookie is not the one you are trying to visit, it is
probably an advertiser.
As you allow or deny sites the use of cookies, you will find each site added
in the Policy window. The site will appear in the Hostname column, and your
policy will appear in the Policy column. To change or delete your policy for one
of the hosts in your Policy window, select the hostname and click the Change or
Delete button. To add a policy without visiting a site, click the Add button and
fill in the appropriate information. If you do not include "www" before the
period preceding the hostname, your policy will be effective for that entire
domain.
Cookie Management
The Management tab gives you information on the cookies from domains where
you agree to accept them, either by default or by confirmation. There are two
columns in the main window, one listing the domain that gave you the cookie
and one listing the name of each cookie. By default, multiple cookies are col-
lapsed under each domain heading. Click the plus symbol next to the domain to
expand the entire list of cookies. When a domain is selected, it is displayed in
the Domain section of Cookie Details. Selecting an individual cookie from that
domain will fill in the remaining fields in Cookie Details. This gives you the
chance to see exactly what a site is storing in its cookie. Some of the values will
appear garbled because they are encrypted or make use of codes known only to
the site.
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Crypto
The Crypto section of the control module is where you manage things like certifi-
cates and the Secure Socket Layer (SSL). Certificates are attachments to electronic
messages that provide some assurance that you are dealing with the machine you
think you are communicating with. SSL is a protocol used to securely transmit
information between machines over the Internet. When you enter into a secure
connection, the little lock on the Konqueror toolbar will appear locked. Unless
you understand what you are doing and the ramifications of selecting or unselect-
ing individual ciphers, leave the settings at their defaults. Think of ciphers as
codes your computer uses to talk to other computers during a secure transaction.
Figure 10.24: Managing Cookies
Figure 10.25: Configuring Crypto
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During a secure transaction, the lock symbol on Konqueror should appear locked.
User Agent
The user agent is a string of text your browser sends to a website to identify itself.
By default, Konqueror's user agent string looks like this:
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/2.1.2; X11)
This tells the website to treat Konqueror as though it were a Mozilla 5.0
browser, and if it has problems with Mozilla, to then treat it like Konqueror or
X11. The reason for passing Mozilla initially in the user agent is to provide the
greatest chance for compatibility with the website. It is the sad truth that some
web sites are not designed using the proper standards. If you find that a website
is not rendering properly, changing the user agent might make it interact with
you differently and clear up the problem. Currently, Mozilla is more widely rec-
ognized in website development circles than Konqueror.
To add or change a user agent, first enter the web address in the When
Connecting To field. This can either be the specific URL (www.examplecom-
pany.com) or the entire domain (.examplecompany.com). Now you can either
select a user agent string from the drop- down box for Send User Agent String,
Figure 10.26: Configuring the User Agent
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or you can type your own. The list provided has a wide variety of options, but
let's create a new one for this example:
Konqueror/2.1.2 (compatible; Mozilla/5.0; Linux 2.4.14 i686)
Now you can create an alias that will appear in the list of user agents avail-
able in the future, something like KonqOnLinux.
Next, click Add to add this user agent to your shortcuts and to the list of
available user agents. You will need to apply these changes as well.
Other Applications
Now that we've covered how to use Konqueror as a web browser, and all the
ways you can customize it to make it most efficient and comfortable, let's briefly
look at a few other applications that relate to the Web: file transfer protocols
and other browsers.
FTP and KBear
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
is the standard protocol used for uploading and
downloading files on the Internet. If you are familiar with FTP, KBear's inter-
face is self-explanatory. If not, KBear comes with some great help files to get
you started. Be forewarned that KBear will have trouble if you are using an FTP
proxy. An FTP proxy is a computer on your connection, located between yours
and the one with which you are trying to exchange files, that lets the other com-
puter think it is your computer. Such a proxy, or stand- in, might be desirable
for security reasons. These are mostly the concerns of system administrators;
check with them before making changes. The KBear software package is com-
patible with KDE. If it is not installed on your system already, you can download
it from http://kbear.sourceforge.net/.
Netscape
Netscape Navigator is a web browser that works well with KDE, but you might
experience the odd display issue or problems with compatibility between the
Netscape and KDE clipboards. Netscape should be located under the internet
module on the K menu. To configure Netscape, open the Edit menu and select
Preferences.
Opera
Opera is a relatively new web browser, known for its speed, standards compli-
ance, and small size. You can download a free, adware version (meaning there's
a permanent, revolving advertisement on the menubar) and install it within a
few minutes, if you have superuser access on your machine. If not, talk to your
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system administrator. Everything you have learned about Konqueror in this
book translates well to Opera, and it is worth checking out. It is extremely
quick, considering the number of features available. Opera has a retail version
that disables the ad field present in the free version.
Building Web Content
Although this book is not a how-to for building web content, a few simple proce-
dures will be covered because they are a part of Konqueror and KDE. These are
basic tips and programs and only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.
Using Save to Make HTML
Many of the word-processing and office applications discussed in this book have
an option available when you save a document that will automatically create an
HTML file of that document, in addition to the original plain-text file. To access
this option, open a document in your word processor of choice. Choose the File
menu and select Save. Go to the File Type box on the dialog box that pops up
and use the scrollbar to find HTML, then click it. In a few seconds, you will
have the new file saved as filename.html. From there, you can open it in your
browser and see a web-formatted document.
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The File menus of some word processors list Save as HTML on the main drop-down
menu, saving you a few seconds and clicks.
Using Quanta Plus
Quanta Plus is a web development environment designed to allow the user to
create web pages of any complexity using a simple graphical interface. Quanta
Plus is fully compatible with KDE. If you do not have it on your system already,
download it from http://quanta.sourceforge.net/. As always, you may need to
Figure 10.27: Opera 5
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consult your system administrator for permission before installing extra soft-
ware. For users who are unfamiliar with the syntax or structure of HTML tags
(the specifications that turn pages into web pages), having a graphical interface
is very comforting. While HTML is beyond the scope of this book, the following
section walks you through the process of creating a very simple web page with
Quanta Plus.
How to Build a Hello World Page
Launch Quanta Plus by selecting it from the Development module on the K
menu. Above the main window, you will see a piece of paper with a shooting
star on it. Click it.
A dialog box opens. Type
Hello World
in the title and click OK. The dialog
box will then close.
Figure 10.28: Getting Started
Figure 10.29: Hello World
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You should see in the main window that the Quick Start feature has filled in
some HTML tags. Your cursor should now be located between a <body> tag and
a </body> tag. Whatever you type between these two tags will be the text on
your page. Type
This is my home page!
.
Now preview this page. In the upper right toolbar, click the eye icon; this
will show you what your page looks like to a browser (it should say, "This is my
home page!"). Click the eye again to see the text of the page.
Save the file and open it using Konqueror, just like any other file.
Figure 10.30: Previewing Your Page
Although Quanta Plus has everything you need to develop a first-rate website,
it is beyond the scope of this book to cover it in detail. When you have time, explore
the options available and play around with designing a web page. You can do things
like incorporate different colors and fonts; include lists, graphs, and pictures; and
make the page interactive. Be sure to read the documentation on the Help menu to
learn how to create an interesting, informative, and unique web page.
Figure 10.31: The Final Result
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