Re: [Fwd: Epiphany, I love it!]

[Mark Taber <mark taber sbcglobal net>]

Thanks for the informative history.  I wasn't offended
by Firefox being chosen as the default browser (I use
it at work extensively), but after I tried Epiphany, I
was hooked.  It has a quiet grace and subtle usability
that makes it tops in my book.  The only feature I
miss?  Being able to open a group of bookmarks at
once.  I understand that the topic metaphor is
different than the folder metaphor; however, every
morning I open the same set of links in a given topic
(and this for multiple 'topics').  It would be nice to
have one-click per topic ability to do this. 
Regardless, though, now I'm in the unenviable position
of missing Epiphany at work!  (We use Windows XP Pro,
although I'll be configuring one of the first Fedora
desktops in the organization...keep me in your
thoughts.  This has to be good. :)  )

Mark Taber
DBA-Infrastructure and Architecture
State of California
Department of Finance
 
--- Bryan Clark <bclark redhat com> wrote:

> On Tue, 2005-01-04 at 12:33 -0600, Jens Knutson
> wrote:
> > On Tue, 2005-01-04 at 10:28 +0100, Philippe Alain
> wrote:
> > 
> > > > What's the most effective way for Fedora end
> users to express an opinion
> > > > on this?
> > 
> > But that's just it - I wanted to find out if
> speaking up on fedora-
> > devel and fedora-test makes any more difference
> than whining on a blog
> > or bitching on a web forum, or even just not
> bothering to speak.
> > There's so much "me too!" noise on those lists, I
> just wonder if
> > anyone is really heard, thus the reason I asked
> Bryan, an "insider",
> > what the most effective way is for one person to
> voice their opinion
> > on the subject.
> 
> I'm not out to start another war here.  I'll explain
> a little history
> from my point of view because I don't want anyone to
> think that this
> happened without a long decision process.
> 
> First, fedora-desktop [1] is probably the place to
> request this kind of
> change.  However since there has already been long
> flamewars about the
> subject messages may be met with "That's already
> been discussed, see
> here:"
> 
> A lot of discussion about the default browser had
> taken place on fedora-
> devel starting on an idle Saturday in October [2]. 
> By this time there
> had already been a red hat internal mailing list
> flamewar that
> innocently started in mid-late September and was
> still continuing.  
> 
> The short of this (from my POV) was the forming of
> three camps.  Camp
> one was the developers who felt "thousands of
> features/plugins" and
> "worldwide acceptance" made firefox the best thing
> since sliced bread.
> This is the camp who cares nothing about a unified
> desktop experience,
> but feels that a long feature list and a recognized
> name really
> determines value.  Camp two was most of the desktop
> team who wanted a
> consistent and quality user experience.  And the
> last camp was people
> who didn't seem to care, many of which are epiphany
> users as they just
> want _any_ web browser that works.  The flamewar
> marched on to trench
> warfare where people were just slinging insults at
> each other and
> nothing was getting done.  I and many others met
> with a lot of people in
> red hat about "the browser issue".
> 
> After much discussions it was decided that Firefox
> would be the default
> browser.  I was (and still am) not completely happy
> about the decision,
> I felt that we caved to marketing and customer
> pressures instead of
> offering the best solution.  Many customers want
> firefox because they
> know the name, also many want to develop
> cross-platform plugins to
> enhance their intranet sites.  Epiphany can't offer
> that kind of
> functionality, but it doesn't mean that firefox
> needs to be default.
> Also our main point was that of an integrated
> desktop experience and yet
> there just weren't enough really powerful
> integration points to argue
> over.  After the switch of course we got lots of
> complaints over
> translation problems, how firefox wasn't aware of
> desktop locale and how
> it handles the MIME/Download/Open problems much
> worse.  Many other
> things were discussed, but those are what I felt
> were most important.
> 
> So I took everything that was discussed and made up
> a list [3] of items
> that I saw needed the most improvement.  Basically
> Epiphany has the
> burden of matching every firefox feature, in a
> better way, plus
> integrating so tightly with the desktop that it
> makes it firefox look
> like some strange 3rd party app.  There's more than
> on that list of what
> needs to be done, but we at least need to start
> there if we plan on
> going anywhere.
> 
> Now, back to the future.  Emails to mailing lists
> saying "me too" are
> completely useless, especially now that the original
> thread had died.
> What we need is for Epiphany to be (and a much of
> this is my opinion) to
> match everything firefox has, but better and to
> pretty much invisible.
> What I mean by invisible is that we want to be such
> a part of GNOME that
> you don't even know you're using a separate app. 
> Once Epiphany is at a
> much cleaner and more integrated state I think the
> start of a campaign
> to bring it back to default in distros like Fedora
> and others is a good
> idea.  User testing, usability tests and lots of
> documentation would all
> help the cause.
> 
> Anyway that's that,
> ~ Bryan
> 
> [1]
>
http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-desktop-list
> [2]
>
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2004-October/msg00505.html
> [3]
>
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/epiphany-list/2004-November/msg00048.html
> 
> ---
> For the lawyers and pundits:  This is most
> definitely my opinion and may
> or may not be the opinion of my excellent employer. 
> Any and all
> discrepancies are the fault of the reader and not
> mine or my employers.
> By reading this email you may have divulged all
> rights to your first
> born and many other assumed rights and privileges. 
> My default response
> to any and all incriminating questions will be "Not
> that I am aware of".
> 
> _______________________________________________
> epiphany-list mailing list
> epiphany-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/epiphany-list
> 


=====
Mark Taber
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Sacramento, CA  95818-4446

Home: 916.457.7771
Cell: 916.837.0364

"To know that one doesn't know is best." - Laozi