[Oneiric-Topic] Default Browser

Mon Apr 18 14:05:10 UTC 2011

On Thu, 2011-04-07 at 10:36 -0500, Micah Gersten wrote:
> Since now both Firefox and Chromium have committed to rapid release
> schedules, I think it's time to reevaluate the default browser in
> Ubuntu.  I am concerned that some of these upgrades might break system
> integration at some point.  While the security team does its best to
> prevent regressions, we can't test every case (especially ones we don't
> know about :)). Perhaps, if we can find one with sufficient features,
> switch to a Webkit based browser with a more normal release schedule (6
> months).  We could have an installer like Kubuntu does to install
> Firefox or Chromium on demand.  This will also keep the system
> documentation current within the release as the screenshots/menus won't
> be out of date shortly after release.
> 
> Thanks,
> Micah
> 
> 

Hi,

So, here are my initial thoughts about this. I'm not going to respond to
every mail in this thread, as that would just take too much of my time.
The response here is directed at the whole thread really.

What problem are we actually trying to solve here? If it is an issue of
maintenance, then I don't think it really solves anything for us - in
fact, I it makes it slightly worse IMO and I will attempt to explain
why.

Changing the default browser isn't going to make Firefox or Chromium go
away (unless you're suggesting we abandon them entirely, but you suggest
adding a shortcut to Firefox or Chromium in the default install). If we
change the default browser, we're still going to provide the same level
of support we have always provided for Firefox (and Chromium too, many
thanks to Fabien), and I definitely wouldn't want to see this change.
However, there would also be an extra browser for us to look after as
well, so if the problem is actually related to maintenance, then this
doesn't really solve it at all.

Also, quoting what you say in your mail:

> While the security team does its best to prevent regressions, we can't
> test every case (especially ones we don't know about :))

This is why we run the test-suite in Firefox now, and this should avoid
the need for a lot of manual testing (although, I'm not entirely sure
about the scope of your current testing). The Firefox test suite is
pretty extensive - see
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=644621 as an example of the
sort of level at which things can be regression tested in Firefox. I'm
not aware of many other projects that use testing frameworks that enable
you to test things at this level.

Also, remember that Firefox is quite an important and familiar brand
name for people migrating from other operating systems (and we do need
to entice these people to come and try Ubuntu). IMO, only Chromium can
match Firefox here, but you are suggesting we look at something else
anyway.

I see a lot of people are recommending Epiphany. I've used this before,
but it's never been my default browser. I used it again today, for the
first time in a year or so. Here's a brief summary of some of the things
I noticed:

- Text rendering is pretty bad. For some reason, text appears to be tiny
in Epiphany compared with any other browser (or any other application on
my desktop for that matter). This is easily visible by comparing
something like http://www.bbc.co.uk/news side-by-side in Firefox and
Epiphany.

- It has a very wasteful statusbar by default. Ok, I know you can turn
this off - but when I did this and then hovered over some links on the
page, I got a tiny overlay in the bottom-left hand corner displaying the
destination URL in the same barely-readable font that the rest of the
page is in (I had to squint so I could read it). These font sizes don't
seem to match anything else on my system.

- Invalid certificate warnings in Epiphany are unacceptable. Firefox
presents you with an obvious warning before displaying the content and
requires the user to acknowledge what they are doing in order to see the
content. Epiphany warns you of this by presenting the content normally
and displaying a broken padlock at the end of the URL bar (rather than
the unbroken padlock it usually displays). I hardly even noticed this.
This is basically https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=542454 ,
which is 2.5 years old. Jamie also reported the same issue in Launchpad
(https://launchpad.net/bugs/589877).

- My extra mouse buttons don't work in Epiphany (to go back and
forwards). This was reported 5 years ago
(https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=337852).

- There is no button to quickly bookmark the current page. Instead, I
have to go to Bookmarks -> Add Bookmarks... where a modal dialog
appears. There also appears to be no visual cue that the current page is
already bookmarked, although this is pretty minor.

- No session saving, and it doesn't even seem to ask for confirmation
when I close a window that has multiple tabs open.

- If I accidentally close a tab, I don't seem to be able to get it back
again.

In addition to this, Firefox has a significant number of addons and a
vibrant addon developer community (presumably because it is quite easy
to develop addons for Firefox). What is Epiphany's support for addons
like?

Can I synchronize my bookmarks, tabs, history, settings and passwords
with Epiphany on my other devices? I run Firefox on my Android handset,
and synchronize my data between my desktop, laptop and cell-phone. This
works pretty nicely, and Chromium has also got pretty good support for
synchronizing user data too.

Epiphany also doesn't seem to provide any support for integrating
web-apps in to the desktop. This is where Chromium is currently a clear
leader (although, Mozilla are working on this too). In Chromium, I can
navigate to the web store, find an app, install it and create a launcher
on my desktop (which I can add to the launcher in Unity). I can then use
this new icon to launch my new web app in the same way that I would
launch any other application, and it opens in a completely chromeless
window. This is awesome (and is also the future).

I'm not too keen on the visual appearance of Epiphany, although I
appreciate this is really a matter of personal opinion (and I'm basing
this opinion on the version we have in Natty btw). It's nice that it
follows the users GTK theme, but that doesn't automatically make for an
aesthetically pleasing application (software-center uses some
non-standard widgets and doesn't blend in to the desktop in the
traditional sense, but it is probably one of the best looking
applications we ship on the desktop). Firefox really sits nicely with
the Ambiance theme in Ubuntu. It also has nice extras, such as an
animated tab bar, Panorama and extensive theme-ability. The new
addon-manager rocks too.

We also shouldn't overlook the fact that Firefox is backed by a pretty
large developer community, and this is a great benefit to Ubuntu.
Without this, we'd be forced to invest even more time in fixing issues
we have (and fixing things I currently take for granted, such as support
for extra mouse buttons and more noticeable warnings of invalid SSL
certs).

On a positive note, rendering and page-load speed seemed comparable to
Firefox, and it's pretty quick to start too. It also has some advantages
such as keyring integration, and the ability to save/open files to/from
gvfs mounts (although, the work has already been done in Firefox to weed
out the last remaining pieces of gnomevfs and complete the GIO
integration - it just needs reviewing and committing).

At the end of the day when we select the default browser, the question
we should be asking ourselves is:

"Which browser provides the best experience for our users?"

...rather than...

"Which browser is easiest for us to maintain?"

IMO, the last question is looking at the problem in the wrong way :)

Regards
Chris

PS - Sorry it is so long - I did try to not make this e-mail a
brain-dump of my thoughts. I've probably also missed out things that I
wanted to say too.
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