Outstanding Epiphany Issues

Rationale

To achieve our long term goal of making Epiphany suitable for Galeon users, we need to identify the differences and shortcomings in Epiphany that have to be addressed. Most things will be addressable through extensions but a few will require core Epiphany changes or additions to the extension interface to make possible.

The following list was initially put together by CrispinFlowerday.

Galeon features that are already available as extensions

• View-source rendered by mozilla (available here (in python) or here (in C, requires compiling)).

• Sidebar (lacking special history and bookmark panes, but these could be added if desired).

  • Probably yes, see Epiphany/BookmarksHistoryIntegration

• Mouse gestures (but not configurable; Epiphany's gestures don't work if started over a hyperlink)
• Page properties dialog (but lacks security page)
• Most Tab menu actions (except for 'Clone').
• Middle mouse button autoscrolling config option

Galeon features that can be implemented as extensions today

• Quit menu item
• Myportal
• Menu item for about:plugins

• Position of new tabs. Probably needs to be single extension as co-operation between extensions seems undefined. See also tab-groups

  • Opening new tabs on middle-click immediately after current tab, on Ctrl+T at the end
  • Opening new tabs (on middle-click) in the background/foreground with Ctrl+middle-click inverting the default behavior

• Open new windows as tabs. Discussed here. I can live with the implications described in this argument. -- AmirYalon

Galeon features that require changes to the extension interface

• Full Cookie/Password/Image/Popup control in Personal Data Manager (need to expose manager dialog to extensions)
• Missing preferences (expose preference dialog to extensions)
  • Save session on quit
  • Configurable new-page behaviour
  • Configurable middle-click behaviour

Galeon features that currently need changes to core Epiphany

• Middle-click handling for toolbar actions (PhilipLangdale is currently working on this)

  • This should include middle-click handling on a smartbookmark button (works similar to Ctrl-Enter)
• Context menu mode for back/up/forward history. (Might not be exposed in core, but must be implemented there)
  • Alternately, actions can be exposed in extension interface for subclassing. But might be going too far.
• DND to toolbar actions (eg: New-Tab).
• VFolder categories. Most of what vfolders can be used for can be done with topics, and the special most-recently-used special topic. Might want to add a most-recently-added topic and there may be some use for url pattern match topics so users don't have to go through their whole set to add particular urls to them manually.
• Marking bookmarks to appear on context menus. (Probably use a special context menu topic).
  • Could it be done as an extension? Perhaps.

    • How is this different from the smart-bookmarks extension? --AdamHooper

• Galeon Spinner Action should replaced current epiphany spinner hack. Looks and works better.
• Ctrl-Enter for smartbookmarks and highlighted location entry matches
  • Ctrl-Enter on the location entry only works for the currently typed text, not for the highlighted entry in the drop down.
  • Also, dropdown doesn't disappear on a ctrl-enter.

  • Ctrl-Enter for smartbookmak field is fixed in 1.9.6 (see also gnomebug:310814) -- ChristianLohmaier

• SBM Configurability (Could be extensions if SBM widget creation can be hooked into).
  • Allow icons to be specified for SBMs (can save screen realestate).
  • Bookmark nicknames. (Mozilla/Firefox have these too). Arguable redundant with having SBMs appear in location dropdown. But Crispin doesn't think so.
  • Resizable/Collapseable SBM entries.

    • resizing is possible by appending »%{width=<numberOfCharacters>}« directly after the »%s« - see also gnomebug:332896 -- ChristianLohmaier

  • SBM history.
• Ability to respect the Emacs key-theme.

-- PhilipLangdale - 22 Oct 2005

Possible others

I'm not terribly familiar with Epiphany so these might be possible with extensions, but these are some of the major reasons I use Galeon rather than it:

• Zoom toolbar item is Galeon is a text edit, in Epiph. it's select-from-these-options.
  • See gnomebug:117923
• Galeon toolbar bookmark items that have no icon have no icon, not a file-icon
• New tabs can be opened after the current group, where group is the current tab and all tabs opened from this one since you last switched tabs
• Address bar tab completion for local files/directories
• Tabs position

  • as in "I (YankoKaneti) want them on bottom where they have been from day one of me using tabs".

  • please also enable tabs to be positioned down the left (or right) hand side - this is Galeon's killer feature for me, working on a laptop with a 1280x600 monitor resolution (KevinShanahan)

    • Already possible (see here)

Here are some features/elements that I (MaciekBieszczad) prefer in Galeon to those Epiphany:

• Size of tabs (smaller in Galeon, more like Firefox)
• Folders in Galeon have icons, whereas in Epiphany they do not

  • Epiphany has topics, not folders --ReinoutVanSchouwen

• New tabs in Galeon preserve history, whereas those in Epiphany do not

  • It does for me in 2.14.1 --DiegoEscalanteUrrelo

• Position of tab (immediately after current tab in Galeon, last available tab in Epiphany)

  • Use the Tab groups extension then (ReinoutVanSchouwen)

ReinoutVanSchouwen:

• Tooltip containing page title over back/forward buttons --ReinoutVanSchouwen

PavelKacha:

• Location text history pulldown - when using Up/Down arrows, Galeon remembers exact text entered by user, which is irreplacable in connection with smart URLs. For example - user enters "g gnome brovser" for Google search, then he spots typo, so he hits Down arrow and just corrects it, then he decides to launch more specific search on gnomefiles, so hits Down again, Home, changes "g" to "gf"... Firefox's history are pain to edit URLs after smart transformation (...google.com/search?q=gnome%20browser...), whereas Epiphany has (by design) no location history.

PaulArnold:

• The google search box in the toolbar is preferable to the 'search in the address bar' behavior of Epiphany.

  • Also, there can be multiple, e.g. for Google, Wikipedia, Ubuntu Packages, ... --JochenEppler

• In Galeon (pre 1.3.12) it was possible to place toolbars at the bottom of the window. In particular the navigation and address bars. See gnomebug:132787.
• On Ctrl-t the address bar, in the new tab, should be selected (as it is in Galeon), so that you don't need to click before typing an URL.

MichalJaneczek:

• In Galeon it is possible to zoom in or out (change font size) using Ctrl-= (without shift), and also Ctrl with -/+ on the numpad

JochenEppler:

• 'Duplicate Tab' is great to visit pages that have similar urls.

ChristianLohmaier:

• Activate/Deactivate Java/Javascript should be accessible using the menu or contextmenu.
• Galeon-Style smart bookmarks, i.e. with "standard" URL that is activated when clicking the label, "smart" URL for the text-entry box and "nickname" for easy access in the Load-URL box.

• <tab>-completion in URL-bar (not only for local files as mentioned above, but mainly for URLs in the history)

• paste URL (middle-mouse button) into document-window should open new tab (there is a gconf key - /apps/epiphany/general/middle_click_open_url - to enable middle-mouse-pasting of an URL, but it cannot be configured to paste the URL as new tab or new window)
• bookmark editor that lets you actually add a bookmark (in epiphany you have to use "bookmark this page/link" to add an entry)
• turn off the confusing tab-jumping behaviour when closing tabs. Either always jump to the one left to the one you're about to close, or always jump to the one on the right hand side - depending on how you collapse the tab-pane. (e.g. jump to the one the cursor will be over when you don't move the mouse in the meantime). You should then be viewing the page that would be closed if you hit the mouse-button again.
• stop the "task-bar-icon-equals-favicon" thing. It is appropriate when the browser is the only thing that is running, but it is very disruptive if you want to switch between apps and there always is another icon to click on (esp. when you collaps the taskbar so that there is no room for text, only the icons to identify the app).

  • fixed in 1.9.6, see gnomebug:131010 -- ChristianLohmaier

• clear smart-bookmark input after pressing (<ctrl>+)<enter> - otherwise it is very hard not to lose the selection clipboard content that one is trying to paste into that field...

WouterVanHemel:

• It's possible to share the (XBEL format) bookmarks from Galeon with Konqueror by means of a simple symlink. I don't know how Epiphany stores its bookmarks, but I hope a way can be found to share the same bookmarks between as many browsers as possible. This makes things easier for people who like or have to switch between different desktop interfaces. It's really dumb to have three bookmark formats for as many browsers (Galeon-Epiphany, Konqueror, Firefox) with no convenient way to share the actual data. If it comes to that, it'd probably make more sense for many people to dump Galeon, Epiphany and Konqueror alltogether for Firefox's (or a statically compiled Opera's) relative independence of either GUI.

donpaolo:

• open all the category bookmarks when middle-clicking on the bookmark category.

elho:

• do not allow JavaScript (and anything else) to resize window, hide the toolbar, etc.

Helping Users Migrate

LiamQuin:

• merge history, cookies and saved passwords from Galeon into Epiphany
  • (this is the biggest reason why I still use Galeon)
• merge bookmarks?

Features from previous versions of Galeon

ChristianLohmaier:

• The arrows in the tab-toolbar should not switch to the next tab, but only move the current view of tabs (and keep the current one active)

  • That was never a Galeon feature as such, it's just the way GtkNotebook works. To my knowledge the current behavior is better for accessibility. --TommiKomulainen

    • Hmm - what is good for accessibility isn't necessarily good usability (I don't have sticky keys enabled, and don't use an on-screen-keyboard or magnifier either). Even it it wasn't meant as a feature, I certainly find it more useful and more intuitive (nowhere else scrolling selects something). And there still are the keycombos to switch to the next/previous tab directly. -- ChristianLohmaier

NorbertBuchmuller:

• Middle-clicking the "New tab" button opens the URL in the paste buffer in a new tab.