Submitted by “In the GNOME philosophy, we want applications that do their job, only their job, and we want those to do it perfectly. Epiphany’s job is to browse the web. Only browsing the web. But browsing the web in a GNOME fashioned way.” Read
more here and also here.
Why Try Epiphany As Your Default Browser with GNOME 2.14
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Why not? It’s been a while since I’ve futzed around with Epiphany, and since I’m revisiting the Gnome world after abandoning it somewhere around 2.10 maybe I should give a more “integrated” browser than Firefox a shot.
The linked article stated these things in a positive light, but I’ll rephrase/include a bit that long-time Epiphany bashers might appreciate:
* You can right-click on the toolbar to configure it now, like every other web browser has supported since the beginning of time itself.
* You can have nested bookmarks now, making large bookmark collections easier to handle. They are still topic-based, but if they are in multiple topics they show up nested like in traditional browsers.
While I appreciate GNOME’s usability avenue, I feel it’s taken to an extreme in Epiphany. An entire toolbar devoted to one task (rather than maybe 2) is a redundant, unappealing waste of space. From both a visual and usability standpoint, Firefox’s default look and feel is, IMHO, much cleaner and leaves you with more screen real estate.
I can adjust epiphany to resemble firefox to a degree (e.g., address/location bar), but there are limitations. In firefox, I always place the bookmarks toolbar to the right of the menu and then disable to extra toolbar…thereby giving me more viewable height while in window mode. I can’t readily do this on epiphany, and it drives me nutts!
//edit
I also can’t stand the small “X” close targets on the tabs. I don’t mind that they’re there, but a general middle-click on tab is an easier/faster target. (Before you mention middle-click being a unix “paste” command, keep in mind that one should not be able to paste text where they cannot edit and/or highlight it.)
//end of edit.
I’d rather use epiphany for the integration (consistent theming is cool)… but firefox is more flexible. So for now, I’ll keep visual consistency using the Tango Firefox theme and Tango icon set for GNOME.
Edited 2006-03-15 17:23
There are just too many little things that keep turning me off Epiphany.
For example, when you hit “Ctrl-T” to create a new tab, it is usually beacuse I want to type in a new address in the address bar, so in most browsers the address bar is given focus, but not in epiphany, requiring me to hit “Ctrl-L”. That slows me down and I don’t like it.
Also, I don’t really like the waste of toolbar space. There are really only 5 buttons (back, forward, stop, refresh and maybe home) that I use, but then I get this big toolbar with no buttons on it, that could house the address bar (like firefox).
I use mouse gestures and epiphany’s plugin for this is not that great.
The integration isn’t really that big of a deal anyway as Firefox can use the Gnome file selectors. What more do you really need?
For example, when you hit “Ctrl-T” to create a new tab, it is usually beacuse I want to type in a new address in the address bar, so in most browsers the address bar is given focus, but not in epiphany, requiring me to hit “Ctrl-L”. That slows me down and I don’t like it.
This was an old Mozilla bug, which doesn’t apply anymore (I’ve no idea if it’s fixed or avoided, never thought to check.)
Also, I don’t really like the waste of toolbar space. There are really only 5 buttons (back, forward, stop, refresh and maybe home) that I use, but then I get this big toolbar with no buttons on it, that could house the address bar (like firefox).
Yeah, that’s annoying, but it’s two seconds to fix. 10 buttons and the address all fit fine in a bar, same as firefox or anything. Also, the toolbar flexibility means you can mix bookmarks and tools together, to cram even more in if you want.
The integration isn’t really that big of a deal anyway as Firefox can use the Gnome file selectors. What more do you really need?
When it’s working, download integration is very nice, where files are automatically saved, opened, stored and whatever.
As for the gestures: yeah, that’s true.
The new tab bug you’re refering to (which was indeed very annoying) has been fixed for quite some time. It now works as you’d expect it to.
The toolbar can be rearranged to look like firefox’s one (which is a better default that I’d like to see epiphany use). One advantage is that, if you hide it, it will pop back when you press Ctrl-L or open a new tab – which is something firefox does not handle as nicely.
Mouse gestures extension is lacking, but still does the “back, next, close” just fine.
what about the google search… god I need that, and not in some crappy extra toolbar, or the bookmark bar.
That’s another feature I love about Epiphany, the URL bar is also a Google search bar, without taking up extra space.
Just like every other browser has had for years.
Apart from “philosophical” (must use Gnome-labelled software), I fail to see a single reason to use Epiphany. It’s horrendously slow, eats RAM like popcorn, and lacking in even the most basic functionality. It also ships with an absolutely inane layout that is a PITA to fix.
It’s horrendously slow, eats RAM like popcorn, and lacking in even the most basic functionality. It also ships with an absolutely inane layout that is a PITA to fix.
I’m sorry you were disappointed in Epiphany. However I wonder what you’re comparing it with? Epiphany is demonstrably up to par with Firefox speed-wise (sometimes even faster) and memory-wise, and editing the toolbar to your liking is a breeze with drag-n-drop. You may not like the default layout for the toolbar, but be assured that it has been chosen after careful consideration and analysis of use cases.
Nevertheless, suggestions for improvement are always welcome. ( http://live.gnome.org/Epiphany/Suggestions )
I’d make suggestions on GNOME Live!, but the process requires creating yet another username/password and give out my e-mail address. I’m unwilling to do so, particularly for a one-time edit.
Apart from the aforementioned performance defects (compared to Opera or even Konqueror) and inability to create a usable layout (moving the tab bar, for starters), the lack of support for keyboard shortcuts is particularly apalling. Epiphany, to the best of my knowledge, does not support moving through page elements with the arrow keys (let alone with vi keys), offers no way to meaningfully define shortcuts, etc.
The lack of session management, undo capabilities, page scaling, and so forth are just more reason to look elsewhere.
The lack of session management
I surf the web, have epiphany and some webpages open, logout and back in, and voila here it is again: epiphany with all webpages open on the same workspace i left it.
undo capabilities
Sorry, can you explain what you exactly mean? I’m not sure what you want to undo.
page scaling
ctrl++ and ctrl+- Or even better: Add the zoom combobox to the toolbar and it will automagically remember the zoom level for every page you visit.
offers no way to meaningfully define shortcuts
Besides the already available shortcuts, you can add/edit them by hovering over the menu entry and pressing the keys you want to assign to it.
Edited 2006-03-15 21:45
I’d make suggestions on GNOME Live!, but the process requires creating yet another username/password and give out my e-mail address. I’m unwilling to do so, particularly for a one-time edit.
You can always use mailinator for one time accounts.
the lack of support for keyboard shortcuts is particularly apalling.
Epiphany does support standard Ctrl based shortcuts. If you want it to support vi shortcut, you can always use python to write an extension.
I’ve just had a quick look at epiphany and from the comments that have been modded up ,a lot of them are pro firefox, touting flexibility over epiphany’s simplicity.
I think their focus on just making the browser do just that : browse , is admirable. Some complain about there being too much focus on bookmarks etc but i disagree. You’ve got to ask yourself what you’re doing when you are go online and start browsing ? It’s essentially an information task and managing bookmarks for any serious web user is one of the major tasks.
With epiphany I get that nice fuzzy feeling that I have with sweet sweet sweeeet integration with my deskop. Pages do render faster and it is more stable. I know every user experience would be different in this regard. But one point I think you have to agree with me on is that it is more stable.
Firefox, for different reasons not necessarily the fault of firefox developers, can get quite unstable with all the 3rd party extensions out there.
Firefox seems to being going in the opposite direction.
It’s a direction that I like more than the sweet sweet elegance of epiphany and that’s providing this rich application platform. I love the idea that I can use browser and with the use of 3rd party extensions I find less and less reason to leave browser space to do other desktop tasks.
Both projects have different directions and I believe that they are meeting their respective goals well. Just for the record , my default browser is Firefox
this article made me have a look at epiphany again (i’m on dapper preview, so i already have epiphany 2.14). and i have to say: WOW!
i justed switched from firefox to epiphany. it’s finally “there”
for instance, take the adblock extension. i just activated it and wondered where i could configure it. but the thing is: you can’t configure it – nowhere. it just works and displays a small red “A” in the lower left corner when it removes an ad. works, without any configuration just as good as firefox adblock extension.
regards,
christian
for instance, take the adblock extension. i just activated it and wondered where i could configure it. but the thing is: you can’t configure it – nowhere. it just works and displays a small red “A” in the lower left corner when it removes an ad. works, without any configuration just as good as firefox adblock extension.
The usefulness of this line of thought is a function of how long you have used the software and how much the usage situation varies. When you first use a piece of software (especially something that is complex), you want it to do most everything “the right way” for you. Web browsers are no exception, hence the widespread adoption of Firefox.
But after a while, exceptions start popping up. In some situation or another, you want to change the behavior. You get sick of having to click that “A” to enable something, or clicking “P” when you need popups to handle your finances (or what have you; this is hypothetical). You’re comfortable with your software, and what you really want is a whitelist.
This is the problem when no configuration exists. This is precisely why configuration exists. This is why OSS tended to be so feature-heavy and configuration-bloated for many years (and leans in that direction today): the users were (the) developers, and if they wanted a feature to make their lives a little easier, they could add it.
When the usage situation is more simple (and it usually is for CLI programs, say), then this urge to find something else is lessened. It’s also usually easy enough to mold a CLI program into doing what you want it to do, either with aliases or glue scripts. But it’s still true when the situation can be either simple or complex depending on the aims of the user, especially with services like httpd or named.
My experience with every DE is that when I switch over to it, and if I like it, it’s because it refreshingly addresses issues I had with the previous DE I was using. So, suppose Epiphany just works moreso than Firefox today. But then a few weeks from now you really want colorZilla, or you have a pet peve with some small feature that is missing or activated differently.
Or maybe not. But, if you can’t make something work how you want it to, chances are good this scenario will arise.
I don’t want no gnome-fashioned-way of browsing, I want as-good-as-possible-way of browsing. And epiphany has not yet managed to convince me – although I have to admint that I haven’t tried it for some months now. I’m not saying this because it’s part of Gnome since I also use Gnome quite frequently (about 1/3 of my weekly worktime), but the only browser icons in sight on my desktops are firefox, opera and konqueror.
And maybe it’s just me (no it’s not) but I always get itches and headaches when I come in contact with the gnome philosophy of not really allowing you to easily configure anything. Epiphany is no exception.
And epiphany has not yet managed to convince me – although I have to admint that I haven’t tried it for some months now.
In that case, you should try it.
Some of Epiphany’s features are very unique. In fact, many are *not* even avaiable as Firefox extensions. Examples include label-based bookmark mangement, combined URL+Search bar and gnome deskbar integration (supports smart bookmarks!).
And maybe it’s just me (no it’s not) but I always get itches and headaches when I come in contact with the gnome philosophy of not really allowing you to easily configure anything.
You have the preference panel, about:config and gconf. I am sure there are enough options among all three to satisfy your every whim.
I don’t think it’s reasonable for epiphany devs to cram every possible options into the preference panel. Non-advanced users don’t care about most of these hidden options (and note that even advanced users only tend to focus on a few of those hidden options). Cramming every single option into the pref panel (like KDE) only serve to make everyone’s life (including advanced user’s) complicated.
You are an advanced user; you should have no trouble digging a little deeper.
Basically the article points out how well epiphany integrates in the gnome environment
Wouldn’t be just much easier to create a extension that makes firefox follow GTK themes (and disable the ability to install other themes) and cleanups some parts of the UI? A extension looks to me much easier to code and maintain than epiphany.
I’m not shocked that many distros ship firefox instead of epihany…it just offers almost nothing but a better integration with gnome UI, and firefox UI is good already (it’s one of the reasons it’s so succesful, firefox is not mozilla) so most of the gnome users feel OK using firefox.
Wouldn’t be just much easier to create a extension that makes firefox follow GTK themes (and disable the ability to install other themes) and cleanups some parts of the UI?
Integration goes much deeper than just the surface.
http://live.gnome.org/Epiphany/ProjectFAQ (FAQ 2.1) gives a number of arguments for this.
The Firefox UI is good, but doesn’t let much room for UI ideas or paradigms that would be considered unfamiliar by windows users. In contrast, Epiphany not just follows the GNOME UI guidelines, but is also helping define the look and feel of other applications (if not for Epiphany, the Evince document viewer would probably have looked quite different, for example).
Wouldn’t be just much easier to create a extension that makes firefox follow GTK themes (and disable the ability to install other themes) and cleanups some parts of the UI? A extension looks to me much easier to code and maintain than epiphany.
Firefox is trying hard to perfectly integrate into GNOME since a very long time now. But the fact is, that it will never perfectly work because the basic approach is extremly hacky and just a huge fake. If you work on theme engines you really notice how fragile this approach is. I can’t count the number of times we have cursed Firefox when we had to work around another rendering bug and half of the widgets are still broken (it’s even worse with OpenOffice). People need to drop the idea that Firefox is a Gtk application, it really isn’t. It’s just faking the look of it using Gtk drawing functions. Firefox is doing a great job at integrating into the GNOME desktop as much as possible, but it will never be as smooth as a native frontend. That’s why there is Camino for OSX and Epiphany for GNOME.
I would strongly recommend Epiphany to every GNOME user who just wants a decent webbrowser. Use Firefox if you like or need it and enjoy the choice.
Best browsing experience ever to grace the planet. Attention to detail is what seperates this app from the rest.
NO autocomplete/form history in every textbox on the website!
That’s really bad, as I usually use this feature a lot! (to configure router/switches/search on forums)
For the paranoid users without their own and password protected computers, this feature should be disabled by default.
The other things on Epiphany are really great, but this feature is a-must-have for me. Sorry, I look at about:config and compared with Firefox ones, but found nothing to enable it
What i really liked about epiphany was the ability to drag a tab to another or new window. I haven’t found that feature in Firefox.
A gecko based browser with a UI made not to fear users.
I prefer good old firefox after all
If people really have used Epiphany at all and explored it’s features because comments made here are just wrong. Epiphany is such a under rated browser, the new adblock is great and puts to shame the adblock extensions firefox has to offer(adblock plus)
Dont have to worry about extension/theme compability, place toolbars icons were you want(shows a animation and moves things out the way to show you where you can put them) and simple preference. Just a great job all round.
Edited 2006-03-15 21:00
I tried it out, and went back to firefox simply because I could not reposition the toolbars the way I liked. At first I thought it was pretty sweet, right-click like in firefox above the address bar to customize and just drag and drop.
To my dissapointment, you could not drag and drop icons wherever you wanted. So before I even started browsing, I uninstalled it.
Plus I seriously can’t browse @ home without some of the extensions firefox has D: it’s just not the same.
This proves my previous post, yes you can move icons and put them where you want. Seems like you just installed it for 2 mins and then uninstalled it without properly looking using.
XUL apps on X11, including firefox/mozilla/seamonkey have one annoying bug:
Shortcuts don’t work when you’re in an alternate keymap (e.g.: Hebrew, Arabic etc.). You can’t use CTRL+T,C,V etc, while you’re on it. One has to switch the keymap to En, use the shortcut and switch back .
That is annoying. QT/GTK+ don’t suffer from the same problem. Since Epiphany is a GTK+ app, the shortcut keys can be used without a problem.
The articles were good enough that I thought I would give Epiphany another try. That’s pretty good for a KDE guy.
Fired up apt-get, which was keyed into Debian Sid. Told it to grab “epiphany-extensions,” knowing that it would also grab the browser. It turns out that I would have to download a few other files (14) to get what I wanted. This “lightweight” browser (which I’m sure it is) required a 19 meg. download, and 60 meg. of additional disk space.
Aside from the Gnome print utilities and libraries, it needed the “mozilla-browser” package. Mozilla’s browser is still at 1.7.12. I assume Epiphany needs it so it can grab the Gecko engine. That’s 10 meg. of download, and 30 meg. of disk space right there. It’s a shame there isn’t a separate Gecko download.
Still, I can see why Gnome users might put up with the “mozilla-browser” penalty. For KDE users it’s a no go. I’m glad Epiphany has morphed from its overly simple to the point of brain dead early versions, to became a capable browser.
As a KDE user, I can say the same thing about Konqueror, which has always been fast, but now has ad blocking that is Adblock FiltersetG compatible. It has a host of other cool features, I might add.
Let’s see, on Linux there is Mozilla (Seamonkey), Firefox, and Epiphany. Good Gecko browsers all. Then there is Konqueror and Opera, two very nice browsers with different rendering engines.
Yes folks, times are good in the Linux browser space.
Epiphany is a GNOME application of course it will need the gnome deps, just like KDE does install it’s deps to a KDE application.
Edited 2006-03-15 22:20
Let’s see, on Linux there is Mozilla (Seamonkey), Firefox, and Epiphany. Good Gecko browsers all. Then there is Konqueror and Opera, two very nice browsers with different rendering engines.
Yeah… I still remember the time I got all excited when I heard that KFM2 (Konqueror) was supposed to get decent CSS capabilities.
The issues we still have today with browsers in Linux are a big joke compared to the situation just a few years ago. We should be grateful to every project that has contributed to this.
When you open many tabs in Epiphany, they don’t get auto-resized: the browser hide some of them and you have to search the tabs in the bar. Is this problem solved in the new version?
Are you the same person saying this all the time?, I can fit eight tabs in 1280×1024 and use the mouse wheel to scroll through them.
When you open many tabs in Epiphany, they don’t get auto-resized
That is by design: resizing makes tab titles illegible and furthermore complicates closing a lot of tabs in a row (currently you can do this by keeping the mouse cursor in one place and clicking a few times).
However, the fact that overflowing tabs become “invisible” is a problem that we recognize. Unfortunately this can only be solved on the toolkit (GTK) level. 😐
Really why? It is not even nice or flexible or fast… Opera rules:)
Before you start banging at your keyboard and complain about your bad experience with Epiphany 1.0 (or any older version), you should at least try the *LATEST* version of epiphany first!
Also, make sure you have read its fine manual before complaining here.
Please, don’t waste your time trying to convince geeks to use Epiphany. They’re unreasonably pedantic and demanding. This shouldn’t be Epiphany’s target audience. Focus on 90% of the market. Focus on normal people who browse the web as opposed to configuration options or extensions.
Edited 2006-03-16 00:19
Been a happy user of Epiphany since Hoary Hedgehog (Ubuntu 5.04). It has improved a lot in my opinion (not in anyway saying it’s better than any other browser).
If you’re like a me… a fan of the GNOME doing things… give Epiphany a try.
I used to use epiphany all the time, but then several
versions back it refused to log out of yahoo mail. I
could use yahoo mail just fine but when I tried to log
off it would always give me the ‘page not found’ message.
So if they’ve fixed this yet I’ll come back.