KHTML for Windows

NOTE: There is now an easier way to set up KHTML on Windows.

Today there no browser using the KTHML rendering engine for Windows. Why would you care? I will tell you.

The KHTML engine is used for two major browsers on their OS. Konqueror on Linux and Safari on Macintosh. So if you are on Windows and want to develop web sites the look OK on those platforms you might want to have a look how your website would look like in an KTHML based browser.

So how do you do then, there are few alternatives.

1. Install a Linux distribution to run Konqueror 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5
2. Buy a Macintosh to run Safari.
3. Run a Linux from an CD (live CD) to run Konqueror 1, 2 or 3
4. Install PearPC / Mac OSX to run Safari
5. Install Cygwin / KDE to run Konqueror

Installing a real Linux OS you need another computer / partition / disc to install on. Installing Linux is not really complicated but can be too much just for this task and you might not have another computer / partition / disc to spare for this task.

Buying an Macintosh might no possible for most people as they are not really too cheap. With the new mini Mac they are on the right track.

Running a live CD is really easy, just download the ISO file and burn it on a CD. Reboot the computer with the CD in the CD player and the Linux system will boot by itself from the CD. Very easy but you need to reboot the computer to try out your site on Konqueror. If you need to change something you need to learn some Linux programs or you need to reboot into Windows again.

Installing PearPC is almost like the process of installing Cygwin and KDE. The thing is that you need an Mac OS X ISO file, which of course cost money.

I will in this article describe the last one, install Cygwin / KDE. Why you may ask? It is free and you can start it directly from your desktop.

Installing Cygwin

First go to Cygwin’s site and download their online installer. It is small exe file, the rest will be downloaded by the installer itself.

1. Start the installer.
2. Click Next. (img)
3. Choose Install from Internet, next. (img)
4. Choose root directory, keep it as it is, click next. (img)
5. Choose local package directory, should be the desktop as default, click next. (img)
6. Choose connection. If you are behind a firewall, change the settings, click next. (http://jedisthlm.com/wp-content/kde/install5.gif)
7. Choose location, take one that is close to you click next. (img)
8. Choose packages. The base files for Cygwin are already picked as default. (img) You should only add on more package so you can read and write text files like Notepad. Scroll down a bit to Editors and click it. It folds out and then click (on the Skip word) the one called Nano. When done click next. (img)
9. The files are now downloaded from Internet and installed. (img)
10. When done click the finish button. (img)
11. To see that the installation works, click the shortcut that was made on the desktop. (img)
12. A console window is opened, showing some text, nothing to care about. (img)
13. Close the console window.

Installing KDE

1. Start the online installer once more.
2. Click next
3. Click next (install from Internet)
4. Click next (local package directory)
5. Click next (connection)
6. Choose location, now add this to the User URL http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/install. Click add. Please be aware that there is no spaces after the URL.
7. Choose packages, scroll down to the KDE-3 -base part. Click to unfold, check the three packages. Unfold the KDE-3-i18n package and choose specific language packages that works best for you. When done, click next.
8. The KDE files are now downloaded and installed.
9. When done, click finish.

Post installation

1. Start the Cygwin console window again.
2. Write: “rebaseall -v”. (img)
3. To start the KDE desktop write: “startx &”.
4. There should start to run a lot of text in the console window, after a while a new window will be opened. If you have an person firewall installed you will get a few warnings (XWin, kcminit, kdeinit and kdesktop) (img), that is ok, just let them through your firewall
5. As this is an emulation it takes a while for the desktop to start, after the welcome screen and an wizard choosing language etc. you will be presented with the KDE desktop.
6. To start Konqueror click the 6th icon in the bottom list (the one with the globe). Go to the web address of you choice, voila.

Notes

1. The installation do no have to many fonts installed as default.
2. The font is not anti-aliased, if I run KDE on Red Hat for example, the fonts do look better.
3. I noted that PNG images did not work, they work fine in a real Linux installation.
4. I did have some problems when downloading the KDE packages, mostly the KDE-3-i18n package. I had to try a few times before I got it downloaded, when this appended I got an error message. I just hit the retry button until it worked.

Reference

1. KDE for Cygwin site
2. KDE-Cygwin install instructions
3. How to Install Cygwin and the KDE desktop on top of it
4. Apple Webcore
5. GTK+ Webcore

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External links

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 25th, 2005 at 5:55 pm and are tagged with: how-to, KHTML, Windows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Listen to this post Digg this post at del.icio.us, Technorati, Digg, Slashdot. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.