Epiphany (was: Re: [Usability] Re: on gconf-edit)

[Reinout van Schouwen <reinout cs vu nl>]

On Wed, 13 Oct 2004, Christian Schneider wrote:

> Does epiphany have any use now that we have firefox? It seems a little 
> duplicate efforts now!?

Well, this has been discussed before, but:

(Partly copied from http://gnomedesktop.org/article.php?thold=0&mode=nested&order=0&sid=1956)

Advantages of Epiphany:

    * Translations are managed by the GNOME translation project, which
      means far greater consistency and less depending on outside factors
    * Uses GTK and GNOME libs and bugzilla, follows time-based releases
    * Has room for real innovations (bookmark topics, integrated
      location bar lookup)
    * Is uncomplicated. FF's 'General' preference category alone has
      more prefs than Ephy has in total.
    * Can be locked down via Gconf

Firefox, on the other hand, is inconsistent with the GNOME desktop in a 
number of ways. It doesn't support icon themes (throbber) or GNOME-wide 
settings like priority text labels and proxy. Firefox made a 
half-hearted attempt to comply to the HIG but doesn't have 
instant-apply, doesn't have action labels (still Cancel/OK), doesn't use 
Yelp, and the list goes on.

Sure Firefox has dozens of extensions, and Ephy has but a few, but do 
you really need to control your media player from your browsers' status 
bar?

Note that I don't think Firefox is a bad program, I advise it to 
everyone who uses Windows. But for GNOME to be a true integrated desktop 
environment, it needs an integrated browser. If you recall, Epiphany was 
selected for inclusion in GNOME mostly because its targets are aligned 
with those of the GNOME project.

For the same reasons I'm hoping gnome-office reaches feature parity with 
OO.o soon, or that OO.o 2.0 will make it possible to create a native 
interface. Being cross platform is great and all, but integration with 
the underlying platform shouldn't be the afterthought it currently 
seems to be.

regards,

--
Reinout van Schouwen			student of Artifical Intelligence
email: reinout cs vu nl			mobile phone: +31-6-44360778