133 lines
7.2 KiB
Plaintext
133 lines
7.2 KiB
Plaintext
Frequently asked questions
|
|
==========================
|
|
The Compiler <mail@qutebrowser.org>
|
|
|
|
[qanda]
|
|
What is qutebrowser based on?::
|
|
qutebrowser uses http://www.python.org/[Python], http://qt.io/[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
|
|
key bindings 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.io/[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.io/[Qt] and http://wiki.qt.io/QtWebKit[QtWebKit]
|
|
instead, which suffers from far less such crashes. It might switch to
|
|
http://wiki.qt.io/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.io/[Qt] because of
|
|
http://wiki.qt.io/QtWebKit[QtWebKit] so I didn't have
|
|
http://wiki.qt.io/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.
|
|
|
|
How do I play Youtube videos with mpv?::
|
|
You can easily add a key binding to play youtube videos inside a real video
|
|
player - optionally even with hinting for links:
|
|
+
|
|
----
|
|
:bind x spawn mpv {url}
|
|
:bind ;x hint links spawn mpv {hint-url}
|
|
----
|
|
|
|
== Troubleshooting
|
|
|
|
Configuration not saved after modifying config.::
|
|
When editing your config file manually, qutebrowser must be exited completely.
|
|
This can be done 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 or it can be obtained from
|
|
http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/[Adobe].
|
|
|
|
Experiencing freezing on sites like duckduckgo and youtube.::
|
|
This issue could be caused by stale plugin files installed by `mozplugger`
|
|
if mozplugger was subsequently removed.
|
|
Try exiting qutebroser and removing `~/.mozilla/plugins/mozplugger*.so`.
|
|
See https://github.com/The-Compiler/qutebrowser/issues/357[Issue #357]
|
|
for more details.
|
|
|
|
Experiencing segfaults (crashes) on Debian systems.::
|
|
For Debian it's highly recommended 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].
|
|
|
|
Segfaults on Facebook, Medium, Amazon, ...::
|
|
If you are on a Debian or Ubuntu based system, you might experience some crashes
|
|
visting these sites. This is caused by various bugs in Qt which have been
|
|
fixed in Qt 5.4. However Debian and Ubuntu are slow to adopt or upgrade
|
|
some packages. On Debian Jessie, it's recommended to use the experimental
|
|
repos as described in https://github.com/The-Compiler/qutebrowser/blob/master/INSTALL.asciidoc#on-debian--ubuntu[INSTALL].
|
|
+
|
|
Since Ubuntu Trusty (using Qt 5.2.1),
|
|
https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-42417?jql=component%20%3D%20WebKit%20and%20resolution%20%3D%20Done%20and%20fixVersion%20in%20(5.3.0%2C%20%225.3.0%20Alpha%22%2C%20%225.3.0%20Beta1%22%2C%20%225.3.0%20RC1%22%2C%205.3.1%2C%205.3.2%2C%205.4.0%2C%20%225.4.0%20Alpha%22%2C%20%225.4.0%20Beta%22%2C%20%225.4.0%20RC%22)%20and%20priority%20in%20(%22P2%3A%20Important%22%2C%20%22P1%3A%20Critical%22%2C%20%22P0%3A%20Blocker%22)[over
|
|
70 important bugs] have been fixed in QtWebKit. For Debian Jessie (using Qt 5.3.2)
|
|
it's still
|
|
https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-42417?jql=component%20%3D%20WebKit%20and%20resolution%20%3D%20Done%20and%20fixVersion%20in%20(5.4.0%2C%20%225.4.0%20Alpha%22%2C%20%225.4.0%20Beta%22%2C%20%225.4.0%20RC%22)%20and%20priority%20in%20(%22P2%3A%20Important%22%2C%20%22P1%3A%20Critical%22%2C%20%22P0%3A%20Blocker%22)[nearly
|
|
20 important bugs].
|
|
|
|
My issue is not listed.::
|
|
If you experience any segfaults or crashes, you can report the issue in
|
|
https://github.com/The-Compiler/qutebrowser/issues[the issue tracker] or
|
|
using the `:report` command.
|
|
If you are reporting a segfault, make sure you read the
|
|
https://github.com/The-Compiler/qutebrowser/blob/master/doc/stacktrace.asciidoc[guide]
|
|
on how to report them with all needed information.
|