Using WebRunner

WebRunner is getting increasingly usable. Interestingly, it is so much in contrast with modern trends. No multiple tabs, no icons, not even an address bar. However it is refreshingly performant and quite appealing, especially because it is based on XULRunner, which can give us a new and helpful technology.

Recently, it has also helped me in using Konqueror more. Wondering how? I prefer using Konqueror on KDE desktops because it is well integrated and performs much better than other browsers. And secondly it is ACID2 compliant, which might not be really important for many, but helps me a lot as a developer. Unfortunately many modern web sites do not work with it well. Not because Konqueror is lacking, but because the sites come up with non-standard code. It is more unfortunate that I have come to heavily depend on a couple of them. And this drove me to other browsers, like Epiphany. I use Firefox, but avoid it for browsing. So, what I do now is use WebRunner for those sites that do not play well with Konqueror. Specifically, Google Reader and GMail.

With the new version it is easier to use WebRunner to open a specific site. You can create a .webapp file, which is like a profile for a site, and just double-click on it to open it in WebRunner. But a command-line fan that I am, I find it more comfortable to use one-line shell scripts to invoke it. For example, I use a shell script called feeds with code webrunner -uri http://reader.google.com/ &. I use a similar script for gmail with webrunner -uri http://mail.google.com/ &. This has made my life easier, and helped me use Konqueror for other sites.

WebRunner works very well, I have not seen an increase in the memory consumption or the CPU usage. There is just one complaint, that on my Kubuntu machine, it keeps opening Firefox even if Konqueror has been set as the default browser. I am all set once I get to know how to fix that. I think WebRunner is very usable, give it a try.