Re: huge weblog post with my suggestions for improvement in Epiphany

[Robert Marcano <robert marcanoonline com>]

On Wed, 2008-04-02 at 07:49 -0500, Steve Bergman wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-04-02 at 23:16 +1300, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> > However, the Epiphany team
> > lacks programmers far more than it lacks ideas. :-)
> > 
> If this has already been discussed to death on this list, please feel
> free to ignore.  But that sounds like a serious problem.  ...

I am not here to judge what is the  cause of lack of programmer help,
but I can only speak in my experience. I developed the patch for a
Certificate Manager for Epiphany and the ideas of the maintainers at
that time of keeping Epiphany extremely simple, forced me to decide not
to be a more frequent contributor, come on a simple Certificate Manager
is a feature any browser need, finally it was enhanced by Crispin
Flowerday and committed as a non default compile time option and still
the FAQ recommends using the internal Gecko XUL url to start the Mozilla
one

I know and love the GNOME way of keeping things simple, but sometimes
they are taken to the extreme. I am not happy about the removal of the
abstraction layer for the rendering engine, I know the maintainers have
their reasons (time constraints, lack of help, etc), what I do not like
is that those things where not told in public  (I will be happy if
someone corrects me) , and if nobody say it nobody can listen and take
action providing help.

> What can be
> done about it?  What potential effect, if any, does the WebKit decision
> have upon this issue?  Should the project be recruiting PR people?  Or
> not?  Any chance of getting Epiphany included in the default install, or
> even as default browser, in more Linux distros? (Fedora comes to mind.
> Especially considering the WebKit move.  I wonder if Debian is tired of
> maintaining IceWeasel?) What have F-Spot and Tomboy done to gain the
> position of "The Golden Ones" while Epiphany gets treated like a
> neglected step child?  Can anything be gleaned from other projects which
> have successfully claimed their fair share of the limelight?  Epiphany
> has, of course, lived in the shadow of Firefox for a long time.  But
> I've watched as the cracks have appeared and spread, and today it's
> fairly obvious that distros are frustrated with mozilla.com's policies
> and might be interested in making a break for it.  The Linux browsing
> experience, has itself increasingly lived in the shadow of Firefox for
> Windows(tm).  And I wonder if that galls any other people the way it
> does me? (Obligatory reminder that a rising tide lifts all boats...
> Firefox's popularity helps us all... etc. etc.)

The IceWeasel history is not much related with this. IceWeasel is a
product of Mozilla trademar policies, and Epiphany never has been
marketed Firefox. I understand now that not so many people are working
on the gtkmozembeed but that is something that needs help, the same way
everyone is running to port WebKit to GTK being committers there, why we
must expect everything done from the Mozilla folks, if help is needed
enhancing gtkmozembeeded ask for help before droping


> 
> One other note which is not strictly related, but sort of is.  Firefox
> has a bad case of what I call singluseritis.  It tunes its memory
> related settings based upon total system ram, and has been quite
> aggressive about sucking up memory in the name of performance.  Its
> problematic "profiles" and lock files.  A configuration system that
> really doesn't work on a multiuser server. (I know.  I admin it in that
> topology.)  

that is why choice is good, if WebKit can help you on your situation
good, and as choice is good for everyone, my enterprise customers
currently requires a Gecko based browser, integrated with GNOME like
Epiphany currently is

> Setting a system wide policy is confusing, and last I
> checked, didn't really work.  Only affected new accounts.  Lockpref
> didn't really work right.  The natural way to deploy Linux desktops in
> the enterprise is to roll out thin clients (either PC or appliance)
> running against XDMCP or NX servers.  WebKit's lighter memory footprint,
> combined with gconf configuration and perhaps some changes to the way
> memory sensitive options get set (we inherited
> browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers=-1),

GConf is not only that can only be achieved using WebKit, current
Epiphany with Gecko backend is able to use a few settings from it

>  might just be Epiphany's
> ace in the hole for Enterprise Linux deployments, which are, after all,
> the next frontier for Linux.  Pervasive single user Linux for the home
> desktop is still a ways away.  But pervasive enterprise deployments?
> Much more likely, and much more immediate.  Gnome already has that
> market sewn up through its hard work and dedication to the UI, and
> that's half the battle.  Now Epiphany needs to claim its rightful place
> on the Gnome business desktop.

to reclaim the business desktop, we must learn that not always we must
run and drop what we have and rebuild from scratch, you can provide new
things but must support what you already had provided. I am not a fan of
IE nor the MS tactics, but their decision to do not make difficult the
migration for their enterprise customers with the dual engine is
something I respect, The intranet is not the internet, and intranet must
be stable, companies expend a lot of money building an infrastructure
that they want it to last more than we developers want to test and
switch to new things.

> 
> -Steve Bergman  

________________________________________
Robert Marcano

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