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How-Tos

Browse using Konqueror

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

Konqueror is the default browser that comes with KDE. You’ll find the user interface and buttons similar to IE. You’ll also find keyboard functions (like Esc to stop loading a page, Ctrl+N for new window) the same.

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The main menu has the standard Edit, Bookmarks and Window options. The Window menu gives you an MDI (Multiple Document Interface) and allows you to browse different websites simultaneously in the same Konqueror window. This significantly reduces clutter in the K Panel. 

Konqueror allows a high degree of flexibility in terms of the settings it provides. Let’s look at them.

Install the JDK
We gave the JDK 1.4 on the September 2001 PCQuest CD. Click on the CD-ROM icon on the KDE desktop. Copy the file j2sdk-1_4_0-beta-linux-i386-rpm.bin in the directory cdrom/linux to Root Directory (/root). Now right click on the file and select Open With>Other. In the pop-up window, check the Run in terminal check box. Now click on the file. This will show a Terminal window with a license agreement. Press the space bar till you are asked if you agree to the license terms. Type yes and press enter. When the terminal window closes, you will see a file named j2sdk-1.4.0.i386.rpm in the root directory. Clicking on this RPM file will start the Package Manager (see FAQ on Installing, upgrading and removing applications in Linux, page 55). Click on the Install button. This will install the JDK in the directory /usr/java/j2sdk1.4.0. 
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You can start Konqueror through K>Internet>Konqueror Web browser or by clicking on the globe icon on the K Panel (taskbar). To browse a site, enter its URL in the Location text field. The Location field is intelligent, similar to IE. It provides quick access to sites, which have been browsed before.

Change appearance



Go to Settings>Configure Konqueror>File Manager. You can change the appearance of the browser and set your homepage. File associations specify how the browser will identify and handle files on the Internet. Most are default and you’ll not need to fiddle with these. The third option lets you change the appearance of Web pages and how HTML, Java and Javascript are displayed. You can also set domain-specific policies (accept and reject) for Java and Javascript. The next tab allows you to set a default fallback search URL in conjunction with specified Web shortcuts (which are search URLs for search sites).

Handle cookies



Konqueror handles cookies, the way you want them to be. You can set them to be allowed, rejected or for you to be prompted for action. Here, the behavior can be domain specific. The Cookie Management option (Settings> Configure Konqueror>Cookies) in the same tab gives you the complete structure of the cookie on your machine including the complete content.

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Set up proxy



Konqueror supports HTML 4, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) 1 and 2, Javascript, Java and SSL (Secure Socket Layer) for encrypted transactions. This support may not be as advanced as in IE but suffices for surfing most websites. 

If you are behind a proxy server, go to Settings>Configure Konqueror>Proxies. Check the box Use proxy. Fill in the IP

address or name of your proxy server and its port. Click on the arrow icon to use the same proxy for accessing FTP sites.

You can specify an HTTP and FTP proxy in the Proxies option. 

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Using E-mail
KMail is an easy to use e-mail client, which is similar to Outlook Express. You can access it directly from your K Panel by clicking on its icon (seventh icon from the left). 



To configure you mail account in KMail, go to Settings and choose Configure. This opens up the configuration menu, which lets you create new accounts, change network settings, appearance etc. First you need to create a new identity for yourself. For this click on the Identity tab and give your details like name, organization, e-mail address, reply to email-address and if you want to, specify a signature file. A signature file contains text that is automatically added at the end of all your outgoing mail. 


Now click on Network. You need to first specify your SMTP server address and port number. Under Incoming mail, click on Add and choose POP3. Now give your account a name and specify your username, password and server address.


You can also choose to store your password in the configuration so you don’t have to enter it each time to check your mail. You can also enable interval mail checking, which will check your mail automatically after a specified amount of time. That’s it. You can use the same procedure to create additional accounts.


To check your mail, go to the File menu and select check mail.


Sachin Makhija 

Bookmark sites



The bookmark can be accessed from the Bookmarks menu. To bookmark a currently loaded site, click on Bookmarks>Add Bookmarks. To organize your bookmarks in categories, click on New folder. Enter a name, say Linux sites. Now whenever you want to bookmark a site related to Linux, click on Bookmarks>Linux Sites>Add bookmark. The site’s name gets added under Linux sites. Konqueror also provides access to bookmarked sites in Netscape (K>Internet> Netscape

Communiator).

You can access these through Bookmarks>Netscape Bookmarks. 

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Flash sites 



Konqueror can use Netscape plugins that include the Macromedia Flash plugin (version 4) to view Flash enabled sites.

However, you must install JDK (Java Development Kit) and enable Java in Konqueror to use the Flash

plugin.

Enable Java 



To view Java applets in Web pages, you must have a JDK installed (see box). Lauch the Konqueror Web browser and go to Settings>Configure Konqueror> Konqueror Browser>Java. In the Global Settings section, check the option Enable Java globally. In the section Java Runtime Settings, for the Path to java executable browse to the directory /usr/java/j2sdk1 .4.0/bin and select java. Developers may like to check the option Show Java Console for debugging Java applet errors.

Common tasks 



To find a word in a loaded page click on Edit>Find. To change to full-screen mode, select Window>Fullscreen Mode or use CTRL+SHIFT+F shortcut. To change back use the same shortcut or press the Fullscreen mode icon at the top. To change the font or font size of the shown pages, go to Settings>Configure Konqueror> Konqueror Browser> Appearance. Cookies related configuration can be accessed through Settings> Configure Konqueror>Cookies. To view the HTML source of a loaded page, right click and select View Document Source. You can enable or disable JavaScript and Java through JavaScript and Java tabs in Settings>Configure

Konqueror>Konqueror Browser.

Ashish Sharma and  Shekhar Govindarajan

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