Backends - was: ANNOUNCEMENT: The Future of Epiphany

[Robert Marcano <robert marcanoonline com>]

Sorry for starting a new thread, but I missed the original announcement
It is difficult to guess if it is real or not, but there are high
probabilities that it is.

After I read the news that Epiphany is now able to run using the WebKit
engine, I liked that, but I only do not wanted it to be a compile time
option, I hoped for it to be a runtime option (not necessarily with an
UI to choose the backend, so It can remain an advanced option). I have
been reading gtkhtml, WebKit and Gecko APIs in order to see if i get the
idea of how to write a modern embeddable HTML control/gtkwidget. using
my little experience with Epiphany coding, see
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=119090 (that still is not a
default Epiphany feature by the way, a Certificate Manager is a must in
modern Web, in special on the enterprise sector)

What has showed this increase in WebKit interest is that we need a way
to abstract all GNOME applications from that backend, who knows when
will another engine dethrone WebKit and Gecko in opensource developers
minds? We will need to rebuild all applications when XYZ engine is the
new kid in the block? We need an abstraction layer.

Why I think Gecko is still important on Epiphany, because the enterprise
sector. Currently I am working in a project related to a massive
migration to Linux on the desktop, and our current browser in testing is
Epiphany, for two reasons: it is Gecko, required by many applications
from third parties, those that only develop for a few browsers and do
not support (officially) any standard compliant browser; and the GConf
integration, moving to WebKit exclusively will destroy our preference on
Epiphany and make us harder forcing us to use plain Firefox.

Like in any opensource project, the maintainers are the guide the
project, but I am worried that a decision like this (if it is real and
not only a way to test the waters) was done without too much user
involvement (correct me if I am mistaken, but I never heard of someone
proposing this in the public)

________________________________________
Robert Marcano

web: http://www.marcanoonline.com/
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