The first thing I have to do when I log into KDE is move Firefox windows to the activities they ought to be in. One to Programming, another to Writing, Administration, Internet, etcetera. KDE deserves a browser that takes advantage of activities and other features of the Plasma Desktop.
Activity awareness
The browser would have a prominent button that creates an association between a domain and an activity. For example when viewing http://bugs.kde.org I can choose to always view the site on my programming activity. Subsequently if I open a link to that site in KMail (on Communication) the desktop would automatically switch to the Programming desktop and open the link in a window there.
Additionally there should be a dialogue providing fine grained control over this feature and a means to easily put web bookmarks on activity desktops. Perhaps tabs/URLs could be dragged onto the desktop or a quick-launch style plasmoid?
Other KDE Integrations
Is it possible to add website accounts into Akonadi? Many forums run PHP Bulletin Board so they could all be addressed with one module. Other major websites such as Reddit and StackOverflow would also be worth creating modules for.
Additionally KDE provides standard locations for different kinds of file such as image and video which the likes of FireFox and Google Chrome completely ignore. Saving to these different paths would be a trivial change that makes saving documents that little bit more pleasant.
Finally, I don’t know how many people want this but a VIM emulation mode akin to Vimperator for FireFox is what my personal decision to use any browser comes down to.
I would like to have a completely separate bookmark application inasmuch as the keyring stores the password outside the browser.
I would like the bookmark app to be able to open links and any browser I select and also maybe even encrypt and store screenshot crops of pages, text, image files, etc… that would be badass.
After all a URL is a Universal Resource Link, basically just a remote filesystem link, but still just a filesystem resource.
I’m currently running Opera on KDE (built into Arch) and it runs SO MUCH BETTER than any other browser. I do agree though that having an integration so that you could launch an Application, and automatically switch to another Activity would be amazing. I want to be able to just launch “Atom” or “Light Browser” and have it auto swap to the activity it’s set to run in. Having a browser that also taps into the Online Accounts would be awesome as well, so that you can add your accounts (Akondi and others) into the panel and the browser would automatically authenticate with pages that use that type of account, using the online account section. You could then revoke access to certain websites / systems as you wish.
Please, no. No new browser. There are enough Midori/Epiphany/? out there. Make an extension for activity integration or use ICE to have a different browser profile for each of them.
I’m not actually going to do it. I just wanted to get some thoughts on how existing KDE features could be better used out of my system.