Submitted by “Epiphany is the web browser for the GNOME desktop. Its goal is to be simple and easy to use. Epiphany ties together many GNOME components in order to let you focus on the Web content, instead of the browser application.” This article starts out with a little history about the Epiphany browser and goes on to talk about the advantages of this light-weight browser.
one reason to move to Linux. It is a linux KMeleon.
I’ll be happy to take another look at Epiphany when the UI looks more slick like Chrome (more minimal) or at least Firefox/Opera – the buttons in Epiphany now remind me of Netscape 4 days, and that’s just bad memories for this web developer.
On the inside, I’d love to see the nimble underlying components of Chrome (WebKit primarily) moved into this native shell. That makes more sense to me than a full on port of Chrome – which seems pretty specifically designed around MS Windows features and shortcomings. Competition is good (despite the incessant whining of many web developers). Seriously, the more cutting edge browsers there are, the more out of touch and out of date IE looks (and more likely MS is to update it). I don’t care if it’s 30 browsers, I’m happy about them all.
Select a different theme.
This is being done. In six months, when Gnome 2.26 comes out, WebKit will be *the* supported rendering engine, and then the fun can really start. Gecko has really tied the devs hands in a lot of ways. WebKit gives them much more flexibility. Mozilla only ever really considers FF when making design decisions.
I’m running from webkit and epiphany trunk, which is much further along than what is in epiphany-webkit for Gnome 2.24.
To the person who asked if you can run side by side, the answer is yes. You end up with epiphany-browser and epiphany-webkit binaries.
Why does Epiphany-WebKit need to be delayed until 2.26? WebKit is ready (see Chrome), it is ready on Linux too (Konqueror, etc). I’d very much love to see it in 2.24… Especially because Mozilla and Firefox development is dying as a result of Google entering the browser wars (and hiring away talent, etc).
Webkit is ready, but the interface integration is not. Cookies and password management are a work in progress. Adblock is not working yet. Proxies are not working yet. And details like “copy link location”. It looks like a reasonable amount to get nailed down in 6 months though. I believe that a lot of the work is a result of getting gecko’s tendrils out of the existing code.
I’m as anxious as you are. And I’m sure the devs are even more so.
Edited 2008-09-26 17:38 UTC
How much more slicker do you want it to be??
http://fopref.meinungsverstaerker.de/div/epiphany.png
And btw., Epiphany already comes with a Webkit backend which can be enabled at compile time.
They even want to completely abandon Gecko for Webkit.
I like Epiphany, because it:
– fits well into the desktop
– has a fast/responding GUI
– has a simple, uncluttered layout
– has a nice History window
– does most of the things they way I want them to be done
Problems I have with Epiphany:
– doesn’t save the open session, therefor I never close it but instead kill it
– crashes quite often lately (since gecko-1.9) on my system (but saves & recovers session every time)
– sometimes doesn’t want to open images on the web itself but instead wants to load them in a gnomeviewing application
Edited 2008-09-25 22:14 UTC
I see Iceweasel and Epiphany crash frequently on Debian Sid, ever since the change to Gecko-1.9.
Well, Debian Sid is, after all, the unstable branch of Debian.
http://www.debian.org/releases/unstable/
If Debian Sid is crashing, then I guess that is more or less what you would expect … seeing that you are running the unstable branch.
File a bug report and move on.
If you actually want to get work done done, use Etch or Lenny.
http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/
There’s already webkit versions available.
chrome chrome chrome chrome chrome chrome chrome.
ergo..
epiphany.
I know its kind of OT, but good god… Simple problem, very visible, priority high, severity major, and it still takes 7 years to fix.
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=56070
Edited 2008-09-25 20:01 UTC
What botters me about Epiphany is that it doesn’t save the url history in the address bar. A drop down menu like the others browsers would help a lot.
Yes it does, and has for as long as I’ve been using it, which is quite a while.
Well yeah, but you have to type something to get text completition, I you only want to use your mouse then you can’t.
Edited 2008-09-26 00:18 UTC
Click the “Open History” button. If you don’t like the placement you can move it down next to the address bar where FF puts theirs.
On a related subject, Epiphany’s bookmarks handling is vastly superior to FF’s.
My personal gripe is that I can’t doubleclick on the tab bar to open a new tab.
Are there any gestures? If so, and if the first was fixed I’d be happy to use this over firefox, particularly with webkit.
Since FF 3 I’m not using Epiphany anymore (one of the reasons is tab handling). While I was, I’ve written a plugin to enable opening a tab with a double click. The links (Sorry, both in Hebrew) are here:
http://whatsup.org.il/article/6040 (updated version)
http://whatsup.org.il/article/5703
You might want to use google translate for those (they’ve added Hebrew translation).
Direct download:
http://whatsup.org.il/meir/newtab_dblclick_0.2.tar.gz
Note one annoying bug:
Double clicks not just empty space on the tab bar (e.g: already open tabs, scroll buttons etc) opens a new tab.
I’ll have to try it out when I connect my Xubuntu box to the Internet again. Is there some way you can install both the Webkit and the Gecko versions and switch back and forth on the fly?
It’s hard to see the point of Epiphany. It strikes me as a leftover from the days when world + wife felt that they had to have a browser in their suite, and from when Gnome was obsessed with the “Users will do things simply and how we tell them” approach. OK, on low-power machines I can see a point, but then the excellent Opera might do just as well. On normal desktops, if you have Firefox there seems little point in bothering with Epiphany. Firefox can do so much more than Epiphany when you factor in extensions and on a modern dual-processor machine Firefox should be plenty fast enough. If it isn’t, then there is always Opera waiting in the wings. And then there Konqueror, among other choices.
Firefox’s Gnome integration is poor, and Mozilla doesn’t really care. It’s 2008 and while “Use image as background” has been there for ages… it hasn’t actually worked for ages. And even on machines with reasonable memory, FF3 is a relative memory hog in comparison. The upcoming Epiphany 2.26 with webkit is lighter still. And *very* noticeably faster than FF3. In six months, there will be no reason to bother with FF under Gnome anymore.
So Epiphany will be able to use Firefox extensions, is that what you’re saying? Cos if so, that’s good news. And if not, you’re talking bollocks because extensions are one of the main reasons Firefox is so popular. Furthermore, I suspect that talk of “Gnome integration” is overrated. Opera isn’t known for Gnome integration either, but no one complains about that. This isn’t about worshipping at the cult of Gnome but about assessing the real merits of a web browser. My original point – that Epiphany is largely reinventing a wheel that doesn’t need to be reinvented – is one of the curses of Linux.
I know it may come as a shock to you, but Epiphany does everything I want from a web-browser, including ad-blocking.
Before I moved 60 users on my largest XDMCP server from Firefox to Epiphany, I looked to see who had FF extensions installed. It was only a couple of people that had one installed. One of them was to give a weather forcast, and I can’t remember what the other one was.
The problem with hobnobbing around technically oriented forums like OSNews is that it gives one a very skewed perception of what “most people” need and want.
I like the idea of a Gnome browser, but I never used it because it can’t use Firefox’s extensions, for which there are hundreds.
It would be neat if there was a connector to use Firefox’s extensions.
I’ve never really gotten into firefox extensions too much. My needs are basic, and when I do have them, I barely use the extension. For me it’s a good thing since I can be very flexible with browsers. As long as it renders well, I’m happy.
Epiphany’s so light (in features) it doesn’t even have keyboard shortcut’s? Once gave it a go, but very quickly got frustrated, because I couldn’t even find a key combination to access the freakin’ address bar. F6, F8 Alt+D don’t work although they are de facto shortcuts to do this.
Epiphany’s so light (in features) it doesn’t even have keyboard shortcut’s? Once gave it a go, but very quickly got frustrated, because I couldn’t even find a key combination to access the freakin’ address bar. F6, F8 Alt+D don’t work although they are de facto shortcuts to do this.
Umm…All the browsers I’ve used have the key combo of ctrl+l or applekey+l. IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Epiphany, Galeon… You’re trying the wrong shortcut.
You could have easily figured out the shortcut by quickly looking at the menu. There is no need to support half a dozen legacy shortcuts.
*This* is what’s wrong with GNOME. Obviously there *IS* a need to support these legacy shortcuts–you just replied to the user who uses them. *He* has a need for them so there *is* a need to support them.
I know you’ll disagree, but you wont like the “make it configurable” choice either, I’m guessing. So where does this leave the original poster? Not using the software that doesn’t work for him.
I think I looked through the menus. I even tried pressing every F-key and some combinations I thought might work. (Never cared enough to access the manual.)
I don’t care if Alt+D or F6 is considered legacy, they are much more intelligent than some random Ctrl+L, which supposedly isn’t “legacy” then.
I can do Alt+D without moving my (left) hand a bit. I can do F6 with just one finger. Ctrl+L is something I need to move my hand off the mouse for. Plus the fact I’ve never before heard of that particular shortcut.
Edited 2008-09-30 08:52 UTC
It’s in the File menu as Open Location. Ctrl L should be quite logical for “Location”, but I can understand that you would like to have a shortcut that can be used with the left hand alone (personally I don’t really see the point, as I have both hands on the keys anyway when I want to type a location, and I find this more convenient than holding the Alt key).
Despite the breezy and up-beat tone of this article it fails to mention an important point: Epiphany is useless junk.
At one time Galeon was better than Mozilla at some things, but since Phoenix this has largely gone away. Epiphany was never and is not better than Firefox in any way, except lower memory usage. They achieve this by sacrificing everything.
You might as well use Kazehakase, another GTK based browser. It’s better in some ways, worse in some ways but the same in every important respect: It’s not a good browser, not as good as Firefox, except in that it uses less RAM. Big deal.
The only reason Epiphany exists (and *certainly* the only reason it gets this kind of fanboy writeup) is because GNOME devs are usability and UI bigots. They have their One True way of doing things and anything that operates outside of or slightly deviates from The Way is abhorrent and must be replaced by something that conforms. Firefox is like this: It isn’t GNOMEy enough, its buttons are sometimes not all HIGgy, its configuration is not limited to just the useless settings that J. Random Dumbass will occasionally change, but which have no useful effect.
Nothing to see here, move along.