Re: Updated wishlist items

On Thu, 2005-02-17 at 06:47 -0800, Karsten M. Self wrote:
> Also:  this wasn't stated as a "it doesn't work" situation, it was as a
> "Google is starting to rule the Web, we're going to want to pay
> attention to it".   My understanding is that Google's playing at the
> edge of some features in creating rapid-feedback interactive apps, not
> sure if they're violating standards in doing it.

Yes, but Google is absolutely violating standards, but it will test all
its pages with Firefox, so Google pages will generally work on all
Gecko-based browsers. No need to worry.

> > Actually in the long-term I would like to see Epiphany and Galeon
> > merging back together. 
> 
> If that happens, I'm pretty much certainly going elsewhere.  GNOME isn't
> _my_ future.

I believe you misunderstand. Epiphany itself -- as it is shipped right
now -- is basically Galeon with a different bookmarks system, less
elaborate privacy controls, miscellaneous feature
omissions/simplifications, and almost HIG compliance (and the most
incredible maintainer of any GNOME project :P).

Epiphany doesn't require any libraries that Galeon doesn't require. Its
binary is about 60% the size of Galeon's (on Debian unstable). Using
heuristic logic, you can assume it's probably slightly faster and more
stable than Galeon. And using extensions, you can add in pretty much any
missing feature you want. And it supports *Python* extensions, which are
trivial to write (despite the fact that to my knowledge only 3 or 4
people have actually written any :P).

My point:

- Epiphany is a light browser -- lighter than Galeon, since it doesn't
include many of Galeon's features. You, Karsten, have expressed desire
for a light browser.
- AFAICS Epiphany can be customized to act *exactly* like Galeon, with
minimal processing overhead (which you could eliminate, since you don't
need *all* the features in Galeon, you just need *some* of them).
- Epiphany extensions can let you change your browser experience to a
great extent -- e.g., "Provide tablist on tab context menu" -- without
bothering other users and without causing any flames on the mailing
lists. I'm almost tempted to write a Python extension in an hour which
would do this, just to prove how simple it is. One hour. That's maybe
less than the amount of time it would take to write up the feature's
specs.

What YOU, Karsten, want, is a browser suited to YOUR needs and desires
(no offense; I don't mean that as an insult). Galeon suits your needs
very well, but has some behavioral quirks which bug you. Some of those
quirks will never be fixed, because of developers' lack of resources or
desire to satisfy more users. Epiphany as it is now does not provide the
features you need. But Epiphany COULD be made to behave the way you
want!

Right now, I'll be the first to agree that Epiphany is far behind Galeon
in terms of features. But if you would prefer *long-term* that Galeon
remain its own project instead of becoming a set of Epiphany extensions,
you are only depriving yourself of the very things you asked for in this
mailing list thread.

Long story short: don't bash it 'til you try it! (Of course,
Galeon-in-Epiphany may never actually happen....)

-- 
Adam Hooper <[email protected]>

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