Epiphany gets a speed dial overview!

This post was made with another stylesheet and it might be messed up!

Epiphany, or the Web if you like, is one of those core Gnome applications that developers should start focusing on with all their power. It is an important but left behind part of the whole Gnome experience.

A step towards the evolution of the Web was achieved through the collaboration of Igalia hackers and Gnome design team. The new feature is called overview and basically allows the speed dial of your favorite websites!

According to Claudio Saavedra who made the announcement:

“This will certainly be the most prominent new feature of Epiphany in GNOME 3.6, and we believe you’ll love it. Personally, I think that this is a huge usability improvement, but I’m much more excited about the possibilities this brings from here on. For 3.8, our plans are more ambitious, but I guess that we will talk more about it when the time is due.”

To see what’s more to come concerning the 3.6 release of Epiphany, read the application roadmap!

comment

Why not copy code from Chromium? it’s open source.

Brian Robles

I believe the assumption is that this will be much more than a simple speed dial in future iterations. See http://youtu.be/b2VALT-DMGU

Ian Brunelli

Someone know if they are planning to make this new redesign in version 3.8?
I hoped that it would be in 3.6, but will not.

alex285

The features in Brian Robles YouTube link, was to be included in 3.4. Then they postponed for 3.6. So there are plans to be included in 3.8. But will they?

Ian Brunelli

Exactly!
I hope yes, but think they will include some new features and leave the redesign to 4.0.

ScionicSpectre

We really need the overview to be complete to replace the tabs, as they’re a little difficult to work right now for a regular user. A menuitem and shortcut aren’t obvious enough to use for something as central as adding a new tab- a simple plus sign would suffice. Of course, since tabs are going away, it wouldn’t make too much sense to add something that would be removed in 6 months.

I still use Epiphany for almost everything, but it will be nice when the interface is complete.

alex285

Which tabs are you referring to?

ScionicSpectre

Tabs up top- the ones that contain individual webpages. These are to be replaced by the Pages button which shows thumbnails in the overview instead of a persistent tabs list (similar to how we have an overview for windows instead of a window list or persistent dock).

This way people can visualize what tabs are open more immediately, rather than looking at a favicon and a title and hoping they click the right one (again, this is almost identical to the issue with a window list vs. scaled overview). Of course, shortcuts like Ctrl+Tab will still be available to instantly switch between open pages without going to the overview. This page explains more of why this is changing; https://live.gnome.org/Design/Web/Tabs

alex285

That feature is on FF also since 1-2 years ago. But it doesn’t work (at least the way it is). I am looking forward on it :)

ScionicSpectre

Oh, you mean TabCandy? Yes, this is similar, although it’s not a very good experience. The layout and animations are just cludgy and uninspiring, and their concept for grouping tabs needs some work. However, you have to hand it to Firefox for being so flexible without looking crazy. These days I only really use Epiphany and Firefox unless I’m doing web development (WebGL these days).

When Epiphany gets WebGL support and Flash dies, I probably won’t use anything else. And yes, I am aware that you can wrap 32-bit Flash into Epiphany, but I think it runs better without Flash. ;)
alex285

None like flash, not even Adobe :) What are you using for WebGL ?
ScionicSpectre

I’m using Firefox and Chrome to test WebGL, since they seem to be the most performant, although I do test against the latest Firefox on Android to see how much (or little) WebGL’s performance improves on mobile platforms. What I’m working on in WebGL specifically I’m not at liberty to say.
alex285

I am not asking what are you building, but what framework are you using for webgl :)
ScionicSpectre

Oh, I get it (brain-fart). I’m using Three.js and experimenting with Ammo.js and Physijs. I’m surprised at how robust it is for such a young library.
alex285

Oh thanks for sharing. I knew only three.js

Zsolt

It could be a great browser, but it really needs some sort of addon system with more stuff, or a Firefox addon or Chrome extension compatibility layer. Currently I’m on Firefox with addons like HTTPS-Everywhere + HTTPS Finder, GoogleSharing, an is.gd shortener, a long URL revealer, PrivacyChoice TrackerBlock. These are the addons that are not browser usability related ones. It’d nice to use them in Epiphany.

Ian Brunelli

It seems like they will make Chrome and Firefox extensions compatible with Epiphany :D

Bob

This is looks nice. I hope that they also add a button to open a new tab.