GNOME Web

GNOME Web
GNOME Web 3.28.1 on Lubuntu 18.04 LTS
Original author(s) Marco Pesenti Gritti
Developer(s) The GNOME Project (mostly by Michael Catanzaro from Igalia)[1]
Initial release 24 December 2002 (2002-12-24)[2]
Stable release 3.30.1 (25 September 2018 (2018-09-25)[3]) [±]
Preview release 3.30rc2 (1 September 2018 (2018-09-01)[4]) [±]
Repository
Edit this at Wikidata
Written in C (GTK)
Operating system Linux, Unix-like
Platform GNOME
Available in 60 languages
Type Web browser
License GPLv2+
Website wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Web

GNOME Web (originally called Epiphany until 2012) is a free and open-source web browser for the GNOME desktop environment.

The browser was forked from Galeon, after developers' disagreements about Galeon's growing complexity.[5] Since then Web has been developed as part of the GNOME project and uses most of GNOME's technology and settings when applicable. It is part of the GNOME Core Applications. As required by the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), Web maintains a clean and simple graphical user interface with only a required minimum number of features exposed to users by default. The browser's functionality and configurability can be extended with official and third-party extensions.[6]

Instead of developing a custom browser engine Epiphany originally used the Gecko layout engine until version 2.28 and WebKitGTK+ starting with version 2.20. This approach allows the relatively small developer community to maintain a sufficient level of modern web standards support.[7] The features of Web include reuse of GNOME configuration settings, smart bookmarks and web application integration into user desktop.

GNOME Web is default web browser on elementary OS and its source code is available under the GNU General Public License. The binary builds of the browser are available in the software repository of most Linux distributions and BSD releases.[8]

History

Galeon fork

Marco Pesenti Gritti, the initiator of Galeon, originally developed Epiphany in 2002 as a fork of Galeon. The fork occurred because of the divergent aims of Gritti and the rest of Galeon development team about new features. While Gritti regarded Galeon's monolithic design and the number of user-configurable features as factors limiting Galeon's maintainability and user base expansion, the rest of the Galeon developers wanted to see more features added. At the same time the GNOME project created the GNOME human interface guidelines, which promoted simplification of user interfaces. As Galeon was oriented towards power users, most developers saw the implementation of those guidelines as unacceptable. As a result, Gritti created a new browser based on Galeon's codebase, with most of the non-mission-critical features removed. He intended Epiphany to comply fully with the GNOME human interface guidelines, with a very simple user-interface. As such, Epiphany does not have its own theme settings and uses GNOME's settings, which are specified in the GNOME Control Center.[5][6]

Gritti explained his motivations:

While Mozilla has an excellent rendering engine, its default XUL-based interface is considered to be overcrowded and bloated. Furthermore, on slower processors even trivial tasks such as pulling down a menu is less than responsive. Epiphany aims to utilize the simplest interface possible for a browser. Keep in mind that simple does not necessarily mean less powerful. We believe the commonly used browsers of today are too big, buggy, and bloated. Epiphany addresses simplicity with a small browser designed for the web—not mail, newsgroups, file management, instant messaging or coffee making. The Unix philosophy is to design small tools that do one thing, and do it well.

— Marco Pesenti Gritti[9]

Galeon continued after the fork, but lost its momentum due to the remaining developers' failure to keep up with the new features and changes Mozilla introduced. Galeon development finally stalled and the developers decided to work on a set of extensions to bring Galeon's advanced features to Epiphany instead.[6]

Epiphany's early philosophy included a commitment to creating a web browser specifically for GNOME:

Epiphany's main goal is to be integrated with the gnome desktop. We don't aim to make Epiphany usable outside Gnome. If someone will like to use it anyway, it's just a plus. For example: Making people happy that don't have control center installed is not a good reason to have mime configuration in Epiphany itself.

— Marco Pesenti Gritti[9]

Gritti ended his work on the Epiphany project and a GNOME team led by Xan Lopez, Christian Persch and Jean-François Rameau now direct the project.[7] Gritti died of cancer on 23 May 2015.[10]

While some promote Epiphany as the default web browser in Linux distributions with GNOME as the default desktop environment, most distros offer Firefox instead.[8] In most minimalist distributions, Epiphany is installed with the GNOME meta-package or packages group.[11][12]

Gecko-based

The first version of Epiphany was released on December 24, 2002.[2]

Epiphany initially used the Gecko layout engine from the Mozilla project to display web pages. It provided a GNOME integrated graphical user interface for Gecko, instead of the Mozilla XUL interface.[13]

The development process of Epiphany was mainly focused on numerous small usability improvements. The most notable of them was the new text entry widget, which first appeared in 1.8 stable version series. The new widget supported icons inside the text area reduced the amount of screen space needed to present the information and improved GNOME integration.[14]

The second major milestone (after version 1.0) in Epiphany development was the 2.14 release. This was the first Epiphany release which followed GNOME's version numbering. It also featured network awareness using NetworkManager, smart bookmarks-related improvements and the possibility of being compiled against XULRunner. The latter was critical, as previously Epiphany could only use Firefox or Mozilla/SeaMonkey as a layout engine provider, so it could only be installed alongside one of those browsers. The XULRunner support made it possible to install Epiphany as the sole web browser on the system.[15][16]

WebKit-based

Epiphany 2.26.1 (left) showing its larger user interface chrome area than in 3.2.0 (right)

The development process suffered from major problems related to the Gecko backend.[7] To address these issues, in July 2007, the Epiphany team added support for WebKit as an alternative rendering engine for Epiphany.[17] As the backend development advanced, on April 1, 2008, the Epiphany team announced that it would stop using the Gecko rendering engine and proceed using WebKit.[7]

The size of the development team and the complexity of porting the whole browser to a new backend caused Epiphany to re-release version 2.22 with bugfixes instead of the actual development code,[18] so browser development remained stagnant until July 1, 2009, when the project team announced that Epiphany 2.26 would be the final Gecko-based version.[19] Eventually, in September 2009, the Webkit-powered Epiphany 2.28 was released, as part of GNOME 2.28.[20]

With GNOME 3.4 release Epiphany was renamed to Web.[21] However, the name Epiphany is still used internally for development, such as for bug tracking and in the source code.[22] The package remains epiphany-browser in Debian-based distros[23] and epiphany in RedHat-based distros.[24]

Release history

Features

Web is based on the WebKit browser engine, which provides support for HTML 4 and XHTML, CSS 1 and 2, substantial degree of implementation of HTML5 and CSS 3 features,[64] Web Inspector (HTML and JavaScript debugging tool)[50] and NPAPI, including Adobe Flash and IcedTea-Web plug-ins support.[6]

GNOME integration

Web reuses GNOME frameworks and settings.[65][66] Therefore, its user interface theme is the GNOME default theme, the network settings with GNOME NetworkManager configuration, printing with the GNOME printing system, settings with GSettings and GNOME default applications settings are used for internet media types handling.

The built-in preference manager for Web is designed to present user only basic browser-specific settings. All the advanced configuration is done with the stand-alone GSettings configurator tools such as GNOME's default dconf (command line) and dconf-editor (graphical).[67]

Web follows the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines[68] and follows the platform-wide design changes. For example, in Web 3.4 release the menu for application-wide actions was moved to the GNOME Shell's top panel application menu and the menubar was replaced with "super menu" button, which triggers the display of window-specific menu entries.[69]

Bookmarks

Bookmarks management and categorisation

While most browsers feature a hierarchical folder-based bookmark system, Web uses categorized bookmarks, where a single bookmark (such as "Web") can exist in multiple categories (such as "Web Browsers", "GNOME", and "Computer Software").[70] A special category includes bookmarks that have not yet been categorized. Another innovative concept supported by Web (though originally from Galeon)[5] is "smart bookmarks". These take a single argument specified from the address bar, or from a textbox in a toolbar.[6] Bookmarks, along with browsing history, are accessed from the address bar in find-as-you-type manner.[71]

Modularity

Up until version 3.6, Web was extensible with a plugin system called Web extensions. This package was distributed by the developers of Web and contained the official extensions. For version 3.8, this system was removed because of problems with stability and maintainability, with some popular extensions, such as ad blocking, being moved to the core application instead.

Web Applications mode

Web application launcher

Since GNOME 3.2[72] Web allows creating application launchers for web applications. The subsequent invocation of a launcher brings up a plain single instance of Web limited to one domain, with off-site links opening in a normal browser.[73] The launcher created this way is accessible from the desktop and is not limited to GNOME Shell. For instance it may be used with Unity, used on Ubuntu.[74] This feature facilitates the integration of the desktop and World Wide Web, which is a goal of Web's developers.[75] Similar features can be found in the Windows version of Google Chrome. For the same purpose Mozilla Foundation previously developed a standalone application Mozilla Prism, which was superseded by the project Chromeless.[76]

Web applications are managed within Epiphany's main instance. The applications can be deleted from the page, accessible with a special URI about:applications. This approach was supposed to be a temporary solution and a common GNOME-wide application management was intended to be implemented in GNOME 3.4, but was not rolled out.[26]

Firefox Sync

Since GNOME 3.26, Web has support for Firefox Sync, which allows users to sync their bookmarks, history, passwords, and open tabs with Firefox Sync, which can then be shared between any copy of Firefox or Web that the user signs into Firefox Sync with.[77]

Google Safe Browsing

Since GNOME 3.28, Web has support for Google Safe Browsing, to help prevent users from visiting malicious websites.[78]

System requirements

Being a component of GNOME desktop environment, Web has neither software, nor hardware dependencies beyond the GNOME platform. Though the GNOME Project does not list the minimum system requirements, it states that GNOME 3 should run on any modern computer.[79]

Web is only released as source code or with Linux distributions and BSDs making binary packages. Thus the availability of Web depends on the distributor.[80] Web can be run on many hardware platforms, including i386, amd64 and several other instruction set architectures.[11]

Reception

In reviewing the WebKit-powered Epiphany 2.28 in September 2009, Ryan Paul of Ars Technica said "Epiphany is quite snappy in GNOME 2.28 and scores 100/100 on the Acid3 test. Using WebKit will help differentiate Epiphany from Firefox, which is shipped as the default browser by most of the major Linux distributors."[20]

In reviewing Epiphany 2.30 in July 2010, Jack Wallen described it as "efficient, but different" and noted its problem with crashes. "When I first started working with Epiphany it crashed on most sites I visited. After doing a little research (and then a little debugging) I realized the issue was with JavaScript. Epiphany (in its current release), for some strange reason, doesn't like JavaScript. The only way around this was to disable JavaScript. Yes this means a lot of features won't work on a lot of sites – but this also means those same sites will load faster and won't be so prone to having issues (like crashing my browser)."[70] Wallen concluded positively about the browser, "Although Epiphany hasn't fully replaced Chrome and Firefox as my one-stop-shop browser, I now use it much more than I would have previously.[70] [It has a] small footprint, fast startup, and clean interface."[70]

In March 2011, Veronica Henry reviewed Epiphany 2.32, saying "To be fair, this would be a hard sell as a primary desktop browser for most users. In fact, there isn't even a setting to let you designate it as your default browser. But for those instance where you need to fire up a lighting-fast browser for quick surfing, Epiphany will do the trick."[81] She further noted, "Though I still use Firefox as my primary browser, lately it seems to run at a snail's pace. So, one of the first things I noticed about Epiphany is how quickly it launches. And subsequent page loads on my system are equally as fast."[81] Henry criticized Epiphany for its short list of extensions, singling out the lack of Firebug as a deficiency.[81] Web instead supports Web Inspector offered by the WebKit engine, which has similar functionality.[50]

In April 2012, Ryan Paul of Ars Technica used Web as an example to his criticism of GNOME 3.4 design decisions: "Aside from the poor initial discoverability of the panel menu, this model works reasonably well for simple applications. [...] Unfortunately, it doesn't scale well in complex applications. The best example of where this approach can pose difficulties is in GNOME's default Web browser. [...] Having the application's functionality split across two completely separate menus does not constitute a usability improvement."[69] This was addressed in later versions, with a single unified menu.

In an October 2016 review, Bertel King Jr. noted on MakeUseOf, "Later versions offer the best integration you will find with GNOME Shell. It lacks the add-ons found in mainstream browsers, but some users will like the minimalism, the speed, and the tab isolation that prevents one misbehaving site from crashing the entire browser."[82]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "epiphany - A simple, clean, beautiful view of the Web". git.gnome.org. Retrieved September 25, 2017.
  2. 1 2 "Epiphany turns 7", The GNOME Web Browser Developers, December 24, 2009, retrieved June 15, 2011
  3. ↑ Catanzaro, Michael (25 September 2018). "GNOME 3.30.1 released!". GNOME Mail Services (Mailing list). Retrieved 29 September 2018.
  4. ↑ Jardón, Javier (1 September 2018). "GNOME 2.30rc2 (2.29.92) RELEASED". GNOME Mail Services (Mailing list). Retrieved 5 September 2018.
  5. 1 2 3 DeRosia, Chris (July 29, 2003), Galeon, A History or, why Galeon is the way it is, retrieved October 16, 2011
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Min, Andrew, "Epiphany, the ultimate Gnome browser", The Ubuntu Applications book (under construction), Free Software Magazine, archived from the original on October 31, 2008, retrieved October 16, 2011
  7. 1 2 3 4 Persch, Christian (April 1, 2008), "ANNOUNCEMENT: The Future of Epiphany", epiphany mailing list-list
  8. 1 2 Paul, Ryan (March 28, 2006), "A look at GNOME 2.14", Ars Technica, retrieved October 16, 2011
  9. 1 2 Marco Pesenti Gritti (December 8, 2002), Epiphany's initial home page, archived from the original on April 24, 2003, retrieved October 17, 2011
  10. ↑ "Marco". gnome.org. Retrieved November 28, 2015.
  11. 1 2 "Gentoo-Portage - gnome-base/gnome", Gentoo Portage (software), Gentoo-Portage.com, archived from the original on November 11, 2004, retrieved October 17, 2011
  12. ↑ "Group Details - gnome (i686)", Arch Linux website, archived from the original on October 21, 2011, retrieved October 17, 2011
  13. ↑ Granneman, Scott (2005), Don't click on the blue e!: switching to Firefox, Sebastopol, CA, United States: O'Reilly Media (published October 16, 2005), p. 201, ISBN 0-596-00939-9
  14. 1 2 "New text entry field with focus indication and icons", The GNOME Web Browser Developers, August 3, 2005, retrieved October 17, 2011
  15. 1 2 "π -1", The GNOME Web Browser Developers, March 14, 2006, retrieved October 16, 2011
  16. ↑ "1.9.8 released; XULRunner", The GNOME Web Browser Developers, February 27, 2006, retrieved October 17, 2011
  17. ↑ Lopez, Xan (July 24, 2007), If you see the Buddha on the road, port it to GTK+, retrieved November 25, 2011
  18. 1 2 Lopez, Xan (April 6, 2008), Epiphany ♥ WebKit, retrieved November 25, 2011
  19. ↑ "Gecko end-of-life", The GNOME Web Browser Developers, July 1, 2009, retrieved November 25, 2011
  20. 1 2 Paul, Ryan (September 24, 2009), "Linux garden gets a new GNOME with version 2.28", Ars Technica, retrieved October 16, 2011
  21. 1 2 The GNOME Project, September 28, (March 28, 2012), "GNOME 3.4 Release Notes", gnome-announce mailing list
  22. ↑ "root/README", Epiphany Git repository, retrieved May 20, 2016
  23. ↑ Canonical Ltd (22 April 2016). "epiphany-browser package in Ubuntu". Retrieved 20 May 2016.
  24. ↑ "Packages in Fedora / RHEL / CentOS / EPEL - Package: epiphany". rpms.famillecollet.com. Retrieved September 18, 2018.
  25. ↑ "GNOME Release Notes", The GNOME Project, retrieved October 16, 2011
  26. 1 2 "NEWS file", The GNOME Project's git repository, retrieved October 17, 2011
  27. ↑ Gritti, Marco Pesenti (December 25, 2002), "[Epiphany] Epiphany 0.4", epiphany mailing list
  28. ↑ Gritti, Marco Pesenti (April 13, 2003), "[Epiphany] Epiphany 0.5.0", epiphany mailing list
  29. ↑ Gritti, Marco Pesenti (May 4, 2003), "[Epiphany] Epiphany 0.6.0", epiphany mailing list
  30. ↑ Gritti, Marco Pesenti (June 7, 2003), "[Epiphany] Epiphany 0.7.0", epiphany mailing list
  31. ↑ "Epiphany 0.8.0 Released", mozillaZine, July 13, 2003, archived from the original on November 26, 2010, retrieved October 17, 2011
  32. ↑ Gritti, Marco Pesenti (August 22, 2003), "[Epiphany] Epiphany 0.9.0", epiphany mailing list
  33. ↑ Gritti, Marco Pesenti (September 8, 2003), "[Epiphany] Epiphany 1.0", epiphany mailing list
  34. ↑ Gritti, Marco Pesenti (March 15, 2004), "Epiphany 1.2.0", epiphany mailing list
  35. ↑ Persch, Christian (September 13, 2004), "Epiphany 1.4.0", epiphany mailing list
  36. ↑ Persch, Christian (March 9, 2005), "Epiphany 1.6.0", epiphany mailing list
  37. ↑ van Schouwen, Reinout (September 5, 2005), "Epiphany and Epiphany-extensions 1.8.0", epiphany mailing list
  38. ↑ van Schouwen, Reinout (March 12, 2006), "Epiphany 2.14.0 released!", epiphany mailing list
  39. ↑ "Topic suggestions", The GNOME Web Browser Developers, January 22, 2006, retrieved October 17, 2011
  40. ↑ Newren, Elijah (September 6, 2006), "Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.16!", gnome-announce mailing list, retrieved September 20, 2007
  41. ↑ "Epiphany 2.16 Release Notes", The GNOME Project, March 2, 2008, archived from the original on September 8, 2008, retrieved October 17, 2011
  42. ↑ "A new stabler stable release", The GNOME Web Browser Developers, January 30, 2007, retrieved October 16, 2011
  43. ↑ Newren, Elijah (March 14, 2007), "Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.18!", gnome-announce mailing list, retrieved September 20, 2007
  44. ↑ "Foresight and Epilicious", The GNOME Web Browser Developers, March 4, 2007, retrieved October 16, 2011
  45. ↑ Paul, Ryan (September 19, 2007), "GNOME 2.20 officially released", Ars Technica, retrieved September 20, 2007
  46. ↑ Untz, Vincent (March 12, 2008), "Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.22!", gnome-announce mailing list-list, retrieved March 12, 2008
  47. ↑ Untz, Vincent (September 24, 2008), "Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.24!", gnome-announce mailing list-list, retrieved September 27, 2008
  48. ↑ Untz, Vincent (March 18, 2009), "Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.26!", gnome-announce mailing list-list, retrieved March 18, 2009
  49. ↑ Holwerda, Thom (September 24, 2009). "GNOME 2.28 Released". OSNews. Retrieved April 5, 2009.
  50. 1 2 3 Hatcher, Timothy (September 30, 2008), "Web Inspector Redesign", Webkit developers blogs, retrieved October 18, 2011
  51. ↑ Holwerda, Thom (March 31, 2010). "GNOME 2.30 Released". OSNews. Retrieved April 4, 2010.
  52. ↑ Untz, Vincent (September 29, 2010), "Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.32!", gnome-announce mailing list
  53. ↑ Untz, Vincent (April 6, 2011), "GNOME 3.0 Released", gnome-announce mailing list
  54. ↑ Clasen, Matthias (September 28, 2011), "GNOME 3.2 Released", gnome-announce mailing list
  55. ↑ The GNOME Project, September 26, (September 26, 2012), "GNOME 3.6 Release Notes", gnome-announce mailing list
  56. ↑ The GNOME Project, March 27, (March 27, 2013), "GNOME 3.8 Release Notes", gnome-announce mailing list
  57. ↑ "Epiphany source coder". Gnome. September 26, 2013. Retrieved October 14, 2013.
  58. ↑ "Epiphany source code". Gnome. March 25, 2014. Retrieved March 31, 2014.
  59. ↑ "3.12 Released with New Features for Users and Developers". GNOME. March 26, 2014. Retrieved April 7, 2014.
  60. ↑ "epiphany - A simple, clean, beautiful view of the Web". Gnome. September 24, 2014. Retrieved October 14, 2014.
  61. ↑ "Epiphany 3.14 News file". GNOME. September 24, 2014. Retrieved October 14, 2014.
  62. 1 2 3 4 "epiphany - A simple, clean, beautiful view of the Web". Retrieved December 3, 2015.
  63. 1 2 "epiphany - A simple, clean, beautiful view of the Web". Retrieved December 3, 2015.
  64. ↑ "SpecSupport", WebKit project, retrieved November 14, 2011
  65. ↑ Grand, Rickford (2004), Linux for non-geeks: a hands-on, project-based, take-it-slow guidebook, San Francisco, United States: No Starch Press (published October 16, 2004), pp. 116&ndash, 117, ISBN 1-59327-034-8
  66. ↑ Peterson, Richard (May 2009), Fedora 10 Linux Desktop, San Francisco, United States: Surfing Turtle Press (published June 15, 2008), p. 224, ISBN 0984103627
  67. ↑ Dalheimer, Matthias Kalle; Welsh, Matt (2005-12-22), Running Linux (March 28, 5 ed.), Sebastopol, CA, United States: O'Reilly Media (published March 28, 2006), p. 94, ISBN 978-0-596-00760-7
  68. ↑ McCallister, Michael (January 2006), SUSE Linux 10 unleashed, Unleashed Series, United States: Sams Publishing (published October 16, 2006), p. 225, ISBN 0-672-32726-0
  69. 1 2 Paul, Ryan (April 1, 2012), "Hands-on: GNOME 3.4 arrives, introducing significant design changes", Ars Technica, retrieved April 1, 2012
  70. 1 2 3 4 Wallen, Jack (July 2010). "Epiphany: An efficient, but different, web browser". Ghacks.net. Retrieved March 24, 2011.
  71. ↑ "Smart Bookmarks", The GNOME Project, retrieved December 14, 2011
  72. ↑ Vitters, Olav; Klapper, André; Day, Allan (September 28, 2011), "GNOME 3.2 Release Notes", The GNOME Project, retrieved October 16, 2011
  73. ↑ Lopez, Xan (August 31, 2011), Web application mode in GNOME 3.2, retrieved October 16, 2011
  74. ↑ Andrew (October 3, 2011), Install Epiphany 3.2.0 with Web Application mode in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, retrieved October 16, 2011
  75. ↑ Lopez, Xan (April 11, 2011), The Web comes to GNOME, ready or not, retrieved October 16, 2011
  76. ↑ Hilaiel, Lloyd (February 11, 2011), "Prism is now Chromeless", Mozilla Labs, archived from the original on August 8, 2011, retrieved November 14, 2011
  77. ↑ "On Firefox Sync – Michael Catanzaro". blogs.gnome.org. Retrieved September 25, 2017.
  78. ↑ "Epiphany 3.28 Development Kicks Off With Safe Browsing, Better Flatpak Handling - Phoronix". www.phoronix.com. Retrieved April 9, 2018.
  79. ↑ Klapper, Andre (October 13, 2011), "GNOME 3 Myths My computer and/or graphics card isn't powerful enough to run GNOME 3", The GNOME Project, retrieved December 11, 2011
  80. ↑ "Epiphany/Downloads", The GNOME Project, retrieved December 11, 2011
  81. 1 2 3 Henry, Veronica (March 9, 2011), "Top 3 Alternative Linux Browsers", Train Signal Training, retrieved March 25, 2011
  82. ↑ King Jr, Bertel. "The Best Linux Software". makeuseof.com. Retrieved October 11, 2016.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.