&Pamela.Roberts;
2010-10-25
&kde; 4.5

# &konqueror; the Web Browser

Browsing www.konqueror.org

## Connecting to the Internet

Once you are connected to the Internet you can use &konqueror; to browse the Web just as easily as you can use it to handle your local files. Just type a &URL; into the Location Toolbar window, press &Enter;, and you are away!

- If you use a dial-up modem connection, then you will be using &kppp; or a similar dialer program to make the connection.

- If your machine is connected to a local area network (LAN) that gives you a proxy connection to the Internet then you will have to set &konqueror; up for the proxy connection. This can be done with the Web Browsing Proxy page of the Settings Configure Konqueror... dialog.

- If you are lucky enough to have a high speed cable connection, then the service provider will probably give you an external cable modem which needs an ethernet connection to your machine. Unfortunately the details of how to establish the connection depend on the service provider and to some extent on which Linux/&UNIX; distribution you are using. Some ISPs connect their customers to the Internet through a proxy server, in which case you will have to set up &konqueror; to use it. You may find it useful to search the archives of your distribution's user group mailing list for help.

An error message such as Unknown Host usually means that &konqueror; cannot find a connection to the Internet or that you have entered an incorrect &URL;.

## Surfing and Searching

Once you have a connection to the Internet, you can surf with &konqueror; just as you can with any other browser.

Type a &URL; into the Location Toolbar window, press &Enter; or left click on the Go button at the right hand end of the Location Toolbar, and &konqueror; will download and display that page. If you have visited the page before, &konqueror;'s Automatic Text Completion feature can help you type the &URL; a second time, or you could look through the History page in the Sidebar. If you want to use one of the web's search engines, &konqueror;'s Web Shortcuts feature can make this easier.

Left click on a link in the page to go there.

To open a link in a new instance of &konqueror;, leaving the old page still visible, &RMB; click on the link and select the Open in New Window option. Alternatively, you might want to Open in New Tab. Tabbed Browsing will let you hold a number of pages in one &konqueror; window and quickly switch between them with a single mouse click.

You could also select multiple view modes with Window Split View Left/Right (&Ctrl; &Shift;L) / Window Split View Top/Bottom (&Ctrl; &Shift;T) option which will let you see different pages at the same time. This can be useful if you are looking through a complicated set of HTML pages, but make sure the little link box at the bottom right hand corner is empty when you are doing this.

To go back to the previous page use the &Alt;Left shortcut, the Back button on the Toolbar, or the menubar Go Back option.

Similarly, once you have gone back you can go forward by using &Alt;Right, the Forward button, or the menubar Go Forward option.

There are multiple ways of scrolling the viewing area. One is to use the Up Arrow and Down Arrow keys. You may also use the scrollbar, your mousewheel or the Page Up and Page Down keys.

If you want to read a long webpage use the automatic scrolling feature of &konqueror;. Start automatic scrolling with &Shift;Down Arrow or &Shift;Up Arrow. Then use these keys to increase and decrease the scrolling speed. You can start or stop automatic scrolling temporarily by pressing the &Shift; key; pressing any other key deactivates this feature.

If you want to stop a download for any reason then use the &Esc; key, the Toolbar Stop button or the Menubar View Stop item.

When you are viewing a web page with the HTML Toolbar enabled you should see two new icons in the toolbar and . Use these to adjust the size of the text in the page if you find it difficult to read. How well this works will depend on how the web page has been constructed.

## Tabbed Browsing

By using this feature you can make &konqueror; load multiple web pages in the same window, and switch between them using tabbed pages. This way, you can preload a page in the background while you carry on reading another.

To use tabbed browsing, right click on a link and choose Open in New Tab from the drop down menu or &MMB; click. The page will be downloaded and displayed as normal, but with tabs across the top of the view, one tab for each page. &LMB; click on a tab to view that page, or you can use the shortcuts &Ctrl;, and &Ctrl;. to cycle through the tab pages. Alternatively, you can scroll through the tabs using the mouse wheel while the mouse pointer is over the tab bar (presuming that your mouse has one). Also, double-clicking over the empty tab bar space will open a new tab.

Using the Open new tabs in the background option in the General page of the Settings dialog clicking on a link downloads the page and shows a new tab for it, but the new page will not be displayed until you left click on the tab.

If you check the Open links in new tab instead of in new window box in the General page of the Settings Configure Konqueror... dialog, &MMB; clicking on a link will open it in a new tab page and if you hold the &Shift; key down while clicking the &MMB; the link will be opened in a background tab page.

Right clicking on a tab will bring up a menu with the following options:

New Tab (&Ctrl;T)

  This opens a new, blank, tabbed page view. You can then download a web page into it by typing the &URL; into the Location Bar or by making a selection from the Bookmark Toolbar or the Sidebar history page.

Duplicate Tab (&Ctrl;D)

  To create a duplicate tabbed page.

Reload Tab (F5)

  Reloads the content of the current tab.

Other Tabs

  Displays a submenu showing all other tabs. Choosing a tab from this list makes it the active tab.

Other Tabs Reload All Tabs (&Shift;F5)

  Reloads the content of every tab.

Other Tabs Close Other Tabs

  To close all but the selected tab page.

Detach Tab (&Ctrl;&Shift;B)

  This option removes the selected tabbed page from the current &konqueror; window and opens it in a new instance of &konqueror;.

Close Tab (&Ctrl;W)

  To close the selected tab page.

## Web Shortcuts

If enabled, &konqueror;'s Web Shortcuts feature lets you submit a query directly to a search engine or similar web site without having to visit the site first.

For example, entering `gg:konqueror` into the Location Bar and pressing &Enter; will ask Google to search for items related to &konqueror;.

To see what Web Shortcuts are available, and perhaps add your own, use Settings Configure Konqueror... and open the Web Shortcuts page.

Once there, to make a new Web Shortcut select New... and you will now have a new dialog requesting the options and specifications of your new Web Shortcut. The first field is for the human readable name of the search provider; that is, simply the name of the Search provider. For example, Google.

In the next field you should enter the &URI; that is used to do a search on the search engine. The whole text to be searched for can be specified as `\{@}` or `\{0}`. The recommended version is `\{@}` since it removes all query variables (name=value) from the resulting string whereas `\{0}` will be substituted with the unmodified query string.

You can use `\{1}` ... `\{n}` to specify certain words from the query and `\{`name`}` to specify a value given by ``name`=value` in the user query. In addition it is possible to specify multiple references (names, numbers and strings) at once, like `(\{`name1`,`name2`,...,"string"})`. The first matching value (from the left) will be used as substitution value for the resulting &URI;. A quoted string can be used as the default value if nothing matches from the left of the reference list.

To make a basic Web Shortcut here however, all that is required is the &URI; that is used to do a search on the search engine. Following our previous example with Google, we would enter `http://www.google.com/search?q=\{@}&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8`. You can often easily find where to place the `\{@}` by doing a search on the search engine in question, and then analyzing the &URL; address. For example, doing a Google search for &konqueror; produces the &URL;: http://www.google.com/search?q=konqueror&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8. Now you need to merely replace &konqueror; with `\{@}` in this example to find the appropriate &URI; to be entered.

In the third field you need to enter the &URI; shortcut. For example, the `gg` in `gg:konqueror`. In the next option — the drop-down menu — you have the option to select the character set that will be used to encode the search query. Once you have entered all the options correctly to your satisfaction, press &Enter; and your new Web Shortcut should now be available in &konqueror;.

## Access Keys

&konqueror; has full support for the `accesskey` &HTML; attribute in forms and links. Access keys allow you to use the keyboard keys for functions which would perhaps normally be done with the mouse, such as following links. The benefit of this is, quite simply, that users can interact with a page with devices other than a pointing device.

This feature has to be enabled by checking the Enable Access Key activation with &Ctrl; key option on the Web Browsing settings page.

To activate the access keys in &konqueror;, press and release &Ctrl;. Once this is pressed, if a particular link on the website has the `accesskey` attribute in the given link, then the character(s) should appear over the link, identifying what needs to be pressed. Then, you can enter the character(s) associated with the link as an alternative to following the link with the mouse. To disable the access keys once activated you can press &Ctrl; again.

The proper use of this feature requires that the web designer of the page has specifically assigned, using the `accesskey` attribute, an access key for the link. Many web designers might not include the `accesskey` in their links and forms, and consequently this feature will be unusable on the given webpage.

## Browser Identification

When &konqueror; connects to a web site it sends some brief browser identification information, known as the User Agent string. Many web sites use this information to customize the pages that they send back, based on the strengths and weaknesses of different browsers.

Unfortunately, some badly designed sites refuse to work properly unless you are using a browser that the site recognizes as a valid one, even though if given a chance, &konqueror; will work satisfactorily with the vast majority of web pages.

To overcome this problem you can change the browser identification information that &konqueror; sends for specific sites or domains by selecting Web Browsing Browser Identification page of the settings dialog.

Problems with getting a web page to work properly may also be due to its use of &Java; or JavaScript. If you suspect that this may be the case check that they have been enabled in the Java & JavaScript section of the settings dialog.

Install the UserAgent Changer extension from the &konqueror; Plugins and enable it in Settings Configure Extensions. This extension adds a Change Browser Identification item to the Tools menu. Using this item lets you quickly switch between different User Agent strings.

## Saving and Printing Web Items

When you are viewing a web page you can save it (or at least the basic &HTML; or similar source text) to your local disk with File Save As.... If the page you are viewing uses frames, then you will also be given the File Save Frame As... option. Left click in the frame you want to save first.

If the page uses a background image, you can get and save that with the File Save Background Image As... option.

But if what you really want is that glorious picture of the latest Ferrari, then right clicking on the image will give you a drop-down menu with a Save Image As... option. Be sure to respect the owner's copyright, and ask for permission before using any pictures saved this way for anything other than your own viewing pleasure.

If you right click on a link (which may be a picture) and select Save Link As... from the pop up menu the basic &HTML; or similar source text will be downloaded and saved on your local disk.

Right clicking on a link (which may be a picture) and choosing Copy Link Address will copy the &URL; of the link to the clipboard so you can then paste it into, say, an e-mail to a friend telling her about this wonderful new site.

Right clicking on a picture and choosing Copy Image copies the &URL; of the picture to the clipboard.

To save a complete web page, including images, select Archive Web Page... from the Tools menu. Note that this feature is provided by a plugin and may not have been installed on your system. The web page will be saved as a single file with a `.war` extension and can be opened by left clicking on the filename in &konqueror; running in File Manager mode.

Printing a copy of the page you are viewing is easily done with the Menubar File Print... or Print Frame option or with the Toolbar Print button.

## &FTP;

&FTP;, or File Transfer Protocol, is one of the earliest, and still perhaps the best, way of transferring files between computers over the Internet.

With &FTP; you can see files and folders on the distant computer just as if they were on your own system, download them onto your computer using &konqueror;'s normal Copy and Paste or Drag n' Drop methods and, if allowed, upload files from your machine to the other computer's filesystem. To try it, type the &URL;

    ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde

into the Location Toolbar and press &Enter;. As long as you are connected to the Internet, and as long as the &kde;'s &FTP; site is not too busy, you should end up seeing the `/pub/kde` folder at &kde-ftp;

Although, strictly speaking, &FTP; &URL;s should be entered starting with `ftp://` and WWW &URL;s starting with `http://` &konqueror; is usually smart enough to figure out what is meant, and insert these characters for you if you leave them out.

When you access an &FTP; site it will usually need some form of username and password from you. To simplify things, most &FTP; sites that offer files for free downloading will accept the word anonymous as a username and your email address as a password, and to make your life even easier &konqueror; will automatically supply these without troubling you.

If you try to access an &FTP; site that does not need a proper username or password but which is too busy to accept any more connections, &konqueror; often interprets the busy message as a request for a name and password and will therefore pop up a dialog box asking you to supply them.

Sites that are more concerned with security will need a proper username and password, in which case &konqueror; will ask you for them or you can include the username in the &URL; you type into the Location Toolbar, as for example

    ftp://username@ftp.cia.org

&konqueror; will then prompt you for the password.

&konqueror; can also support automatic logins as specified in a `.netrc` file. Details of how to enable this feature are given at http://www.konqueror.org/faq.html#netrc

## &URL;s with Port Numbers

If you specify a port number in your &URL;, as in for example `http://intranet.corp.com:1080`, you might get the error message Access to restricted port in POST denied. This is done for security reasons. If you nevertheless need to access a server on this port, just add a key line

    OverridenPorts=CommaSeparatedListOfAllowedPorts

to `$KDEDIR/share/config/kio_httprc` or `~/.kde/share/config/kio_httprc`.

For example

    OverridenPorts=23,15

(it should not include any embedded spaces).

&konqueror; will reject the following ports (the list is hardcoded in `kdelibs/kio/kio/job.cpp`):

1, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 37, 42, 43, 53, 77, 79, 87, 95, 101, 102, 103, 104, 109, 110, 111, 113, 115, 117, 119, 123, 135, 139, 143, 179, 389, 512, 513, 514, 515, 526, 530, 531, 532, 540, 556, 587, 601, 989, 990, 992, 993, 995, 1080, 2049, 4045, 6000, 6667