For several months now I have been following the development of Otter from afar. Using Opera the last 16 years (since 3.51) I have still not found a new home and the number of pages Opera 12.16 has problems with is rising.
After changing from LMDE (where there is no qt5) to Debian Testing end of September I tried Otter but it crashed frequently. Week 51 I tried again and it is much more stable now.
First of all my compliments for having achieved what you did as a small team in short time. Impressive.
Saying this will motivate you (hopefully) but precise feedback might help better.
In terms of speed it seems to be noticeably faster than Opera, Qupzilla and Iceweasel (but it's difficult to compare as speed here is changing all the time).
But featurewise it is still behind, so here's my feature list that looks somewhat different from yours.
Must have (to leave Opera):
- mail client
- ad blocking/content blocking
- site specific settings (Cookies, JavaScript overrides, sound yes/no)
Nice to have (to feel comfortable):
- password manager
- customizable toolbars
- start page
- switch between tabs with mouse (right click and wheel with Opera)
Lesser importance (things I never use):
- spell checking
- form auto completion
- feeds reader
- BitTorrent
- instant messaging
- tabs grouping
- skins
So, go on and give us what the vikings were obviously not capable or willing to do :-)
Thanks for feedback. :-)
After changing from LMDE (where there is no qt5) to Debian Testing end of September I tried Otter but it crashed frequently. Week 51 I tried again and it is much more stable now.
All depends on Qt version,
QtWebKit in Qt 5.4 is finally stable (haven't seen crashes yet).
In terms of speed it seems to be noticeably faster than Opera, Qupzilla and Iceweasel (but it's difficult to compare as speed here is changing all the time).
To be honest,
QtWebKit is sloooow in any form, expect far better performance with
QtWebEngine.
- mail client
Yes, I know, as you can see by my User Agent. ;-)
- ad blocking/content blocking
- site specific settings (Cookies, JavaScript overrides, sound yes/no)
Already available, but no way to toggle sound in QtWebKit...
- password manager
Soon.
- customizable toolbars
In progress (for now just manual editing for navigation toolbar).
- start page
Sooner or later.
- switch between tabs with mouse (right click and wheel with Opera)
Still missing but easy to do.
- spell checking
- form auto completion
- feeds reader
- BitTorrent
- instant messaging
- tabs grouping
- skins
Planned, see TODO (https://github.com/Emdek/otter/blob/master/TODO).
- switch between tabs with mouse (right click and wheel with Opera)
Still missing but easy to do.
How easy is the switching order, btw? (i.e. most recent)
@Frenzie, not so hard by itself, we need to store time of last access per tab, which could be reused for one extra feature anyway.
But there are some additional complications (to avoid all possible issues to be expected from built-in behavior of QTabBar), we need to redo WindowsManager (preferably by replacing it by model describing entire session) which needs to be decoupled from TabBarWidget (which is also needed to properly finish customizable toolbars, so there could be no tab bar at all, not just hiding it) but we need custom tab bar to take advantage of such model. :-D
The above has to be done in next five months as it is one of the most important things for 1.0 (custom tab bar etc.).
We can have LRU switching earlier, but it may end up being out of sync with tab bar itself (noticeable at least when closing tab, as it may end up switching to wrong one).
- ad blocking/content blocking
- site specific settings (Cookies, JavaScript overrides, sound yes/no)
Already available, but no way to toggle sound in QtWebKit...
That's strange. I have neither.
There is no ad-blocking here. Or is it just the GUI still missing?
Cookie settings just offer enable/disable and third-party-settings. No possibility to (dis)activate cookies for specific sites.
JavaScript only offers two options, but no "allow right click" for example.
@py-thon, content blocking works, but UI is still rough and so far we don't have the same way to add rules as does classic Opera (but should be doable).
Missing bits for cookies will be done shortly after beta 4 (it's a bit too big change to be done before it).
By default we are allowing to hijack context menus, but most likely we will get option to disable that.
There is no ad-blocking here. Or is it just the GUI still missing?
Adblock is called content blocking like in Opera, but it works like adblock by selecting adblock filter. Here's how to add more filter files into Otter's adblock https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=357.msg29299#msg29299
Ok, I have understood that. The problem for me was caused by a small bug: "Tools" is not shown when using the menu button, only when using the menu bar.
Edit: Beta 4's menu button now shows "Tools" but tools do not contain content blocking (only with menu bar).
Edit again: One thing I forgot in the original post is the frequent pop up of SSL warnings which are not really helpful because they don't give enough information
"Es sind SSL-Fehler aufgetreten. Wollen Sie fortfahren?
The issuer certificate of a locally looked up certificate could not be found
The root CA certificate is not trusted for this purpose"
Sorry if this sounds as if I am only complaining. This is not my intention. And probably you already know about the SSL-thing but lack time to fix it.
Beta 4's menu button now shows "Tools" but...
There is no "Tools" showing in my menu button for beta 4.
@py-thon, we need proper certificate viewer, it's important task which doesn't have own ticket yet...
@treego, it's not shown using default configuration. Its layout cannot be considered final yet.
Adblock is called content blocking like in Opera, but it works like adblock by selecting adblock filter. Here's how to add more filter files into Otter's adblock
Thanks, once you've found it it works fine.