Re: A change in direction for Epiphany?

[Matthew Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

Reinout van Schouwen wrote:
>...
> On Wed, 22 Jun 2005, Ryan Thiessen wrote:
>> 
>> becoming more of a Gnome browser.  For example, I have read that they
>> are planning to even tweak the preferences dialogs to make them more
>> Gnome HIG compliant.
> 
> That might be true, but tweaking layout is not the key to becoming HIG
> compliant; it also covers Yes/No or OK/Cancel buttons on dialogues for
> instance, that have to be replaced by more descriptive labels. The
> problem for Firefox is that if they do this, they're not compliant with
> windows-style guidelines any more, so they'd have to create separate
> branches to be completely guideline-compatible on all platforms, and I
> don't think they want to do that.

Firefox *already does this* to get buttons and (more challengingly) menu
items in the right places for the Mac version, so don't think they won't
do it for Gnome. (Months ago I had a Gecko hacker discussing with me how
reflow could become interruptible so that Firefox's font preferences
could become instant-apply under Gnome and Mac OS X, without causing the
multi-second lockups that Epiphany's font prefs cause when you change
them with many windows open.)

>> My suggestion was to differentiate Epiphany from Firefox in a highly
>> visible way, something to get these power users and distribution
>> managers to take notice.
> 
> Switching to webcore would definitely raise some eyebrows; but would
> most likely involve huge amounts of work to get it on the same level of
> usability as the current gecko back-end. And then, what happens when the
> initial peak of interest has subsided? There is no guarantee at all that
> switching to webcore would make, let's say Ubuntu, decide to suddenly
> make ephy the default browser on their distro.
>...

That's true. You'd get native-looking controls (finally!), and you'd get
some speed improvement, but people don't seem to care quite as much
about those things on Gnome-based OSes as they do on Mac OS X.

I won't pretend to speak for Ubuntu here, but I suggest that if you want
 Epiphany to be used as the default browser on Gnome-based OSes, *be
slightly better in every respect*. There's lots of easy things that
Gecko and Necko can do, that Firefox and Epiphany could do, but neither
of them does. For example:

*   Use error pages instead of alerts. Safari 2.0 does this, MSIE for
    Windows has done it for years, Necko can do it, but Firefox doesn't
    by default. Make the error pages polished and Epiphany-specific.
    Include links to Google Cache and Wayback Machine copies of the page
    that didn't load.

*   Once Escape works in the address field to return it to the URL of
    the current page, start putting a page's address in the URL field as
    soon as I click the link (rather than when the page starts loading).
    Then if the page fails to load for whatever reason, focus the
    address field, so I can just hit Enter to try again.

*   Provide a graphical interface for entering a custom style sheet.
    Safari does this, Opera does this, MSIE for Mac did this, MSIE for
    Windows does this, Gecko can do this, but Firefox doesn't. Provide
    an "Easy Reading Mode" toggle that simultaneously sets a bundled
    user style sheet (in addition to that entered in the prefs) plus a
    minimum font size.

*   Provide a graphical interface for controlling animations. MSIE for
    Mac did this, MSIE for Windows does this, Gecko can do this, but
    Firefox doesn't.

*   Provide an Activity window
    <http://david.davies.name/weblog/2004/02/26.html>. Safari does this
<http://mytech.it/mytech/statici/computer/images/apple_safari/activity_b.gif>,
    Necko is capable of doing it
    <http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/screenshots.html>, but Firefox
    doesn't.

*   Get a cool icon. Not one that's a wild non-sequitur, like -- say --
    a fox burning up on re-entering Earth's atmosphere. But not one that
    looks like a washed-out homage to Windows 95, either
    <http://netfaqs.com/windows/DUN/ICONS/ICONinetwiz2.png>.

*   Not so important because most distributors override it, but ...
    Choose a default home page that *doesn't steal focus* when you're
    trying to enter an URL in the window you just opened. Gah!

And that's before we even get to Gnome-specific stuff. For example,
implement a panel applet -- present even when Epiphany isn't running --
that lets you search Epiphany's bookmarks, Epiphany's history, Google,
Wikipedia, and any other search engine you specify, or just enter an
URL. Don't wait for Beagle -- they can hook in to the applet later.

-- 
Matthew Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/