I can’t use Epiphany and I don’t, mostly because it cannot still recognize 6,7 mouse buttons (back-forward)!? Well, yesterday I used it a bit to test the performance of WebKit in Web and in my cool (sic) app I am making.
I accidentally pressed back button ..and it worked! Surprisingly there were more nice things that came into my attention!
Noticeable changes
This is not a standard version of Web, I have it from sources as it was yesterday, which is the same as for today, there aren’t any more commits. At first look we get 4 new changes;
- Search: A new cool search bar is now on the top-center and not on the bottom (thanks!)
- Ads: An ad blocker is now available from the options
- Mouse Buttons: You can now use mouse buttons 6&7 to navigate back and forward.
- Incognito Mode: There is also a Incognito Mode that opens with the the dark theme!
Incognito Mode
Incognito doesn’t keep cache or history. The dark theme that reminds us is a Incognito Window is a bit excessive. A more discreet way -an icon maybe- would fit better here. Also it won’t work if you use a theme that hasn’t a dark variant or if you enable dark theme for all windows.
Speed Dial is poor and the only thing you can do is to delete thumbnails. Tab Right Click Menu is also poor, with just Move Left/Right and Close options. No Duplicate, no Pin Tab, no Close All Left/Right options here. There isn’t a quick button to create a new tab and you are forced to use Gear Menu (who will do this?) or <Ctrl+Tab>.
Search & Ads
Search feels very nice and clear, but is missing word counter which is very important. Colors on the selected (Cube title) isn’t easily recognized and it should some different color here.
We can disable Advertisements (figure on right) and if you haven’t noticed we run a Google Ad on the right of each article, which is now off thanks to Epiphany new option ;)
Epiphany 3.7.3 Changelog
There are more changes in Epiphany and I am just adding the 3.7.3 log which is a 3 weeks old.
- Vastly improve the icon generation for Web Applications (#657755)
- Allow to zoom images, since this is actually supported by WebKit now
- New design for the find bar (#689929)
- Add an ‘Incognito window’ mode in the UI (#676914)
- Support back/forward mouse buttons (#337852)
- Improve heuristics to decide whether to open new windows or where to append new tabs when Web is invoked from other applications (#685976)
- Add zoom controls to the gear menu (#683625)
- Use GtkSearchEntry all over the place instead of our own version (#687744)
- Tidy up the application menu to be more in sync with other core apps (#678962)
- Add support for favicons in WebKit2.
- Tons of cleanups and other bugfixes.
There was a proposal for Epiphany to be the project for the Friend of Gnome yearly donation instead of Privacy. Gnomers picked Privacy as it was a more general goal.. but if I could choose, I would certainly vote for Epiphany.
Ok, there are Chromium and Firefox but still the Web-Browser is the most important part of the Desktop today and GNOME is way to behind on that; they can’t control any changes in Firefox or Chromium and add any integration with GNOME. Epiphany is more important than Documents, is more important than Contacts..
Also I found this nice article HOW BROWSERS WORK: BEHIND THE SCENES OF MODERN WEB BROWSERS. It is 1,5 years old but it still applies.