Why Firefox is not a good choice of browser for a KDE/Plasma-based product

[Michal Hlavinka]

On 03/26/2014 01:49 PM, Kevin Kofler wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am going to summarize what I wrote yesterday on IRC so everyone can read
> it.
>
> The discussion of what should be the default browser on the Plasma Product
> has come up yesterday, and I strongly believe that Firefox is NOT the answer
> (but either Konqueror+KWebKitPart or Rekonq is), for the following reasons:

Yet firefox is the answer for just one following reason:
It works.

I tried both konqueror and rekonq a long time ago and was not satisfied 
with them at all. Before writing this email, I tried them again. Rekonq 
improved, but still not good enough.

I use tabs in firefox as my todo-list (with extra addons to make sure I 
don't lose it). Right now I have 480+ tabs. Firefox is still working, it 
is fast and memory consumption is reasonable.

I tried rekonq and it crashed before I got to 50 tabs. (google search 
for something and open every link in a new tab). Just before it crashed 
it took almost half of the RAM firefox takes - with 10% of tabs (I don't 
know if some memory management would hit later, just describing what 
I've seen).

Firefox is faster - tried loading a few huge pages, rekong took 
130%-200% time to load them.

Quick html5 support test (http://html5test.com/) shows html5 support in 
firefox is better.

Also, for user it is annoying to get "Your web browser is too old or not 
supported" messages too often (I got them 3 times during just a few 
minute test).

Anyway, if it is still possible to install Firefox from repository, I 
don't care. It's what I've been doing for last X years anyway. When I 
install Linux  ( = Fedora KDE ), people are usually happy. But 
LibreOffice and Firefox is a must.

Seems to me this is the purity vs. usability question. It would be nice 
to have well integrated web browser - an application that is used most 
of the time ordinary user is working with a computer. Especially file 
dialog and kwallet integration would be nice. On the other hand, users 
will get much better experience with firefox. Similar as mediaplayers or 
codecs in fedora. We have them extra - located in rpmfusion. It's nice 
that our system is Pure(tm), but users usually do not care. They want to 
use their computer so they have to install all those Ugly and Unpure(tm) 
  pieces anyway. It's just annoying to have to do it and some leave 
fedora with (wrong) impression "it does not work in fedora, but it works 
in ubuntu", Don't use this approach, learn from it.

Just my 2 cents.

Michal