Re: A change in direction for Epiphany?

[Ryan Thiessen <ryanthiessen gmail com>]

On 6/22/05, Reinout van Schouwen <reinouts gnome org> wrote:
> Undeniably, Firefox has gained a large following. But that Epiphany is
> "not getting much use" is contradicted by the fact that there is a
> steady stream of bugreports and people finding their way to this
> mailinglist.

Certainly there is a difference between "getting much use" and getting
any use at all.  I'm not suggesting at all that nobody uses Epiphany,
just that web statistics indicate that very few users are currently
out there.  Anecdotal evidence from my Gnome-using friends,
distribution preferences, and screenshots posted by Gnome developers
on planet.gnome.org confirm this.  I realize this is not necessarily a
crisis, so long as there are enough developers such as yourself
willing to keep working on the program out of love, but my point still
stands.

> Let's face it, Firefox is as much a simple browser for GNOME as it is
> for any other desktop. Yes, it makes a halfhearted attempt at imitating
> the GTK theme, but that's about all integration you get. Oh, and the
> file chooser widget. Epiphany gives *real* GNOME integration, but I
> admit it's hard to recognize the value of this until you've worked with
> GNOME for some time.

I think this is understating the degree to which Firefox is working to
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.  Of course, they are just mimicking GTK but this
is "good enough" for the vast majority of users -- at least enough so
to make few people willing to make the switch to Epiphany.  Many of
the really cool ways that Epiphany integrates with Gnome are subtle
and easy to miss, none have a significant "wow" factor on their own.

> If Epiphany seems to have lost much of its purpose, then how about
> Galeon? Yet Galeon too has an active user base. I suspect you are
> painting things more negative than they really are.

You are certainly correct, my concerns are even more poignant for
Galeon.  But I'm not a Galeon user, and I'm not writing to the Galeon
mailing list.  I am concerned about the long-term success of the
Epiphany browser, which I prefer over the alternatives available.  I
just see the status quo of the embedded mozilla widget bugs (both
security and annoyance level) stagnating for another couple of years
because all of the gecko developers are concerned primarily with
Firefox.  Unless something changes to make this no longer the case
with the embedded gecko widget, I can't see a lot of future with
Epiphany.  Is this overly negative or just realistic?

> Although your analysis is mostly correct, your solution seems wrong. It
> is centered around the idea that adopting a new rendering engine would
> cause users to suddenly flock to Epiphany; however there is no reason to
> assume that Epiphany's primary target group, that you already mentioned,
> even care about what a rendering engine is.

This is again a good point.  The target group will not switch, but by
the same token they will not use the browser at all if distribution
managers and power users don't provide Epiphany as the default
browser.  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.  Perhaps some of them will
decide that there is indeed a compelling reason to include Epiphany as
the default browser for the desktops they provide to our primary
target group.

So in the end I agree with you -- moving to webcore is not necessarily
the best solution in the world to the problems facing Epiphany at this
time.  But what it would  do is address some of the security and
usability bugs that currently trouble the browser, and give Epiphany a
very clear and distinct differentiation from Firefox, giving power
users a solid reason to install it even if the distribution provides
Firefox by default and they find this simple enough for their
purposes.

But if you can think of another development that could kickstart
interest in using Epiphany as a default browser, I'm not tied to my
own suggestion.  As I suggested earlier, the python extensions are a
good start to providing a "wow" feature, and mono extensions might get
some of Mono people excited about it as well.  I just have a feeling
that this will not be enough, and it will fall further from the public
eye.  In the meantime I'll keep using and enjoying Epiphany -- thanks
for all your hard work.
--
Cheers,
-Ryan Thiessen-