[Oneiric-Topic] Default Browser

[Shane Fagan]

Hi Chris,

Maybe I was presuming a bit of things :)
>> Firefox I don't think ever fit in because of XUL.
>
> I'd like to know why you think Firefox won't ever fit in because of XUL?
> After all, it's just another toolkit (like QT is just another toolkit,
> or perhaps you think that QT wouldn't fit in too?), and Firefox does
> actually render platform native widgets in most cases. In any case, I
> think Firefox fits in pretty well in Natty, and I'd be interested to
> know what you think currently stands out.

Well what I mean but it will never fit in is its not really like using
GTK and having all those looks for free. I didn't say that Firefox
doesn't look great in natty but when you go down past the main
interface to the preferences or the history it doesn't really look or
behave like a native app. As for Qt it does actually fit in quite well
at the moment if you compare apps side by side in terms of look with
the same content on each window. They are just toolkits but there is a
difference between each of them and it is noticeable in the finer
details but I suppose for the regular user they wouldn't notice it too
much so ill withdraw that point.

>> It takes a lot of work every release to get the plugin going to make Firefox act in some
>> way like a regular addition to the desktop.
>
> As the Firefox maintainer in Ubuntu, this is news to me - perhaps I'm
> missing something?

Ok I admit I was putting words in your mouth there but what I meant
was it would be a lot more effort maintaining the big plugin release
to release rather than if we could send a patch to epiphany for
instance and that would be in the upstream. (Im just presuming some
stuff here though and you said its not a big thing to maintain so its
cool :) )

>
>> Also on integration issue
>> it also isn't integrated with unity with quicklists and all that kind
>> of thing.
>
> Well, it's already integrated with the global menu. In addition to this,
> I'm going to be doing work on integrating it with the launcher in Unity
> next cycle. However, a spec or some suggestions of useful things I could
> do with quicklists would be welcome.

Cool look forward to giving it a try next release.

> What else is missing?
>
>
>> Maintaining the plugin for
>> Firefox and adding more bits to it every time and working around
>> compatibility stuff and having to keep the 2 packages going is a lot
>> more effort than just patching something once and shipping it.
>
> Same response as the one to your similar comment above ;)

So good to get proven wrong about some of the stuff but still I don't
withdraw the suggestion about Epiphany. And I think my point above
about the look still stands up a bit if you compare the preferences
window for firefox and for any other application shipped in Ubuntu
today.

--fagan