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Yeah, I wish there were screenshots for KDE, as this one is more difficult to integrate, as Firefox is a Gtk application. Firefox is very well integrated in my WinXP and openSUSE Gnome OSes. I thought Firefox was already as integrated as on the screenshots of the article.

Actually no. Firefox is a XUL application and if Mozilla wouldn't contantly block any attempt of contributing a Qt based implementations, they would have intergration there as well.

Hum, then it shouldn't be that difficult? I remember Zack Rusin trying to port Firefox to Qt, then he abandoned the project...

http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/976
http://dot.kde.org/1094924433/
http://troy-at-kde.livejournal.com/6059.html?thread=46507

I remember having tested Firefox-Qt when Firefox reached 1.0, it was buggy. Then we didn't have any new versions.

GTK-Qt Theme Engine is your friend:
http://gtk-qt.ecs.soton.ac.uk/

Taken from their website:


Edited 2007-10-19 07:15

No it's not. It does a terrible job of emulating the Qt themes and I have always turned it off.

Gone are the days of the ugly Windows 95 looking buttons, check boxes, text fields etc from Firefox 2. 8-)

Actually, first thing I always did on Windows XP was to switch to Windows Classic theme. I prefer it that way. Plain, simple, quick.. (and possibly ugly for some people, but not for me).

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.

Same here but I really don't want to see it in Linux.

This is a very nice improvment.

The radio buttons and checkboxes looked like (and I quote) "they have been drawn in the dark with a broken pencil".

Thanks Mozilla!

Sorry dude, but this is BS, complete BS!

I've been using Firefox under KDE for quite some time and it integrates very well with the KDE themes and color schemes. Beside that there are still a bunch of "themes" available and ChrystalSVG is one of them.

So please explain what on earth is Firefox 3's INNOVA~1

I really prefer FF 2.x over 1.x and even used the beta versions, because 2.x had some damn cool innovation, like the inline spell checker.

Now my worst concern is that Mozilla corp tries to compete with this ugly company from Redmond and we all know how this will end.

If Mozilla, doesn't use its creativity and innovation, it's a dead men's hand.

Sorry dude, but this is BS, complete BS!

I've been using Firefox under KDE for quite some time and it integrates very well with the KDE themes and color schemes. Beside that there are still a bunch of "themes" available and ChrystalSVG is one of them.

So please explain what on earth is Firefox 3's INNOVA~1

Here you go! Firefox 3 to the left and 2 to the right:
http://home.student.uu.se/sist8525/ff2vsff3.jpg

> Here you go! Firefox 3 to the left and 2 to the right:
> http://home.student.uu.se/sist8525/ff2vsff3.jpg

Sorry, folks, but this is not a big deal. I need glasses to spot the difference. What about fixing bugs? What about adding garbage collector to javascript? What about accelerating javascript to JIT native code internally? What about optimizing it for mobile devices, N800/N810, for example? What about touch interface? What about kinetic scrolling?

Maybe you can't read, but did you not see that someone already addressed this concern? Different developers specialize in different areas of the application. A large portion of the work anyway is design. Designers can't program. Another large part is XUL stuff, which is just an off-shoot of HTML.

Jesus christ, you're like the people that wonder why all 50,000+ Microsoft employees arent working on optimizing Windows.

> Here you go! Firefox 3 to the left and 2 to the right:
> http://home.student.uu.se/sist8525/ff2vsff3.jpg
Sorry, folks, but this is not a big deal. I need glasses to spot the difference.

What exactly were you expecting to see when shown the same Google site? For it to magically appear in 3D? A flashing neon ad? If a simple site like google didn't look the same we'd all know there was something seriously wrong with the new build.

What about fixing bugs?

Maybe you should take a look at their bug tracker, because tons and tons of bugs have been fixed.

What about adding garbage collector to javascript?

They actually did that. Or at least parts of it, search for cycle collector.

What about accelerating javascript to JIT native code internally?

Planned for FF4, IRC. That's a pretty major change, and you can't expect them to do it while also making all the others - integrating adobes javascript framework, the switch to cairo, adding the gc, the new layout framework, reworking text rendering, places, etc.

What about optimizing it for mobile devices, N800/N810, for example? What about touch interface? What about kinetic scrolling?

All needed, and since they just announced a major mobile push, I expect they will be coming soon enough. I have a tough time getting too excited about these things, though, since I'm too old fashioned to use my phone for anything more than talking.

Edited 2007-10-20 07:23

It's open source - it'll integrate as well with a platform as people are willing to support the cause. If you have concerns, download a nightly and file bugs, join in on IRC or make mockups.

It's open source - it'll integrate as well with a platform as people are willing to support the cause. If you have concerns, download a nightly and file bugs, join in on IRC or make mockups.

My point was that
1: saying that the existence of different distros makes Linux integration harder is dumb. All distros use the same 2 toolkits.
2: It's already (mostly) GTK so making it integrate with Gnome should be much easier than making it integrate with Vista or OSX.

Spurred by this article, I've spent last 10 minutes doing searches about more Firefox Linux integration; the bug reports and discussions are already there on this subject, so there's no need for more of that.

Also, your response could be given to anything. I could say the same thing to you about your complaint in your other post about which theme to use for OSX and the chrome buttons.

Edited 2007-10-18 22:57

It's already (mostly) GTK so making it integrate with Gnome should be much easier than making it integrate with Vista or OSX.

iirc, the gui of firefox uses xul, not the gtk-widgets.
and native ports of gtk do exist both for windows and for osx.

Popular misconception, right up there with OOo being a GTK app. FF uses it's own toolkit, so it is as foreign to Gnome as it is to KDE. It does hook into GTK to give the appearance of being an integrated app for the purposes of things like file dialogs, in much the same way that Opera will utilize Qt without really being a true Qt app.

Yeah, but the people who work on skinning/theming, etc... are NOT the same people who work on memory utilization, startup times, etc...

Yes we know this, so there's even more a reason to let the skinners get to work whilst the 'real' developers work on 'real' problems within Firefox.

What are you even trying to say?

Its not just the GUI that is a problem. I stopped using firefox a month or so bad because it had become bloated and did not intergrate with the desktop environment of preference (KDE).

What bothers me the most is the file dialogs and the like. With KDE I can customize what appears in the side-bar on a system-wide and / or application-specific level. I also have found the Gtk file-selector to be awkward and mangled hugh pile of steaming proverbial.

So now at a loss for choice, I have stuck to konqueror even if lacking extensions. At least flash works now.

Cheers

What bothers me the most is the file dialogs and the like. With KDE I can ...

Check out kgtk: http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=36077
I'm using it to get KDE dialogs with Firefox (when I'm not using Konqueror).

Though it works well, it's a bit of a hack. I wish the Portland Project would actually make something other than pie (in the sky) and command line utils.

Portland is only as effective as the ISV's that choose to utilize it... Last I heard Mozilla has declined to participate, though maybe that has changed for future consideration ?

No they don't. Epiphany just uses the XUL engine right now. What they're talking about here are the drop down menus on actual websites. The UI part of Epiphany fits very well into Gnome, but any sort of buttons or drop down menus within the website itself look horrible.

I tested out Epiphany with the webkit backend that is currently in Debian Sid and the difference in look is huge. Though I couldn't really use it for long, since webkit for gtk is still very unstable. But the buttons looked fantastic.

You're confusing elements. Firefox uses a XUL interface around the Gecko web rendering engine. Epiphany uses a Gnome-GTK wrapper (the UI part you referred to) around the Gecko web rendering engine. If you're seeing issues with buttons or drop-downs in Epiphany, that's Gnome/GTK issue, not a Firefox issue. The whole point is that by utilizing native rendering styles, Firefox would being rendering the same way Epiphany does. You may want to reconsider the theme you're using, if that's the issue.

The basic problem with XUL (and hence Firefox) is that it is hideously inefficient, at least in that it draws outrageously far more resources to utilize than a native toolkit would, though it is also it's biggest strength because it encourages the extensions that make FF so popular. Gecko itself is effective, but a bit bloated, which is why there has been a move towards webkit by companies like Apple, Adobe and Nokia, a fact that has been admitted by Mozilla and planned to address, though that remains to be seen.

I really wish Camino could use Firefox plugins and search engines (although maybe this has changed since the last version of Camino I tried).

- chrish

The probelm with thes DE centric browsers is that they get too small userbases. This means that things like plugins may be developed to work with them.

Yes.

an what " Crappy OS " would that be? Windows Vista perhaps?

I'm on MacOS X (Intel) and have found that Camino 1.5.2 is definitely a good replacement for Firefox. I'd like to see more 'support' for the extensions, but at the end, its weighing up between nice widgets or a extensible browser.

That one is pretty easy, basically

if (getenv("KDE_FULL_SESSION") != 0) // KDE

One could also query the respectice X property on the root window, in case the application developer wants to support DE detection in an application running on one machine, but displaying on an X server of another.

Pretty much the same applies for GNOME as well and XFCE also has a specific root window property IIRC

EDIT: fixed typo

Edited 2007-10-19 11:36

Well, nobody is denying that AFAIK.

"""

"""

Maybe. But if there were *one* thing I would like to see fixed, it is FF's exponential increase in table rendering times as table size increases. FF's horrid rendering times for huge tables, necessary for business reporting apps, make FF a no go for these applications.

Moaning about FF memory requirements is passe.

Argh!

The problem is not themes.
You can always theme firefox to make it look like your OS' DE.
The problem is -form widgets-. [1]

Fire up google.com in firefox. Do you see the "Google search" and "I feel lucky" buttons? Look at the the posting window in osnews.com (Preview, Submit)? Don't they look like Windows 95 on downers? *

Making firefox 1.x/2.0 look anything close to normal requires manual edit/replacement of a number files in your res directory... and even then it doesn't look right.

- Gilboa
* Unless you're using Window XP or Vista.
[1] http://www.google.com/search?q=firefox+form+widgets

Ah yes, got it now. I have no idea why that isn't handled by the built-in theme system, it seems like the same problem to me.

Those buttons are Motif-style, I think, which was horrible already when Motif was released back at the dawn of time.

- chrish