Ars takes a quick look at GNOME 2.14. “The GNOME team recently announced another excellent release. GNOME 2.14 includes a variety of spiffy enhancements, bug fixes, improvements, and new features that make it the best GNOME desktop environment ever. Already available in Ubuntu Dapper and the recently released Fedora Core 5, GNOME 2.14 awaits your use and abuse. I’ve poked and prodded it and now I’m ready to talk about it.”
With the release of GNOME 2.14, some developers are beginning to argue that distributions should package Epiphany as the default browser instead of Firefox.
That is a stupid idea. The last time I used epiphany, I felt uncomfortable. May be because I am used to using firefox and its very useful extensions or could be that firefox is indeed way better than epiphany or any other out there.
“That is a stupid idea. The last time I used epiphany, I felt uncomfortable.”
You think that it’s a stupid idea to encourage people to use a piece of software, just because you don’t like it? I’m not going to claim there’s an objective way to rank software, but it would be at least as easy to create a scale that preferred epiphany as one that preferred firefox.
Is one of the most underrated browsers out there.
Extensions: Has it’s own without the needs for compatibility issues or download. Adblock is superiour to anything Firefox has including stopping junk ads on this site.
GNOME: Better intergration and proper GTK+ support
Speed: It’s faster that firefox since it dont feel heavy.
Interface: Has one of the most simple UI properites interface out there.
GNOME-2: It’s the official web browser for GNOME it’s HIG, Firefox is only default because people know it, not because it’s better.
Customization: Yes you can customize Epiphany to how you want, yes that includes the tool bars.
Session: Epiphany can resume your session if it crashes ,so you dont lose where you were.
Themes: Epiphany themes with your icons set mantaining a consistant look, unlike firefox, HIG anyone?
Edited 2006-03-29 19:17
>Is one of the most underrated browsers out there.
I certainly think Epiphany is a great browser, but I think of Firefox as a platform, rather than just a browser. More extensions/plug-ins are available for Firefox just because it is more wide spread. That’s why I’m glad it comes bundled on most distros. And, since it is cross platform, it will probably be more popular for quite some time, hopefully attracting more developers.
The platform clearly should be XUL and not Firefox. I don’t quite get the obsession with browser extensions. You don’t choose your mail client or calculator depending on the number of extensions for it, do you? You can admittedly do some interesting things with a web browser interface, but I still assume that most users are merely interested in the ability to browse the web…
I personally see extensions mainly as a method to keep the basic interface sane without pissing off users with specialized needs. 🙂 They are also great for experimental features.
GNOME-2: It’s the official web browser for GNOME it’s HIG, Firefox is only default because people know it, not because it’s better.
Just because the Gnome folks say Epiphany is the official browser is no reason to use it.
What do I care about someone else’s preferences?
What do I care about someone else’s preferences?
Well clearly you don’t understand HIG or you would realize why you are not capable of making competent choices yourself. Now quit arguing and do what the devs tell you, it’s for your own good.
In my opinion both are a nightmare. So far I’ve tried firefox, epiphany, and konqueror lately. All have something I like:
Konq is efficient.
Firefox is extendable, I like my extensions.
Epiphany is fast, once you turn pipelining on.
But all three crash within an hour consistently. I think an extension is to blame on firefox, but I can’t figure out what one. But this unreliability of virtually all extensions makes them almost useless! I really wish they’d start a good peer reviewed page of extensions that are known to not have bad side effects.
Konq crashes in relation to flash, when you can get it to work.
And Epiphany, not the latest but the last, crashes every 20 minutes or so. This *might* be because I’m not running it in Gnome, but that shouldn’t make any difference!
I’m still waiting for a good browser I can use (Opera doesn’t work with webct, and I get stuck using that quite a bit :/).
Firefox was good before it got popular. Seriously, 0.7, 0.9, 1.0, were all great! Maybe I should just go back to Mozilla.
I don’t get it… how does an extension problem make firefox “not as good as it was” ?
Please explain.
And Epiphany, not the latest but the last, crashes every 20 minutes or so. This *might* be because I’m not running it in Gnome, but that shouldn’t make any difference!
Hmm, maybe you need to memtest86 your computer – reminds me of a chap off Comp.os.advocacy who swore like buggery that Linux was an unstable POS – after much argument, I got him to run memtest86, and he found that there was a fault in one of his memory modules – he pulled out, replaced it, and experienced non of the crashes.
Sure, crashes occur, but if they occur every 20 minutes, something isn’t quite kosher in your computer setup.
At the end I found these really interestings points:
-Banshee developers have been working on adding support for the iTunes Music store
-Tapioca is an open source VoIP framework and Google Talk client
-Rodrigo Moyo wants to extend support for Nautilus scripting, potentially by integrating NACT or possibly designing a new system inspired by Apple’s Automater. Although I think Automator is poorly implemented, I think that a Linux alternative built on D-Bus could be very powerful. I really appreciate Rodrigo’s interest in bringing the power of scripting into modern desktop environments.
Edited 2006-03-29 19:22
I’ve recently switched to mac (got a macbook pro, no linux support) so i’m still using firefox. on my linux box however, i also use firefox, the main reason being when i type something in the url bar, i can’t(in any version i’ve tried) tab through the suggestions it gives me. ignoring this convention (and they did ignore it, it was discussed on the mailing lists) is plain ignorance on behalf of the developers. until it behaves like a proper browser, it it’s not usable.
was that I still had to have mozilla or firefox installed if I wanted to build it. I never really had problems with gnome overall but lately I’ve been enjoying kde. so nice to have options
…and here’s to hoping that the comments for this article don’t degrade into a qt/gtk licensing war *sigh*
“GNOME-2: It’s the official web browser for GNOME it’s HIG, Firefox is only default because people know it, not because it’s better.”
Oh god, here come the Gnome HIG guys again. Quit telling me what’s best for me and let me use the software I like please. The fact that Gnome’s usage statistics (~20-25% of the linux market) have dropped to half of what they were before this HIG stuff started should tell you what people think of HIG.
Firefox is popular on all platforms because it’s an excellent browser – period.
Firefox is popular on all platforms because it’s an excellent browser – period.
Not really. Most OS X users prefer Safari because of its rendering speed and native integration. Of course, you will find it to be quite featureless. However, once you get to know OS X, and shortcuts like cmd+ctrl+d, then you will appreciate it better. As for windows, IE6 (no matter how much we want it to die) is still the most popular browser by marketshare.
Edited 2006-03-30 00:25
FWIW, I actually prefer Camino on my powerbook… http://www.caminobrowser.org
I actually used Camino 1.0 as my primary browser for a while. My biggest gripes with it is the lack of support for services, the slow rendering speed and the slow scrolling performance when plugins are loaded. Most of these problems have to do with Gecko, which won’t see a new version until next year.
This being said, I look forward to Camino 1.1, when they will add spellchecking support as well as Camino 2 with Cairo/Quartz-based rendering.
At least that way we could overlook the lacking of over 140 extensions that are available for Firefox.
I need Scrapbook.
This is a completely different issue to the “default browser” issue. If you know what a Firefox extension is then you should have no problem installing Firefox to replace Epiphany, so it’s less important to consider users in your category when picking a default browser.
Epiphany has a number of unique features that are very hard (if not impossible) to duplicate with Firefox extensions:
1. Tag-based bookmark system: It works just like Gmail labels and it even supports hierachy
2. Multipurpose URL bar: You can enter URL, do web search through smart bookmarks or search your bookmark collection (The last feature is not featured in Firefox by default and the myurlbar extension is slow and buggy)
3. Faster; more responsive; less memory hogging: Epiphany will always have an edge in performance. Part of this is because most of its depedancies are already loaded. Also, a large portion of Firefox is actually written in javascript, which is considerably slower than compiled binary.
4. Can be compiled with XUL loader: You no longer need to install the Firefox package just to use the Gecko engine.
5. Integration on multiple fronts: Gnome Keyring (much better than wallet), DBUS (network status detection), Beagle (smart bookmarks!), session management etc.
6. Plugin support: Epiphany can be extended via Python. Adblock and a few other extensions already exist.
7. GConf support: Much easier to management in a business setting.
8. No FormHistory/AutoComplete in websites -> this is not acceptable
8. No FormHistory/AutoComplete in websites -> this is not acceptable
That really depends on your usage patterns. Personally, I find this particular feature to be rather annoying than helpful.
“1. Tag-based bookmark system: It works just like Gmail labels and it even supports hierachy”
Should appear in Bon Echo, doesn’t it?