Frequently asked questions ========================== The Compiler [qanda] What is qutebrowser based on?:: qutebrowser uses http://www.python.org/[Python], http://qt-project.org/[Qt] and http://www.riverbankcomputing.com/software/pyqt/intro[PyQt]. + The concept of it is largely inspired by http://portix.bitbucket.org/dwb/[dwb] and http://www.vimperator.org/vimperator[Vimperator]. Many actions and keybindings are similar to dwb. Why another browser?:: It might be hard to believe, but I didn't find any browser which I was happy with, so I started to write my own. Also, I needed a project to get into writing GUI applications with Python and link:http://qt-project.org/[Qt]/link:http://www.riverbankcomputing.com/software/pyqt/intro[PyQt]. + Read the next few questions to find out why I was unhappy with existing software. What's wrong with link:http://portix.bitbucket.org/dwb/[dwb]/link:http://sourceforge.net/projects/vimprobable/[vimprobable]/link:https://mason-larobina.github.io/luakit/[luakit]/link:http://pwmt.org/projects/jumanji/[jumanji]/... (projects based on WebKitGTK)?:: Most of them are based on the http://webkitgtk.org/[WebKitGTK+] http://webkitgtk.org/reference/webkitgtk/stable/index.html[WebKit1] API, which causes a lot of crashes. As the GTK API using WebKit1 is https://lists.webkit.org/pipermail/webkit-gtk/2014-March/001821.html[deprecated], these bugs are never going to be fixed. + The newer http://webkitgtk.org/reference/webkit2gtk/stable/index.html[WebKit2 API] seems to lack basic features like proxy support, and almost no projects seem to have started porting to WebKit2 (I only know of http://www.uzbl.org/[uzbl]). + qutebrowser uses http://qt-project.org/[Qt] and http://qt-project.org/wiki/QtWebKit[QtWebKit] instead, which suffers from far less such crashes. It might switch to http://qt-project.org/wiki/QtWebEngine[QtWebEngine] in the future, which is based on Google's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_(layout_engine)[Blink] rendering engine. What's wrong with https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/[Firefox] and link:http://5digits.org/pentadactyl/[Pentadactyl]/link:http://www.vimperator.org/vimperator[Vimperator]?:: Firefox likes to break compatibility with addons on each upgrade, gets slower and more bloated with every upgrade, and has some https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publisher-transformation-with-users-at-the-center/[horrible ideas] lately. + Also, developing addons for it is a nightmare. What's wrong with http://www.chromium.org/Home[Chromium] and https://vimium.github.io/[Vimium]?:: The Chrome plugin API doesn't seem to allow much freedom for plugin writers, which results in Vimium not really having all the features you'd expect from a proper minimal, vim-like browser. Why Python?:: I enjoy writing Python since 2011, which made it one of the possible choices. I wanted to use http://qt-project.org/[Qt] because of http://qt-project.org/wiki/QtWebKit[QtWebKit] so I didn't have http://qt-project.org/wiki/Category:LanguageBindings[many other choices]. I don't like C++ and can't write it very well, so that wasn't an alternative. But isn't Python too slow for a browser?:: http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/van-rossum-python-not-too-slow-188715[No.] I believe efficency while coding is a lot more important than efficency while running. Also, most of the heavy lifting of qutebrowser is done by Qt and WebKit in C++, with the https://wiki.python.org/moin/GlobalInterpreterLock[GIL] released. Is there an adblocker?:: There is a host-based adblocker which takes /etc/hosts-like lists. A "real" adblocker has a http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/25j41u/adblock_pluss_effect_on_firefoxs_memory_usage/chhpomw[big impact] on browsing speed and https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/05/14/adblock-pluss-effect-on-firefoxs-memory-usage/[RAM usage], so implementing it properly might take some time and won't be done for v0.1 if at all. == Troubleshooting Configuration not saved after modifying config.:: When editing your config file manually, qutebrowser must be exited completely. Either by issuing the command `:quit` or by pressing `ctrl+q`. Unable to view flash content.:: If you have flash installed for on your system, it's necessary to enable plugins to use the flash plugin. Using the command `:set content allow-plugins true` in qutebrowser will enable plugins. Packages for flash should be provided for your platform. Read any help documentation with regards to installing flash from your operating systems. Flash can also be obtained from http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/[Adobe]. This can also be set manually in your config file located in `~/.config/qutebrowser/qutebrowser.conf` on *nix systems. Before editing be sure to exit completely. Locate the line `allow-plugins = false` and change to `allow-plugins = true` save the file and load your browser and enjoy flash! Experiencing freezing on sites like duckduckgo and youtube.:: When visiting some pages and you experience freezing, unable to close or unable exit the browser. This can be solved by disabling plugins, or checking if you have a package installed called mozplugger on your system. On Archlinux and Debian/Ubuntu systems the package is called mozplugger. After removing the package, you may need to also delete a few files in your home plugin dir. They are so named `~/.mozilla/plugins/mozplugger*.so`. Be sure to exit the browser completely before removing any plugins manually. See https://github.com/The-Compiler/qutebrowser/issues/357[Issue #357] for more details. Experiencing segfaults (crashes) on Debian systems.:: For Debian it's necessary to install the `gstreamer0.10-plugins-base` package. This is a workaround for a bug in Qt, it has been fixed upstream in Qt 5.4 More details can be found https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=119951[here] and https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=119951[here]. My issue is not listed.:: If you experience any segfaults or crashes, you can report the issue on https://github.com/The-Compiler/qutebrowser/issues[qutebrowser issues]. Be sure to read over how to create a stacktrace to report crashes of unknown cause by visiting https://github.com/The-Compiler/qutebrowser/blob/master/doc/stacktrace.asciidoc[reporting segfaults]. // We link to github rather than to the file here so it also works with the // qutebrowser :help because that doesn't render HACKING.