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View Full Version : Epiphany thinks it's Firefox



Luggy
December 18th, 2007, 05:22 PM
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/1504/epiphanylolzuf1.th.png (http://img143.imageshack.us/my.php?image=epiphanylolzuf1.png)

Just open up Epiphany and for an address type "error:" or some other invalid url thingamabob and you will get that error.

vishzilla
December 18th, 2007, 05:27 PM
Correct if I am wrong...Epiphany is based on the same engine as Firefox

kellemes
December 18th, 2007, 05:28 PM
They're using the same engine so this message doesn't surprise me..

lvleph
December 18th, 2007, 05:31 PM
Someone went cut and paste crazy. lol

SunnyRabbiera
December 18th, 2007, 05:34 PM
yeh they both use the same core so no surprise

RebounD11
December 18th, 2007, 05:35 PM
I would've expected sth like this from MS :)

FuturePilot
December 18th, 2007, 05:42 PM
Epiphany currently uses the Gecko engine from Firefox.

hanzomon4
December 18th, 2007, 05:59 PM
It is firefox, dressed in gtk. Ok, not really but they use the same engine so I'm not surprised.

Mr. Picklesworth
December 18th, 2007, 06:06 PM
I blame Gecko ;)

Thankfully, the Epiphany people are forward-thinking enough to be moving this browser over to WebKit...

bruce89
December 18th, 2007, 06:07 PM
Ubuntu have made the bad decision to build Epiphany on Firefox instead of XULRunner. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/epiphany-browser/+bug/39033 and http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=333487

Once Ubuntu switch to Epiphany with WebKit, this won't be an issue.

adityakavoor
December 18th, 2007, 06:08 PM
Lol :)

Mr. Picklesworth
December 18th, 2007, 06:22 PM
More shocking, actually, is this one:
chrome://browser/content/browser.xul

(And some web sites trigger downloads in weird ways, causing the XUL download manager to open).

Thus, if you still feel an overwhelming urge to use Firefox for some absurd reason, you need not look any further than Epiphany.

Luggy
December 18th, 2007, 06:30 PM
I blame Gecko ;)

Thankfully, the Epiphany people are forward-thinking enough to be moving this browser over to WebKit...

So then it will say "Sorry Safari can't find the page you are looking for"?

p_quarles
December 18th, 2007, 06:33 PM
So then it will say "Sorry Safari can't find the page you are looking for"?
No, that won't happen. As people have pointed out, Ubuntu made the decision to run Epiphany on top of Firefox's Gecko engine -- in other words, it's actually using parts of Firefox. Debian doesn't do this, so if you were to run Epiphany on Debian, you would not get this message.

Thumper!
December 18th, 2007, 06:36 PM
i don't even know why gnome spend there time developing Epiphany? I mean whats the point? it's just a downgraded version of mozilla Firefox, same thing goes to evolution mail, Thunderbird is much better and was already there to use for free?

sometimes i don't understand the Gnome guys....ahh well!

Vadi
December 18th, 2007, 06:38 PM
Uh, yayyy, funny.

No, really. Can it be any more less mature about this? Just file a bug report and move on...

Luggy
December 18th, 2007, 06:43 PM
No, that won't happen. As people have pointed out, Ubuntu made the decision to run Epiphany on top of Firefox's Gecko engine -- in other words, it's actually using parts of Firefox. Debian doesn't do this, so if you were to run Epiphany on Debian, you would not get this message.

So the Ubuntu devs chose for Epiphany to run ontop of Firefox's version of Gecko and not just Gecko itself?

p_quarles
December 18th, 2007, 06:46 PM
So the Ubuntu devs chose for Epiphany to run ontop of Firefox's version of Gecko and not just Gecko itself?
That's what I said. Anyway, go back and take a look at the bugs that Bruce89 linked to. You'll get more accurate explanations at Launchpad and Bugzilla than you're likely to get here.

FuturePilot
December 18th, 2007, 06:49 PM
So the Ubuntu devs chose for Epiphany to run ontop of Firefox's version of Gecko and not just Gecko itself?

Currently there is no stand alone Gecko engine. But I believe that's what xulrunner solves.

Luggy
December 18th, 2007, 06:49 PM
Meh, I wasn't really trying to point out bugs... I just thought it was funny is all...

jken146
December 18th, 2007, 06:55 PM
i don't even know why gnome spend there time developing Epiphany? I mean whats the point? it's just a downgraded version of mozilla Firefox, same thing goes to evolution mail, Thunderbird is much better and was already there to use for free?

sometimes i don't understand the Gnome guys....ahh well!

Epiphany is much faster than firefox. I'll be using it until firefox 3 comes out, and then we'll see.

Evolution is not a downgraded version of thunderbird. I need Evolution for its better MS Exchange support.

Rashedul
December 18th, 2007, 06:58 PM
Epiphany is much faster than firefox. I'll be using it until firefox 3 comes out, and then we'll see.

Evolution is not a downgraded version of thunderbird. I need Evolution for its better MS Exchange support.

Edit: Swiftfox from the Swiftfox repository is using Firefox 3.0bpre right now.

bruce89
December 18th, 2007, 07:13 PM
No, that won't happen. As people have pointed out, Ubuntu made the decision to run Epiphany on top of Firefox's Gecko engine -- in other words, it's actually using parts of Firefox. Debian doesn't do this, so if you were to run Epiphany on Debian, you would not get this message.

Not quite true. Debian build-depend on XULRunner, which is Gecko as well, but separate from Firefox.


Currently there is no stand alone Gecko engine. But I believe that's what xulrunner solves.

Debian already use it.


Epiphany is much faster than firefox. I'll be using it until firefox 3 comes out, and then we'll see.

Epiphany in Hardy uses XULRunner 1.9 (https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/hardy/+source/epiphany-browser/2.21.4-0ubuntu2) (as of an hour ago), so all the Gecko improvements will apply to Epiphany now. Hopefully this will mean that removing Firefox is possible now.

Mr. Picklesworth
December 18th, 2007, 07:25 PM
i don't even know why gnome spend there time developing Epiphany? I mean whats the point? it's just a downgraded version of mozilla Firefox, same thing goes to evolution mail, Thunderbird is much better and was already there to use for free?

sometimes i don't understand the Gnome guys....ahh well!

The problem is that Firefox is not integrated into the GNOME desktop in any way. Subscribing to RSS feeds with Epiphany is a wonderful D-Bus powered process, for example, whereas Firefox has a Windows-esque list of arbitrary applications that happen to be the "chosen ones" that Firefox can work with. With Epiphany, if Liferea is running in the background, I can subscribe to it with Liferea. Same with any feed reader that uses D-Bus, even if it was not at all considered by the Epiphany (extension, in this case) developers.

(Speaking of which, we also have Firefox's bother appear when opening RSS feeds... I should see if that's reported).


Compared to Epiphany, Firefox is accessibility-challenged; it does not follow the user's theme settings and (being XUL powered) does not behave like any other application on the GNOME desktop. Its dropdown menus do not (and will not) have configurable menu accellerators, its toolbar buttons are all using Firefox's own theme and display settings, its menus and buttons all have Firefox's own localization instead of stock widgets. Because of XUL, Compiz needs an ugly workaround (any workaround is ugly) to properly recognize Firefox's menus as menus.

As well as just plain ugly, these are usability issues. When a major application such as the web browser behaves in a manner substantially different from any other application on the desktop, the features provided by that desktop environment (of which there are many) will be difficult to learn and understand. Another point against learnability when we use Firefox: Its icons are likely to be different if the user is not using the distro's default theme for each. This means that people will not get the connection between a particular image and the action that it always represents.

For accessibility, this is a huge issue. Here we have a web browser (I will stress: The most common application at this point in time) that will not change if the user needs a high contrast theme due to vision problems. Its font size will not grow if the user chooses a bigger font in the Font settings. Instead, he has to repeat that preference, again, in Firefox.

That is what we are trying to avoid here! GNOME (and Ubuntu, I hope) is all about having a cohesive desktop where one global setting can change the behaviour of every program, such that one does not need to spend more than a short moment making things work. With most of the GNOME applications, that is working beautifully.

Firefox, being a program clearly not built for GNOME, simply does not fit here as a default. As long as it is "Ubuntu's web browser", the default desktop will appear broken.


Sorry, I've turned this into a recurring discussion :(

tageiru
December 18th, 2007, 07:27 PM
same thing goes to evolution mail, Thunderbird is much better and was already there to use for free?
That's not true. Evolution was first.

lvleph
December 18th, 2007, 07:35 PM
More shocking, actually, is this one:
chrome://browser/content/browser.xul

(And some web sites trigger downloads in weird ways, causing the XUL download manager to open).

Thus, if you still feel an overwhelming urge to use Firefox for some absurd reason, you need not look any further than Epiphany.

Woohoo I am going to crash my browser with that one. If you have RSS ticker, do a bunch of those and see what happens.

You can even open tabs. lol

bruce89
December 18th, 2007, 07:39 PM
Compared to Epiphany, Firefox is accessibility-challenged; it does not follow the user's theme settings and (being XUL powered) does not behave like any other application on the GNOME desktop. Its dropdown menus do not (and will not) have configurable menu accellerators, its toolbar buttons are all using Firefox's own theme and display settings, its menus and buttons all have Firefox's own localization instead of stock widgets. Because of XUL, Compiz needs an ugly workaround (any workaround is ugly) to properly recognize Firefox's menus as menus.
As well as just plain ugly, these are usability issues. When a major application such as the web browser behaves in a manner substantially different from any other application on the desktop, the features provided by that desktop environment (of which there are many) will be difficult to learn and understand. Another point against learnability when we use Firefox: Its icons are likely to be different if the user is not using the distro's default theme for each. This means that people will not get the connection between a particular image and the action that it always represents.
For accessibility, this is a huge issue. Here we have a web browser (I will stress: The most common application at this point in time) that will not change if the user needs a high contrast theme due to vision problems. Its font size will not grow if the user chooses a bigger font in the Font settings. Instead, he has to repeat that preference, again, in Firefox.
That is what we are trying to avoid here! GNOME (and Ubuntu, I hope) is all about having a cohesive desktop where one global setting can change the behaviour of every program, such that one does not need to spend more than a short moment making things work. With most of the GNOME applications, that is working beautifully.
Firefox, being a program clearly not built for GNOME, simply does not fit here as a default. As long as it is "Ubuntu's web browser", the default desktop will appear broken.


Sorry, I've turned this into a recurring discussion :(

Even though there are no paragraphs, this is a well put argument.

I assume Ubuntu uses Firefox as people know of it. This seems pointless as all the other programs are different. Even most of the Ubuntu developers use Epiphany.

Thumper!
December 18th, 2007, 07:49 PM
Epiphany is much faster than firefox. I'll be using it until firefox 3 comes out, and then we'll see.

Evolution is not a downgraded version of thunderbird. I need Evolution for its better MS Exchange support.

My bad......

8-[