Epiphany: The Web through the eyes of GNOME

If you build 1.7.2 and the Epiphany extensions from source, then it supports Firefox-style find dialogues. Screenshot of Epiphany's new find widget

I have Ubuntu 5.04 with the epiphany 1.6.1 and the search bar is avalaible in the tools - extentions menu.

It's like firefox now

1. There's an RSS extension in the works, for a screenshot see http://s88648154.onlinehome.us/feedreader-screenshot1.png. Help with testing etc. appreciated as always.
2. There's a patch for Epiphany that generates hierarchies automatically based on topics, but it didn't make it before feature freeze. If you insist on subfolders, however, you can create topics with an -> arrow in them. This works in the current version of Epiphany. This feature was added to ease importing of existing bookmark collections.

Please, check http://live.gnome.org/Epiphany_2fFeedReaderExtension
However, this extension is not coupled with the bookmarks subsystem (yet).

An Epiphany-webcore branch actually exists in CVS, however no one is working on it at the moment and it has probably bitrotted. But if people want to work on it, they're free to do so.

Webcore is an excellent engine for rending most _current_ HTML pages, but Gecko is still much more advanced when it comes to "future" technologies. It wouldn't make sense to switch now, as Mozilla is going very strong. One obvious advantage of Gecko is, that it is available for Windows, so web developers can more easily test for conformity. But of course it would be nice to see a port of Epiphany to Webcore as an alternative.

I'm sure somehow or another it'll get tacked into the XMPP protocol (Jabber) ;-). I 'unno.

The best thought I can come up with is a java chat client for IRC that also does something with Gaim...I really don't know.

The Flash block method described on floppymoose.com works quite effectively for Epiphany too. Put the userContent.css file (including the Flash modification, read the whole page!) in ~/.gnome2/epiphany/mozilla/epiphany/chrome/ and it will work.

What do you mean when you say mozplugger does not know GNOME? I've used it for displaying videos (though nowadays I use Totem's Mozilla plugin). And it works with Evince, too -- a Google search brought me to http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-25685.html but I imagine the best solution would be an Evince browser plugin.

Smart bookmarks have been around since Epiphany 1.0. Just create a bookmark to http://www.google.com/search?q=%s and you can add it to your toolbar. Better yet, you can use the same location entry to type in your search, then select "Google" in the drop-down which appears.

Hi,

I am currently running Firefox 1.0.6 on Ubuntu Breezy.

In order to enable streaming media I followed the instructions on the Ubuntu forum for using Mozplugger + Totem. Works fine.

However I would like to move over to the Totem-Mozilla plugin.

Could you provide a link to the plugin or instructions to get it up and running.

Cheers.

Ephy has smart bookmarks. One of the default bookmarks is "Search the web" or something, just type your query in the address bar, and select search from the drop down. It's the same principle as bookmark shortcuts in firefox, but much simpler to use. Also, you can use them on highlighted words in any page, just search straight from the context menu. I've never used the google toolbar though, so who knows.

As for plugins, the media side should be better soon, as totem now has a native plugin. And as for pdfs, I've always considered inline viewing to be horrible, so best ask someone else about that...

"can firefox be integrated into gnome?"

Flamebait aside, this is always an interesting question. In a way it can, about as good as it integrates on Windows: Practically not at all. Firefox can behave like a nice GNOME application should do and it can even look like a GNOME application (mostly), but it will never truely integrate as a part of the desktop. Firefox is simply not designed for that, but as a third party application that runs reasonably well on top of several platforms. Firefox is like its own little world.
Changing this would practically require to write an entirely new frontend and then we could just as well use Epiphany instead.

Creating a frontend is much less work than creating a web rendering engine for example, so there is also no reason to stick with Firefox simply because it has more developers. It is one of the strengths of Gecko that it can easily be embedded in native applications, we would be silly not to make use of it. Many users will appreciate this, and those who don't will always have the option to use Firefox as what it's intended to be: An independent third party application, which happens to also run on GNOME.

See the FAQ question on Firefox's GNOME integration.

I use Epiphany because it is simple, it has all the features I need and I think that it is better integrated in gnome. But the best thing is that you can choose. You can use Firefox or Epiphany. These people are not wasting their time, they are just implementing what they think that is a better browser (that does not necessarily be what you think that is the best one).

Everything I wanted to say was said in that last comment, so this is just to say I agree.

Epiphany is the nicest browser I've used, and I miss its features when I have to use firefox. Other people may think the opposite, but that's their choice.

As heretical as it sounds, one of my favourite parts of ephy is the bookmarks. I never use the menu, that's pretty much useless (takes several screens to fit it all in,) but typing in a category name in the address bar is a fantastic way to work. For example, if I type "articles," or even just the first few letters, I get articles on every subject, which is great when I just want something to read. Other times, I type the subject instead, and it gives me everything related to that. The only change I would make would be to allow items on the bookmarks bar to have filter with more than one category ('courses' and 'year 3' being the list I'd really like); I should probably fill in a report on that one.

Oh, and smart bookmarks are vital for everything.

I agree completely with the parent and grandparent. Epiphany has this intuition about it. If I want a list of python programming references that I've bookmarked, I type "python". If I want all the recipes I've bookmarked on the web, I type "food". I really miss that functionality when I'm not using Epy.

The Epiphany Extensions package provides all the vital extensions (for me it's mainly mouse gestures and Firefox-style find dialogue which is brilliant, but there are all kinds of others too).

Firefox is also a brilliant browser, and it's by far my first choice for Windows. But my preference goes to Epiphany...its extremely robust in very subtle ways. Use it for a month with the Epiphany Extensions package, and you'll know what I mean.

Epiphany is a GNOME-based web browser that embeds the Gecko rendering engine from Mozilla. So in a sense, yes, it is a frontend for Firefox.

Firefox extensions however cannot be used in Epiphany because they're not GTK-based, and javascript bindings for GTK don't exist. But there is the Epiphany-extensions package, it may provide the functionality you are looking for.

#105153

Don't be fooled by the reporter, in fact the problem also occurs when you open a new tab while another one is still loading. The focus is then stolen and moved into the hidden tab. That means that while you are looking at one tab, your keypresses actually go into the hidden tab. Sometimes might even be scary (imagine someone typing his password into the hidden tab :-/).

That some bugs take lots of time to fix does not mean that nobody cares. For what it's worth, the problem will be worked around in Epiphany 1.8.