Re: Epiphany strategy vs. Firefox

["Luis Villa" <luis tieguy org>]

On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 2:30 PM, Dylan McCall <dylanmccall gmail com> wrote:
> Hi! I noticed an unfinished draft for this, so am touching it up and
>  posting (at risk of looking like a maniac thread exorcist).

It is an important thread; I was disappointed it didn't go further the
first time around. This is (IMHO) much more important than what
rendering library is used; the new rendering library is useful *only*
if it helps with the kinds of things you raise in this email. If you
fight merely on slight performance wins and ACID3 tests, you're going
to lose.

>  In terms of GNOME integration, Firefox still only manages that visually,
>  on first glance. Most notable to me is how Firefox's RSS subscription
>  works (poorly, with a select few arbitrary programs listed to use) vs.

At least in ffox3, it allows me to use any program or URL. The
defaults are arbitrary, I'll grant, but otherwise it Works with
whatever I want it to.

>  Epiphany's nice, extensible and platform fitting d-bus method.

This nice, extensible, platform-fitting dbus method still won't let me
subscribe to feeds with google reader, as far as I can tell. So don't
give yourselves too many pats on the back about it. :)

>  On that topic of smooth operations, I think one spot Epiphany needs to
>  catch up is installing extensions. Perhaps there could be a default
>  extension that handles automatically downloading and installing them?

It would be nice if there were a polished UI for both extensions and
plugins. It is sort of embarassing (for both browsers) that
about:plugins is still as good as it gets.

>  As for making Epiphany notable, I think it is important to get it
>  integrating with and showing off every GNOME feature under the sun!
>  (Well, not every one, but all the good ones). Epiphany definitely has
>  the benefit of being Only For GNOME, so we have a lot more freedom and
>  power to make this great than with a one-size-fits-all browser such as
>  Firefox.

+1000 to this, but with the caveat that (as above with google reader)
integration with the web is important too. An example where both could
be done is an epiphany version of firefox prism that actually knows
about my menus and puts webapps in there properly. That would be
awesome to see.

Luis