Shelling Epiphany

[Alexandre Mazari <scaroo gmail com>]

Hi Everyone,

I recently joined the Epiphany effort thanks to my awesome employer
letting me contribute to this lean and mean browser.
I am particularly interested in the integration of the Web with the
desktop, and think ephy has strong advantages in that regard.

Indeed, being a non-multi-platform browser, ephy is free of the
constraints/compromises the others have to make in order to coherently
run in different environments. We should take this opportunity and go
wild on integration with gnome-shell and the Gnome 3 Desktop in general.
Really become "the Gnome Web Browser".

Obviously, the gnome-design team members have a clearer view on the kind
of global experience the desktop should offer to the user. Ephy being a
part of that whole, their input/directions is invaluable. There are
already some (controversial, see below) mock-ups regarding ephy in their
git repo. Lets build a stronger communication channel.

Here are some ideas/user stories/brainfarts on how we could achieve such
a synergy. 
Feedback, comments, other ideas, even bashing, are welcome!


= Let the user use web-applications in the same way they use "native"
ones  =
The idea here is to make web applications first-class citizen of the
desktop. Those applications would benefits from the same integration
level that the "native" apps have:
• be launch-able in the overview app pane/dash
• have their window be manageable by g-s application switcher and
alt-tab switcher independently of ephy
• send notifications using the g-s notification area
• have nice icon badges for unread mails etc... (I think this feature is
planned in post-3.0 g-s)
• ...
Epiphany's role here would be to create/manage those webapps, actually
making a browsed site an application.
Also Ephy could be used to display those apps, with a streamlined
interface. Or a separate visor could be created.
see https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=644002


= Let the user switch to a specific epiphany's opened site using g-s
facilities =
I am using the term site here, instead of tab, because it is not really
clear we should to keep the tabs management in ephy IMHO.
Tabs and notebooks are just a way to have application-local window
management, mostly duplicating wms/shells facilities, compensating for
their missing features (windows grouping for instance).
Re-giving that responsibility to the shell seems like a natural thing to
do, reducing the number of different ways to switch to a specific
site/app/context.
It seems the design team shares this opinion, as seen in
http://gitorious.org/gnome-design/gnome-design/blobs/raw/master/mockups/epiphany/epiphany2.png .

This idea being very controversial, going against years of tabbing
browsers usage, displaying ephy tabs contents in alt-tab switcher and/or
overview might be an intermediate solution.
Here is a quick and dirty mockup:
http://people.igalia.com/amazari/ephy-tabs-in-switcher.webm


= Let the user open a recently visited or a favourite site from g-s =
- integrate with the future g-s jump-lists
- make gnome-shell's search box access ephy bookmarks/history
- make gnome-shell's search box delegates to ephy if the entered text
looks like an URL


= Make the user's experience coherent with the rest of the desktop =
- comply with http://live.gnome.org/ThreePointZero/AppIntegration
(notably regarding dialogs)
- use symbolic icons wherever possible, see
http://jimmac.musichall.cz/log/?p=974
- share data with the shell and other applications (Zeigeist ?
Tracker ?)
- get the warning theme colours for the location entry in https mode
- ...

What do you think ?