💾 Archived View for woodpeckersnest.space › ~schapps › journal › 2024-12-05-falkon-introduction.gmi captured on 2024-12-17 at 09:47:55. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

View Raw

More Information

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

An Introduction To Falkon

Browse the internet as if it is 1995.

Greetings!

I would want to introduce you to an internet browser called Falkon (formerly known as Qupzilla), which I utilize as my exclusive HTML browser for over 7 years.

Because I use Liferea RSS Reader to receive information and updates, I rarely use internet browsers, yet when I do have to "browse" HTML pages, I utilize Falkon for that task.

About

Falkon was initially called Qupzilla and it was created by Mr. David Rosca from the Czech Republic. Today, Falkon is maintained by Mr. David Rosca and Mr. Juraj Oravec.

Falkon was started as an academic project and has soon became a desktop software, which will soon be available on Linux mobile devices too.

Features

Falkon offers a variaty of features, extensions, integration with KDE and customizations; amongst its extensions are AdBlock for blocking of advertisements, Readability for improved layout of articles, Vertical Tabs for improved management of tabs, and even Greasemonkey to install your own custom extensions, without being worried of major and inconsiderable API changes or various of arbitrary commercial regulations of organizations that imposter as benevolent organizations.

Extensions

All of of the official extensions that are provided by the Falkon project are written in C++ and QML, which means that they perform significantly better than their counterparts that are coded in ECMAScript (commonly known as JavaScript).

In addition, Falkon also provides an interface to Python, by incorporating PySide, which makes it possible to code extensions with the Python Computer Language.

Considerations

You might want to consider to install Falkon and replace any other browser in favour of Falkon, for the following reasons:

Efficient

Falkon is lean in both, storing of its data and consumption of memory (i.e. RAM).

Storage of data is smaller by times 2.5 in comparison to its counterparts.

Consumption of memory is smaller by times 4 or 8 in comparison to its counterparts.

Interface

The interface of Falkon is simple, and it can be customized and extended with a few clicks.

Falkon also has a status bar which is crucial for various of status indicators and access extensions.

Plugin System

The plugin system of Falkon allows to customize Falkon in a similar fashion to, and even better than, the XUL toolkit which was utilized for some Gecko based browsers, before the gimped "WebExtension" system which is even dwarfed against Greasemonkey.

The plugin system of Falkon allows to extend its protocols (e.g. Gemini, Gopher and XMPP).

The plugin system of Falkon allows to easily integrate with desktop software and software modules and libraries without any arbitrary restrictions.

Python Projects

You can incorporate buku as a bookmark management system.

jarun/buku

You can incorporate yt-dlp-gui into Falkon with a little amount of modifications in order to adopt yt-dlp-gui as a plugin for Falkon.

dsymbol/yt-dlp-gui

There are many other software that you can be integrated with Falkon with a minimal effort.

Savvy

Falkon is becoming more and more prevalent amongst business, enterprise, and experts, it was ported to the Haiku operating system, and is also the browser of choice on various of BSD and Linux operating systems, commercial and private as one, some of which ares Artix, Chakra, helloSystem, KaOS, KDE Neon, Kubuntu, Manjaro, openSUSE, PCLinuxOS, SparkyLinux and Tuxedo OS.

Future

These are some of the future predictions to Falkon.

Mobile

Provided that an interface for mobile be provided, Falkon will be available on devices that run Kupfer, Mobian, postmarketOS, UBports.

Synchronization

A session (bookmarks, history and tabs) synchronization system based on XMPP.

XMPP For Browsers

BlockMatrix

There is an important extension which is similar to uMatrix and is not yet done.

DefaultUser/falkon

Conclusion

If you are interested at a browser which respects your free will, you might want to consider Falkon.

You are also encouraged to contribute to the project Falkon by helping to improve it, creating new extensions or help to translate it to your own language.

The best way that you can help, is to use Falkon and report of issues.

Ciao,

Schimon