In this article I am going to show you a few tips and tricks that you can apply to the Konqueror web browser to make your Konqueror (and KDE) experience even more flexible and powerful than it already is.

KIO Slaves

KDE Input/Output slaves allows Konqueror to take advantage of external applications making it far more usable. Depending on what kio_slave you want to use the input for Konqueror will be different. Let’s take a look at some of the more useful slaves.

fish://

If you start an address with fish:// you are telling Konqueror to make use of the ssh protocol. With this you can connect to a remote ssh server and even copy/paste to that server from within Konqueror. To do this you would enter an address like:

fish://USERNAME@ADDRESS

Where USERNAME is an actual username on the remote machine and ADDRESS is the actual address of the remote machine. You will be prompted for a password, unless you already have this connection set up for passwordless secure shell connections (see “Five handy secure shell tips and tricks“).

imaps://USER@PASSWORD@ADDRESS:PORT

Where:

• USER is the actual user name.
• PASSWORD is the users password.
• ADDRESS is the address of the imap server.
• PORT is the port used for the imap server.

Quick search

If you enter gg: linux in the Konqueror address bar you will get a page with the Google results of the string “linux”. Konqueror has a lot of pre-configured quick search shortcuts like this. For example:

• gg – Google
• fm – Freshmeat
• froogle – Froogle
• msdn – Microsoft Developer Network
• odp – Open Dictionary
• tr – Technorati
• wp – Wikipedia

You can also create your own by issuing the command kcmshell4 ebrowsing in either the run dialog or a terminal window. In the new window click the New button and then fill out the following information:

• Search Provider Name: Give your shortcut a name.
• Search URI: The URI the site you are adding uses.
• URI Shortcuts: Comma delineated list of shortcuts.

So let’s say I want to create a short cut for searching amazon.com. To do that I would enter the following information:

• Name: Amazon
• URI: http://www.amazon.com/s?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=\{@}
• URI Shorcuts: az,amazon

So now if I want to do a search for the string “Linux” on amazon.com I would just enter:

az: Linux

In the address bar.

Split views

Figure 1

Not only can Konqueror do tabs, it can do split windows. Say you want to do some comparing of windows, or just want to be able to see more than one window at a time. With Konqueror you can split the view either horizontally or vertically by going to the Windows menu and selecting either Horizontal or Vertical and you can have two windows open at once for simple viewing. NOTE: Whichever window has the focus is the window that the address bar will effect. In other words, if you want to change the page on the right pane, click on the right pane and then enter the url in the address bar. If you want to close a pane <Ctrl><Shift>R will close the active window.

Final thoughts

Konqueror is a very powerful, flexible tool that can be extended well beyond its intentions. Have you found a cool trick that applies to Konqueror as either a web browser or file manager? If so, share it with your fellow Ghacks readers.

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One of the most under-appreciated aspects of Thunar is the ability to create custom actions. A custom action is a user-configure item that interacts with Thunar plugins so you can quickly take action on files within a directory. Say, for instance, you want to quickly print a file. Instead of having to open that file in the dedicated application, you simple right click a file and you will see a newly created Print File custom action that I am going to show you how to create.

Creating custom actions for Thunar will really make this file manager useful. Depending on how resourceful you are, you could create some really handy actions. Some of the more useful actions you can create are:

• Print a file.
• Finding files in current folder. NOTE: For this action you will need the gnome-search-tool installed.
• Manipulating archives.
• Playing audio files.
• Burning iso CDs from file.
• Set as background.

And so much more.

So now let’s take a look at how to create customized actions.

Figure 1

The first thing you need to do is open up Thunar. This will depend upon the window manager/desktop you are using. If you can’t figure out how to open up your file manager (it should be obvious) you can always open up a terminal window and issue the command thunar. When Thunar opens (see Figure 1) click on the Edit menu to reveal the Configure Custom Actions entry. Click on that entry to open the Custom Actions window.

Figure 2

By default you will most likely only see one action included, Open Terminal Here. As you can see, in Figure 2, I have two other custom actions created: Print File and Set As Background.

First let’s create the Print File action. Click on the “+” symbol to open the Add Action window (see Figure 3).

For the most part the configurations for the new action should be obvious. In the case of the Print File action we will be using the “lp” command in order to make this happen.

Figure 3

For the custom actions you can use anything for the Name and description. Remember, though, the Name will be what appears in the Right Click menu so you will want to keep that obvious and to the point.

Also notice the “%f” in the command line. As you can see the New (or edit) action window includes a listing of what each of these switches does.  This switch is crucial to the action, because without it the customized action will have no idea what file it is working on.

If you click on the Icon button a window will open with quite a few icons to choose from. If you don’t find what you are looking for in the window that opens, click the “Select Icon From” drop down and switch to a different listing. You should be able to find a suitable icon for your action.

Before you click OK click on the Appearance Condition tab. In this tab you have to select the file types which this action applies to. Obviously you will want to select Text Files. You could also select Image Files to print images as well.

Figure 4

After you fill out the necessary information, click OK and your action is complete. Now, navigate to a file within Thunar you want to print, right click the file, and behold the new menu entry “Print File” (see Figure 4).

Now let’s create an action that will make setting a background quick and painless. This will work for Window managers like Window Maker, Fluxbox, etc. This action requires the fbsetbg command. You will create this action similarly to the Print File command. In the “command” field you will enter:

fbsetbg %f

You will also want to select only Image Files from the Appearance Conditions tab. Click OK when you have completed this action. Now when you right click on any image within Thunar you will see an entry similar to what you configured for the Name of the set background action. In my case I named the action “Set As Background”. So when I right click an image in Thunar I see “Set As Background” listed. By clicking that the desktop wallpaper instantly changes to the image desired.

Final thoughts

The Thunar file manager is an outstanding entry in the file manager space. It is fast, reliable, user-friendly, and (with the help of custom actions) customizable. See what types of custom actions you can come up with. If you have a really handy one, share it with your fellow ghacks readers.

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ScanDir will process the user request and display the results in four different ways. The first view lists all file paths, names, sizes and dates. A click on a file allows the execution of the file right away. The other three views provide various information such as statistics.

The software comes with file operation tools like copy, merge or purge. It is nowhere near as comfortable as working with a file manager but it works surprisingly after some time of training.

Bookmarks can be set to be able to quickly navigate between different directories. One of the main uses of ScanDir is the ability to export and print the results. It is possible to select the information that are included in the export. A complete export will basically contain all information that have been displayed to the user prior to starting the export function.

ScanDir is a portable software for the Windows operating system that provides access to extensive search operations and export options that might be interesting for users who regularly process such data.

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A start page can be configured to contain any number of selected folders of local hard drives and other devices. Firefox tries to discover the available devices automatically at first start but all of them can be edited or removed from the list. Each device is listed with a system path, an alias and other information like type.

The user can then browse those folders and devices normally by clicking on them. The functionality is basically the same than that of Windows Explorer. Several file types can be previewed by hoovering the mouse over them. Most multimedia files can be played right in the browser

Windows can be split and a folder structure can be displayed in the left sidebar as well. I would say that it is a sophisticated file manager, great for everyone who needs something like this in Firefox. I see it more as a nice proof of concept of what can be done with Firefox add-ons.

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The main features that make it stand out are tabbed browsing, synchronization and the duplicate finder. Tabbed browsing is definitely the easiest to explain. Two panes are by default displayed like in any other file manager. If I wanted to open another local or remote directory I would have to open a new WinSCP instance. Capivara makes use of tabs to avoid that several instances of the same application have to be opened.

A right-click on a tab opens a menu with the option to add another tab to that pane which can connect to local or remote servers. Synchronization is the next feature. As I said earlier this is also supported by WinSCP and many other clients but Capivara supports four different modes including SHA-1 and MD5 sync.

Before files are copied and deleted they are shown in a preview pane which displays all file operations. The last feature is the duplicate finder. It compares the files and folders that reside in two root directories giving the user the options to move or delete duplicate files.

Capivara has some shortcomings though. The local file system will only be displayed if the user presses the connect button and selects it from the menu. That’s a bit complicated in my opinion. The right-click menu is not working everywhere. A user has to press a button to create a new directory while most are probably used to right-click the mouse to do so.

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I’m not a huge fan of file managers because I can’t see a reason to use them these days but I know that some, including Tobey, use them daily. So, what can you do with Frigate3 ? The main purpose is to manage files effectively of course which includes queuing file operations, build in zip support, file viewers, ftp, ftps and sftp support, network support, size manager, advanced search, mp3 tagger and build in syntax highligher.

Frigate3 has a lot of features which is the major difference to my setup. I tend to use different applications for my needs and the advantage of Frigate3, and any other file manager, is that you only need to install one software to increase the functionality of your Windows operating system.

I suppose Tobey will leave a comment about the File Manager when he reads the article and it’s probably better that he does, because he knows the program way better. I guess it’s worth a look if you are looking for a file manager or use file managers.

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Free commander offers some additional features that make it a valuable tool for every windows user. It is able to check and synchronise files and folders, wipe files, calculate folder sizes, split and filter files and much more. It has a built in file viewer and can read zip, cab and rar files as well as a multitude of other files.

A great feature is that it can be run not only from hard drive but also from usb stick, CD or floppy disks because it does not install itself. Just run it from the location that you’ve chosen and everything will work out fine.

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