Submitted by Epiphany is a web browser for the GNOME desktop that aims to be simple and easy-to-use. FootNotes, a GNOME news site, has posted the Epiphany: The Web through the eyes of GNOME article.
Epiphany: The Web Through the Eyes of GNOME
About The Author
Adam Scheinberg
Technology Executive • Web Developer • Father • Foodie • Music Snob • OS enthusiast
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66 Comments
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2005-07-21 1:44 am
2005-07-20 7:50 pm
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2005-07-20 7:44 pm
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2005-07-21 12:10 pm
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2005-07-21 11:20 am
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2005-07-20 8:48 pm
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2005-07-20 8:48 pm
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2005-07-20 9:46 pm
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2005-07-20 10:28 pm
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2005-07-20 10:28 pm
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2005-07-20 10:31 pm
iwbcman
is the breadth and depth of extensions available for Firefox. In terms of strategies for winning over users this is the single biggest weakness of epiphany.
I have used epiphany off and on for a couple of years and it has definitely improved over time. There is also much to like about epiphany- it’s speed, it’s simplicity.
But customizability, when it comes to browsers, is something for which there is palpable demand. Streamlining and simplifying the user interface of epiphany serves first and foremost the goal of producing bugfree maintainable code- a quite laudable goal.
This goal is probably the main driving force behind GNOME 2.x in general- rather than having umpteen options most of which contain small bugs which only appear when used in the myriad of possible combination , GNOME has decided to radically reduce bugs (features). As a whole I thoroughly embrace this approach to programming and it has on balance led to a greatly improved GNOME experience. But browsers are a different story.
The moment one talks to someone about firefox the first thing they mention are all the reat plugins- it is precisely this type of individual customization which makes Firefox, beyond it’s mere utitlity as a browser, so appealing. And although epiphany has an extension api, now with python scripting, up till now nada has occurred in the way of mentionable plugin development- and I honestly don’t see this changing.
I wish epiphany, as a project, the best of luck, but I sorely wish they could either find a way of making writing extensions as easy as it is for Firefox(apparently easy due to the sheer numbers of plugins), or to find a way to integrate Firefox plugins natively-which is probably impossible.
And if epiphany steals my cursor again when I try to type in a URL I will bad mouth the coders from now until enternity 
2005-07-21 12:19 am
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2005-07-21 12:50 am
Daniel Borgmann
These Epiphany discussions (I dare to use this term ) are always very repetitive, so:
– “Galeon Fork”
It is basically nonsense to speak of a fork. Marco Pesenti Gritti is the original author of Galeon. At some point he simply had enough of the flamewars but didn’t want to force his views on the community, so he stepped back as the maintainer of Galeon. He then started to work on Epiphany, which was basically Galeon as Marco envisioned it to be. Considering all the work Marco put into Galeon and Epiphany, you can hardly fault him for following his own vision. Of course some users could never understand why the world doesn’t resolve around them and how someone could just go ahead and code something different.
– “Winning Users”
It is worth mentioning that Epiphany is not trying to “win” users as much as Firefox or other third party browsers do. Its primary purpose is to please those users who couldn’t care less what browser they are using, as long as it doesn’t get into their way. The majority of users still use IE because it doesn’t get into their way. Firefox needs to have special crazy features and customizability to motivate users to do the switch, but Epiphany (and IE) don’t have to.
Of course that doesn’t mean that Epiphany wouldn’t try to please as many users as possible. But if you are happy with your current (open source) browser, by all means, keep using it!
– “No Features”
It is wrong to say that Epiphany has no remarkable features at all. Here is just a short list of my favorites:
* Unsubmitted form changes confirmation: When I close a tab or window which contains unsubmitted form changes, Epiphany will warn me. And _only_ then. Extremely useful and extremely logical.
* Extremely intuitive white-listing for popup blocking by simply checking the menu item. The setting will be changed on a per-site basis.
* Likewise, font zoom is saved on a per-site basis. That’s so much more useful than constantly zooming in and out because a single page uses too small or too large fonts. If I wanted to change the font size globally, I’d so so in the preferences.
* The bookmark system. Of course this is debatable and it is certainly not perfect yet, but for my needs it is already far more powerful than the Firefox bookmark system. For some users this is a feature, for others it isn’t.
* Comfortable crash recovery. Of course that’s nothing special anymore. Just mentioning it because last time I checked, Firefox didn’t even provide it by default.
That list might not look like much, but they all have a serious impact on my browsing comfort, unlike 99% of the advanced features of other browsers, which I’d use rarely if at all. Despite of that, the simplicity and elegance is a feature in itself, because it also increases browsing comfort. Epiphany has no zero-features agenda, so more similarly minded usability features can be expected in the future.
And then there are the extensions of course. The Python API is very new, so it remains to be seen how popular it will be.
I’m personally very happy with Epiphany and so are more and more users. Additionally I believe that it does the right thing for an integrated no-fuss web browser. It is extremely good at what it’s trying to do and the alternatives are plenty, so nobody is forced to use it. But it’s not a geek toy, so it will probably always get a trashing on the web forums (similarly to GNOME itself). Still I hope that this little piece of rambling made some more people understand why Epiphany has a reason to exist. 
There is more to be said, but it would be insane to add it now…
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2005-07-21 1:36 am
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2005-07-21 1:42 am
2005-07-21 2:17 am
2005-07-21 10:11 am
2005-07-22 1:17 pm
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2005-07-22 2:04 pm
My experiences with Ephiphany that it is faster at displaying pages than FireFox (and yes I know that they are both based off the Gecko engine). But I use Firefox on both windows and linux, and found Ephiphany to take the “ultra-simple” interface to an extreme.
epiphany is religion and not a very good one. Religion when it works has to give people something they deep down want and Epiphany just doesn’t do that unless something to be religious about is it for you (for some I guess it is, old HIG zealots before things got more sane).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany
You might want to read that before making up new religions.
My experiences with Ephiphany that it is faster at displaying pages than FireFox (and yes I know that they are both based off the Gecko engine). But I use Firefox on both windows and linux, and found Ephiphany to take the “ultra-simple” interface to an extreme.
Yes, I’ve found it to be a fraction quicker than Firefox in terms of page load – however, it’s somewhat slower than Dillo – Dillo is the fastest “page load” browser I’ve ever used – however the features are pretty minimal though
I love Dillo! It runs great on my PII-200 with 128 MB RAM. If only it rendered blogs better and I could use it to access GMail.
Ultra simple interface..?! – Err.. try hitting the F11 button next time… saves you to install an extra browser…
That’s my experience also, I was very amazed looking at Epiphany’s quickness and responsibility on my Ubuntu box, knowing it’s powered by the same engine as Firefox. It felt considerably lighter and faster, might be related to the XUL roots of FF (just guessing here).
Can’t remember now, but for some reason I reverted back to FF, I think I had issues with Epiphany’s shortcuts or something. I’ll give it a try again once a package with a new version is available.
Is it possible to post statistics on osnews about who is actually using what browser? I’d love to see something that said:
linux – mozilla – 5%
linux – firefox – 25%
linux – opera – 7%
linux – konqueror – 18%
linux – galeon – 2%
linux – epiphany 8%
etc, plus versions. Other OS’s and browsers too of course. I think we would all be surprised by and interested in the numbers.
Our external stats are here:
http://bilbo.counted.com/2/42699/400/?password=&date=0
Our external stats are here:
I guess that’s proof that there’s no reason for OSNews to continue using non-W3 standards compliant HTML for the site. Considering that the stats for anything below Opera are in the “tens”. Unless of course those stats are wildly inaccurate somehow…
There are ~2,000 mobile unique users every day (about 5,000 hits). That’s reason enough.
Besides, it’s not just about the sheer numbers. It’s about not being ironic. When we report on OSes like NeXT or Amiga, we owe to render well on their browsers. If we were a site about the latest sports news, sure, no reason why we shouldn’t be XHTML-only.
This is off topic btw. Don’t start the same old same old discussion. We have already responded t o this and we are not changing our minds. We only want to hear a complain when the page does NOT render well on your browser. If it does, then we are all happy and everything else is a waste of breath.
I don’t mean to take this too off-topic, but you can use proper CSS and XHTML that works with mobile devices. Web sites that use proper CSS and XHTML and sites that work with mobile devices are not mutually exclusive.
http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=HandheldStylesheets
http://webmonkey.wired.com/webmonkey/04/12/index4a.html?tw=design
http://archivist.incutio.com/viewlist/css-discuss/50973
I guess that’s proof that there’s no reason for OSNews to continue using non-W3 standards compliant HTML for the site.
Oh jesus, would the “waaaah, OSNews is not w3c compliant” crowd give it a rest already? While I’ll probably never be invited to join Eugenia’s fan club (*cough* http://www.bedoper.com/bedoper/2004/twentyninth.htm ), I think that lack of w3c compliance is a pretty spurious complaint.
What existing practical problem(s) would be solved by re-writing OSNews in a w3c-compliant fashion?
I hope it’s not just some BS about how not complying helps perpetuate the problem. It’s not her/their responsibility to try to push the adoption of w3c standards, especially when doing so would directly interfere with the design goals of the site (one of which is to be visible in the browsers available for older/hobbyist OSes).
Our external stats are here: