22 March, 2012

Fork me on GitHub


Christopher Wickert pointed me to web browser Qupzilla. Qupzilla mimics the Mozilla Firefox UI closely but is build on WebKit and Qt.

This project was started about a year ago by a Czech student named David Rosca. So you expect an incomplete browser. And you're wrong. Qupzilla has all the features you'd expect from a modern browser while being fast and stable.


Cool

What is cool about Qupzilla is that David does a lot of things right:
  • It has a pretty website. That's advertisement!
  • The site makes it easy to find the important stuff.
  • It is easy to contribute and that fact is advertised with the awesome "Fork me on GitHub" ribbon and the prominent 'contribute' button. GitHub is awesome but people have to find the repo!
  • Has good documentation. Both on how to contribute and how to use.
  • Communicates what is going on! It gets people engaged, makes them care. And thus more likely to contribute. One blog a month sounds like little but it's enough to keep some live in there.
  • Has an easy and pretty download page, using the Open Build Service for multi-distro support and since today using the OBS download integration.

Result: the GitHub repo mentions 14 contributors, showing a nice graph of the growth.


Razor-Qt in openSUSE?

On a different note, the package of Qupzilla has become part of the X11:QtDesktop project, where Petr Vanek and Eugene Pivnev are building Razor-Qt, the Qt based Desktop Environment. As devel project they're open to merge requests (github style, as OBS works that way too) or of course new team members. And they are aiming to Factory and thus openSUSE 12.2 inclusion soon!

Go to conferences!

As Petr, Eugene and David are all Czech FOSS developers I'd like to remind them that there are two conferences taking place within a reasonable distance of their beloved country: openSUSE Conference will take place in October in Prague this year and KDE's Akademy conference will happen from 30th June to the 6th of July 2012 in Tallinn, Estonia. KDE, as biggest community of Qt users, and openSUSE, as most important KDE distribution, would both welcome you very much! I can guarantee that as I'm involved with both conferences.

I can also guarantee lots of fun and interesting people at both conferences!

8 comments:

  1. btw it was pointed out to me on IRC that the Czech republic, being in the middle of Europe, is close to ALL conferences. And that Talin isn't exactly close compared to a conf in Prague. I humbly appologize but still suggest to go there :D

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  2. wow. Qupzilla seems to be my new favorite browser... it's super fast, and cupzilla hasn't crashed yet (Rekonq does it a lot unfortunatally). Finally a good qt- webbrowser... Thank you Jos :)

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  3. Also if you're looking for a nice conference in Czech Rep. - 21st of April there will be Openmobility Conference in Prague - for all open source and mobile platforms fans :) http://www.openmobility.cz/

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  4. I maintain qupzilla pacakges for openSUSE in KDE:Extra. Maybe it's a good time to talk with X11:QtDesktop folks to merge package and use it as devel for Factory ;)

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    1. Try, I've found out that David is an extremely nice and responsive dude. He hangs out on IRC at #qupzilla on freenode and is there as "nowrep".

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    2. X11:QtDesktop forks qupzilla from home:nowrep. Mainly because we use OBS as a platform for suse (of course) and for fedora s well. That's main reason why it's "separated" from main OBS repos.

      But I have some signs that fedora maintainers want to handle these packages on their own so maybe I'll return back to suse only. Who knows.

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  5. Well, as all current opensource webkit browsers it seems to have troubles with js postback functions to other windows - so does QupZilla. May be a webkit bug though (i have this problem on one site which opens a new window for login and posting back the form data to the main site) :-).

    It's been my favourite browser (on Linux and Windows) for a longer time now, and I can only recommend it.

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  6. "Qupzilla mimics the Mozilla Firefox UI" I see more Opera than Firefox and i think that David tried to take some nice parts from the polished looks of Opera suite like the simple way you add favorites and bookmarks the speed dial with the interchangeable background and more.
    "David does a lot of things right" Yes he does he is also cool and friendly Geek and that helps a lot collaborations.

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