[Oneiric-Topic] Default Browser

[Chris Coulson]

Hi,

On Wed, 2011-04-27 at 17:52 -0500, Micah Gersten wrote:
> Apologies for the delay in response, responses inline.
> 
> This isn't about maintenance as much as a uniform browser experience. 
> The theory being that casual users don't care about the latest and
> greatest stuff as long as they know they're secure and have the tools
> they need.

The fairly rapid uptake of Firefox 4 (over 100 million downloads so far,
and it's still not advertised as a major upgrade for 3.6 users yet)
would suggest that users do care about the latest and greatest. And as
mentioned briefly on IRC yesterday, Epiphany (and Midori) users aren't
all that secure right now, with Webkit not getting a security update in
over 6 months (despite the fact that a lot of Chromium CVE's are for
Webkit code). Chromium and Firefox seem to be the safer bet from a
security POV for Lucid and Maverick users at the moment.

> While having the Firefox test suite enabled is good, that only find
> regressions in Firefox itself.  As the default browser, I'm concerned
> about system integration breaking which the Firefox regression suite
> cannot catch.

What aspects of system integration are you concerned about that the test
suite wouldn't catch?

> Indeed, which is why making it simple for those who recognize the brand
> and want it as their browser is important.

> While sync is important for power users, how important is it for the
> casual user of Ubuntu?

Nearly every single person I know now owns multiple devices and already
shares data across those devices (whether that be just data from GMail
or Facebook). Regardless of whether users are using it right now or not,
this is the sort of thing that users do want to use. I don't think we
can dismiss the ability to share bookmarks and history across devices as
a power-user feature. The ability to share data is exactly the sort of
thing that users do expect to be able to do in a connected world.

> To use the old cliche, will grandma be happy if she gets a browser that
> looks different every 6 weeks?  If functionality moves, will people be
> able to adjust?  Your question hits the nail on the head, which browser
> will provide the best experience for our users?  Is it one that's
> constantly changing or one that's static for the release?  As power
> users, we generally want the latest and greatest.  

Grandma isn't going to get a browser that looks different every 6 weeks.
Whilst the featureset will change gradually over the life of an Ubuntu
release, there won't be radical differences between each version (have a
look at Fx 5 and Fx 6 now - they're merely incremental changes over Fx 4
rather than the major change that Fx 4 is over Fx 3.6, and this is what
the rapid release cycle will continue to bring).

Remember that Mozilla have over 400 million Firefox users to think
about, so they aren't really going to be pushing major changes to users
every 6 weeks if those changes all require significant adjustments to
the way that people use their browser.

> Mozilla's rapid
> release cycle gives us a great excuse to do this.  However, since we're
> trying to bridge the chasm here,  what are users on the other side
> looking for?
> Just for the record, the maintenance burden will be about the same
> whether Firefox is the default browser or not, the main issues are IMHO:
> Can we satisfy the core requirements of browser usage w/out using
> Firefox/Chromium?
> Will people be happy with a rapidly changing browser?

Well, the web will continue to evolve regardless of the default browser
we ship. The question is, will LTS users be happy with a browser that
doesn't support the latest web technologies in 2 years time?

> What's the tradeoff of a security update vs system integration breaking?
> 
> These questions also apply to Thunderbird as a default E-Mail client as
> well (s#browser|Firefox/Chromium#mail client|Thunderbird#).
> 
> Micah
> 

One other point I realised I overlooked when I noticed some spam e-mail
yesterday - what are the anti-phishing tools in other browser like?
Firefox and Chromium both have pretty solid phishing protection. Googles
test URL ( http://malware.testing.google.test/testing/malware/ )
triggers a warning in both browsers. However, when I click this link in
both Epiphany and Midori, I don't see any such warning. Lack of phishing
protection would be a big fail for the default browser from my POV.

Regards
Chris
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