Frequent Answers and Questions!

This page serves as both an About and FAQ section for TKExplorer- outlining design, purpose, and limitations.

💡 What is the purpose of TKExplorer?

TKExplorer is an experiment in a minimalist functioning browser through Python and open libraries. It also helped teach me the practical needs in distributing an open-source project, and show what is possible with similar technologies, such as the WebDevKit toolkit.

🧪 Is TKExplorer comparable to the Lynx text web browser?

Mostly not. Lynx is intended for serious use by a niche crowd, supporting downloads and other necessary features for typical browsing, and is continually supported. TKExplorer supports slightly more graphics (other than coloration) by happenstance of what TKE’s Python libraries enabled. The main similarity is largely their simplicity. Under the hood, Lynx is standard C, while TKE is Python.

🔧 Why does Python need to be installed as a Windows App?

Windows 11 instantly recognizes the installation and runs TKExplorer through it. Using self-installed versions of Python is possible, but given the program is more so a proof-of-concept and a curiosity, optimizing the version/using a custom install is not worth the effort.

❓ Why is TKExplorer not compatible with Linux or MacOS?

Technically, there is no reason the program shouldn’t be able to be ran on these platforms. I simply chose not to support it, as it easily could double my total development time to support both. I would rather release a new, more secure browser.

❗ Why make a new browser instead of building upon TKExplorer?

First and foremost, TKExplorer has no way for me to implement real security features. It is somewhat a set of libraries that execute to return and display a result- at best I would have to fundamentally overhaul what the libraries and TKinter is doing in the first place. Even then, TKExplorer is not the same, and I am stuck with the same limitations. In short, starting from scratch makes the most sense, and thus 2.0.0 is the final official release of TKExplorer.