Should Firefox stay the default browser in Fedora Workstation?

[Kalvin Lee]

Speaking /entirely/ from a layman's perspective, I disagree with this 
proposal. I have GNOME Web on my machine as a secondary browser; while I 
do like its UI and its GTK support, these are only marginal 
considerations before the rest of the functionality in Firefox.

In the spirit of "Don't fix what's not broken" and "tyranny of the 
masses," I think that, constraining our view to Fedora users only, 
Firefox has a bigger userbase than Epiphany. Speaking purely for the 
layman end-user, it would appear a strange decision to abruptly abandon 
Firefox for GNOME Web. Yes, I am aware just how easy it us to run "su -c 
'yum install firefox'," but not all unfortunate end-users are able, and 
I suspect the move would generate a great deal of bad publicity and FUD 
on the eye-rolling review sites.

Yammering aside, I see Christian Schaller has actually summed up my 
points better than all my blabbering here. I do, however, agree with you 
(Elad) and Michael Catanzaro in that shipping two browsers won't work 
very well. Michael's usability questions also apply. For some reason I'm 
obligated to kill Epiphany every time after I close it (the process 
lingers?) and the compatibility issues are a little irksome (Google 
Images, for example, refuses completely to give my its modern 
continuously-scrolling interface).

I would appreciate more exposure for GNOME Web, but shipping it by 
default might not attract the right audience for that. And I don't quite 
understand how Fedora contributing to Firefox "instead of" GNOME Web is 
the wrong direction, if anyone could expand on that for me?

On 06/06/2014 08:52 AM, Elad Alfassa wrote:
> Should Firefox stay the default browser in Fedora Workstation?
>
> I know it's powerful, it has a lot of extensions, and it's popular. 
> But it's integration with our desktop is lacking and getting worse all 
> the time.
>
> Here's a list of things Firefox lacks in Fedora:
> * GPU acceleration
> * Integration with the desktop's geolocation services
>   * On that note, geolocation doesn't work at all in Fedora's firefox 
> at the moment
> * Integration with the desktop's notification system
> * Support of url scheme handlers (this used to work)
> * UI that matches the rest of the desktop (without installing 3rd 
> party theme and extensions)
> * GTK3 support
> * High-DPI support
> * Touch input support
>
> Some of those issues are being actively worked on, other have 
> incomplete patches in upstream's bugzilla with nobody working to 
> finish them, and some of them seem to be issues that will never be 
> solved (such as making the UI feel more "native" to GNOME).
>
> Meanwhile, Epiphany (GNOME Web) keeps getting better and better, 
> perhaps we should consider it as the default?
> -- 
> -Elad Alfassa.
>
>

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