EpiphanyDefaultBrowser

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 * Can use Firefox plug-ins (gxine, mplayer, Flash, Java, etc.)
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 * Is multimedia support equal/better/worse than Firefox? There is a totem plug-in for Epiphany/Firefox that will be in GNOME 2.12 (shipped with Breezy) but how does it fare compare to the xine/mplayer plug-ins available for Firefox? Can the xine/mplayer plug-ins be used with Epiphany as well? You can use them in Epiphany as well.
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 * Gecko must be separated from Firefox

This page is an open discussion about whether or not to install Epiphany as the default browser instead of Mozilla Firefox. The proposed switch to Epiphany is not suggested for the Breezy Badger release but is aimed at Dapper.

Note: This page is not endorsed by any Ubuntu developer and is only an open discussion. There is no official plan to replace Firefox with Epiphany.

Note: This is also not a discussion about what features should be added to Epiphany or Firefox.

Characteristics of a default browser

  • simple to use for people new to Ubuntu as well as people new to computers in general
  • predictable behavior that is consistent with other Ubuntu applications
  • low resource requirements to ease use on a variety of hardware
  • active development to combat bugs, integrate new features, and refactor code for efficiency
  • supports open standards, both for web content as well as importing/exporting bookmarks
  • multimedia support for embedded audio/video content

Average users impressions of Epiphany or Firefox

  • do they notice a difference?
  • ease of adoption?

Epiphany advantages

  • well integrated with GNOME and follows the global theme and global options (like displaying text beside buttons, GNOME proxy settings, etc)
  • follows the GNOME/Ubuntu release schedule
  • "session saving" is built-in which means that if for some reason it does crash, it will ask "do you want to restore you previously open pages" when restarting. Although there is a Firefox extensions that does this, it is not installed by default.
  • adheres to GNOME Human Interface Guidelines which helps it look and feel more consistent with the rest of the GNOME desktop. For example, the preferences dialog uses tabs and takes a more simple approach than that of Firefox.
  • seems to use less RAM than Firefox (possibly because it utilizes GTK+ without the overhead of XUL?)
  • translations are easier because of Epiphany's I10n support
  • utilizes freedesktop.org bookmark storage standard (XBEL), which is also used in Galeon, Konqueror and some other browsers. There is a firefox "Bookmark Synchroniser" plugin that can import/export to this format but Firefox does not support it natively
  • bookmarks can be imported from Firefox, Mozilla, Galeon, Konquerer or Epiphany to ease migration. They can exported to Firefox/Mozilla if the user decides to use Firefox instead.
  • On middle-config (between 600MHz and 1GHz), Epiphany is much faster and doesn't eat 100% of CPU when a website is not responding
  • Can use Firefox plug-ins (gxine, mplayer, Flash, Java, etc.)

Firefox advantages

  • well-known and has lots of "hype"
  • brings familiarity for users of Windows and MacOS that already use Firefox. However, Firefox has a few interface differences between platforms which can confuse users who expect Firefox on Windows to be identical to Firefox on Linux. (e.g. "Preferences" menu entry is under "Tools" in Windows but it is under "Edit" in Linux, clicking the URL entry area once in Windows selects all text but clicking once in Linux does not, etc.)
  • Firefox extensions make it easy for users to customize their browser for a better surfing experience. Even if Epiphany currently has its epiphany-extensions package, Firefox has some widely-installed extensions that Epiphany has no equivalent for (yet). The most commonly referenced is Adblock, although Epiphany has a plan for an equivalent http://live.gnome.org/Epiphany_2fAdBlockExtension (This is, IMHO, not an argument since it's only a power user tool. You cannot provide by default a browser that alter the web like AdBlock! So, the extension is not to be installed by default and must not be considered, like many extensions, as an argument. Same apply to webdev extension (wich is very cool, but is a no necessity for the Average Joe) or the Gmail Notifier (which is only useful if you do use Gmail).)

General points

  • Firefox contains more "power user" features, which could be argued as being good or bad
  • Firefox supports keywords in the address bar "google search term" (use google to search for "search term") or "dict word" (to look up "word" in an online dictionary), whereas in Epiphany "keymarks / smart bookmarks" appear as a dropdown menu from the address bar.
  • Firefox has a search field in the toolbar, which can be configured to use different search engines. In Epiphany any 'smark bookmark' can be put into the bookmark bar, which creates an entry field - this allows users to have boxes for dictionary lookup, babelfish translation, etc.
  • Epiphany integrates RSS feeds with external reader (liferea) when Firefox manages RSS itself. They are opposite approaches.
  • Epiphany currently has some better tab handling features, such as re-ordering (although Firefox 1.5 gets some of these). Firefox's behaviour of shrinking tabs, when there are a large number, is generall considered to be better than Epiphany's behaviour of having scroll buttons (re http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=153792).

Outstanding issues with Epiphany

  • Epiphany currently depends on the Firefox packages, so to run Epiphany, Firefox needs to be installed. This could be dealt with by creating a seperate Gecko package, on which Firefox, Epiphany, Galeon, Mozilla, Thunderbird and all other Gecko-powered applications would depend on.
  • If we want to allow RSS feature in Epiphany, we have to ship by default a compatible RSS reader. (liferea is IMHO a perfect candidate)
  • Gecko must be separated from Firefox

EpiphanyDefaultBrowser (last edited 2008-08-06 16:20:54 by localhost)