Henry lives on

After complaining about the poor state of the web browser in a KDE platform, I have to report with mixed emotions that I've bitten the bullet and installed firefox. I'm not a huge fan of firefox - yes, it's open source, and seems to work fairly well, but it's also slow and a huge resource hog.

Who here remembers when firefox first came out? It was supposed to be a stripped down version of the mozilla web browser. The idea was that by removing the mail client, IRC chat application, and god knows how many other applications we'd end up with a smaller, faster, lighter browser. To some extent it worked. However, I'm starting to wonder if they'd have been better starting from scratch.

I challenge anyone reading this to use Chrome for windows for a week and then switch back to Firefox for good - I guarantee you you'll be pulling your hair out within a week; firefox is slow! I always assumed that the reason my browsing experience was so poor was down to my slow Internet connection, but it turns out that a fair amount of the delay is the browser.

So I have firefox - the GTK theme KDE installs looks awful, and several web sites look rubbish, but at least I can check my email...

Well, that's it for now. More to come soon (and this time I'll lose the shakespearean titles).

My Kingdom for a Browser!

This post is set to be one of the most painful entries I have ever written on this weblog. Not because the subject matter is particularly difficult, but because the technology has let me down.

The story starts with me upgrading my laptop to Kubuntu 8.10. It's been out for a while, and I'm a big fan of KDE 4, but I hadn't had a sufficiently quiet weekend in which to take the plunge. I was previously running Kubuntu 8.04, so I could have just downloaded the latest packages, but I wanted to start from scratch, for a couple of reasons.:

1. I wanted to remove all the rubbish that I had installed over the last six months. I frequently download and install applications, only to find that they're not quite what I want. I rarely uninstall them, so over time my lhard disk fills with cruft.
   
   
2. I wanted to wipe away all the stale config, especially as my window manager would be changing from KDE 3.x to KDE4. Besides, there's a certain pleasure to be derived from configuring a brand new KDE installation.
   

The install was a breeze, and for the first time ever all my laptop hardware was detected and configured correctly without any hacking on my part - even the weird web-cam, which doesn't even work in Windows XP. Life was good, until I went to browse the Internet.

KDE ships with Konqueror as it's default web browser. As far as web browsers go it's fairly nice - It lacks the large "Add-Ons" repository that Firefox has, but many of the plugins I can't live without when using Firefox are included as standard in Konqueror.



Konqueror is more than just a web browser though - the integration between konqueror and the rest of KDE is truly stunning (as an aside: this is why I prefer KDE over other desktops. Technologies like KPart and DBus are the future of desktop applications, and KDE is leading the charge in this area). As an example, if you want to search google for something, but don't have your browser window open, what can you do? Easy! just press Alt + F2 to open the "Run Command" dialog, and type "gg: " followed by your desired keywords. Hit enter and you'll launch Konqueror with the google results right there waiting for you.


Konqueror also has extensive protocol support. For example, SCP and SFTP are supported by default. Try typing something like "fish://user@host" - konqueror will as for the user password, and will then behave like a file browser for the remote machine.

These two examples hardly scratch the surface of what Konqueror can do. However - there are some very serious problems with it. Using GMail with Konqueror is torturous. First Google will give you the plain-old-HTML-only mode, since Konqueror isn't officially supported. Then, if you ask for the full version anyway you get all sorts of weirdness - and a completely unusable inbox. The solution seems to be to set the user agent to Safari 2.0, but even then my inbox seems to be incredibly slow.

Members of the KDE community have pointed out that GMail plays fast-and-loose with web standards, so it's understandable that Konqueror misses a few tricks. The Google engineers must have tested the javascript enhanced version of GMail with the most popular browsers, and left Konqueror out in the cold - and fair enough. However, the KDE developers are missing the point: no matter how good their browser is technically - no matter how standards compliant it is, it simply does not work for me - the user. I now have a browser that I cannot use to check my email (no, using the HTML-only version is not an option).

So what are the alternatives?

Before I upgraded Kubuntu I had Firefox installed. However, when I went to install it, I nearly had a heart attack. In order to install Firefox, I had to install 63 other packages - most of them gnome or GTK packages. The reason for this is simple: Firefox uses the GTK toolkit to provide a UI. I knew this already, but this early on in my new Kubuntu install I wasn't about to pollute my OS install with GTK packages.


What can I do? There are a few other options available to me:

There's been talk of a Firefox port to Qt. However, nothing usable has materialised yet, so that's off the cards.

There's the Arora browser - this is a Qt browser running the Webkit engine (which is included as standard in later Qt distributions). A quick install told me what I needed to know: also not really usable as my default browser.

Finally there's Google's offering: Chromium. However, this has not yet been ported to Linux.

So what's the underlying cause of my troubles? Without hacking the code directly, I have no idea. Perhaps this is part of the KHTML vs Webkit debacle - There's a good article outlining the whole issue here, but I'd like to quote a couple of paragraphs:

So, what's the situation? Well, it appears that KHTML will remain the web rendering engine for Konqueror going into KDE 4.0, and that it could be changed to qtWebkit as of KDE 4.1. That does not seem to be officially settled, so much as the most likely scenario. It appears that the KHTML team seems hesitant about the proposition, while many KDE developers and users alike have expressed a very receptive attitude toward seeing Konqueror user qtWebkit. And Rusin made clear to a reader that he believes the KHTML team should continue their work as long as they like.

The challenge is that Webkit, which comes from Apple, is widely tested, and is thus known to work well with a large number of websites. KHTML is not as widely tested, and, for example, GMail doesn't work well with Konqueror. Many Konqueror fans have expressed regret at having to keep Firefox around just for sites like GMail, that don't recognize KHTML. Using Webkit would solve these problems, enabling many users to stick to one browser.

In other words: "The developers are dragging their feet to implement a fix that would arguably make Konqueror a better browser". Of course, the developers involved are free to do as they please with their code, but they're dragging down the rest of the KDE platform - I now have to have multiple browsers installed to do the most basic of day-to-day tasks.

While the situation is frustrating in itself, the unfortunate fact is that similar things are happening all over the open source scene. Frequently developers get too caught up in making sure that their code is "right" (that may mean designed correctly, stable, cool, standards compliant, well integrated, or anything else the developer feels is important), and not enough time is spent making sure that the product is usable. I suppose this is one of the draw backs to a development methodology where there is no external pressure to develop your product.

Usability is king, and trumps all other concerns in a product. If it's not usable, it's no good.

WiiWare: Innovation and mistakes

I bought a Nintendo Wii earlier this year. I've never actually owned a console before, but have a reasonably strong loyalty to Nintendo. They appear to publish the best games (of course, that's entirely subjective). My game catalogue now includes the following titles:

• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
• Super Mario Galaxy
• Metroid Prime: Corruption
• Wii Sports
• Mario Kart
• Super Smash Bros Brawl
• Star Wars The Force Unleashed (this game barely makes it into the list, I'm thoroughly disgusted with this title, and am considering using it as a coaster)
  

You may have noticed that I'm not a big fan of the more lighthearted "party" style games out there - I prefer the more focused, single player games.Once I had purchased those titles I began to look for something else, but quickly found that there's not a whole lot of choice out there right now. Most new Wii games tend to be in the "party" category.

Thankfully, Nintendo have launched WiiWare. WiiWare is a collection of titles created by third party developers. There are many different titles to choose from, and each title costs around £10. I ended up purchasing two titles:

• Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My life as a king.
• Lost Winds.

These are both splendid games. However, once again, the pool of good games in the WiiWare collection is very limited - the main reason for this as far as I can see is that it's incredibly difficult to get your hands on the tools required to develop games for the Wii. For a start, Nintendo are only selling their development kit to well-established development houses (you need a registerred business, proper offices, previously published titles etc.). Their application form states that:

The Application includes a NonDisclosure Agreement (NDA). Once the Application and NDA are
submitted by you, we will email you a copy of the Application and NDA for your records. Please
note that your submission of an Application and NDA does not imply that your company is approved,
or will be approved, as an Authorized Developer for the platforms above.

...
If the Application is approved by Nintendo, we will notify you by email. At this point, your
company will be considered an Authorized Developer for the platform(s) specified. If your company
is approved for Wii, this also includes WiiWare. If approved the appropriate SDKs can be downloaded
from Warioworld, and development kits can be purchased from Nintendo of America.

So First you need to sign an NDA, Then, if you are accepted you need to purchase the development kit (priced at over $1000 USD). All this makes is increadibly hard for "joe programmer" to start cutting code for the Wii.

I really think Nintendo have missed a trick here; imagine the community that could form behind a free development kit. Think about the success of the Apple AppStore for the iPhone, but with games instead. The Wii is a revolutionary platform, with a unique control interface: surely lowering the barriers to entry can only be a good thing?

There's another side to this as well: The Wii Homebrew team have already done a lot of work reverse engineering the Wii, to the point where there is already an SDKs available for use. Is it usable? I haven't tried it myself yet (perhaps when I finish some of my current projects I'll play with it), but there are already a fair number of games available for the homebrew channel: I count more than 70 games listed, as well as a number of utilities, emulators and other bits and pieces.

The free development kit is based on the gcc PPC port, and comes bundled with everything you need to start development. GNU gcc has been a well established payer on the compiler scene, so it's not like we're playing with untested technology here.

Given that many of the secrets of the Wii are out (or are being reverse engineered even as you read this), wouldn't it be prudent for Nintendo to officially welcome third party developers to the fold? More importantly, for other, future consoles, imagine a world where:

• The original manufacturer (Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony or whoever) use an open source toolchain from the beginning. I assume that Nintendo have spent a lot of time and money developing their toolchain, which seems a little wasteful to me, when an open source solution already exists. Sure, it may need to be tailored for the Wii, but I'm sure there are plenty of people who would embrace these changes. An open source toolchain lowers development costs, and lowers the barrier to entry for third party developers.
  
• Third party developers are encouraged to write applications themselves, and the cost to entry is kept as low as possible. The manufacturer supplies the hardware, points to a pre-packaged toolchain of open source applications, and provides a development SDK with decent documentation. If all you need to test your games is a copy of the console itself, that would be great. However, why not build an emulator that can run on a standard PC?
  
• The manufacturer provides bug-fixes for the SDK when needed, and creates a community-oriented website for budding developers.
• The manufacturer provides a free (or very cheap) means of distributing third party applications via the internet, and offers the option of DRM routines, should the initial autors wish to make use of them.
  

I believe this setup could bring about a number of beneficial changes to the console gaming market:

• An overall increase in the diversity and quality of available games.
• A vibrant community of developers who help the manufacturer maintain the platform SDK and development toolchain by submitting bugs, feature requests and other suggestions.
• Increased popularity for the platform (I'd buy any platform that offered all of the above).

Unfortunately, I can't see it happening any time soon. It seems to me that the big three console manufacturers are still engrossed in the "proprietary hardware, closed source" paradigm. Still, a guy can dream, right?