Galeon Developers Interview

Nachtjäger writes "The Galeon website has an interview with the developers, describing overall project health, current problems, and future direction. There's also a place to ask your own questions for future interviews."

Comments

They've had a lot of trouble.

[James A. A. Joyce]

People have been abandoning the project for imaginary problems or unimportant problems, all of which stem from, allegedly, "libbonobogui", which appears to be a graphical API for GNOME. This has been the cause of lots of kludges in versions 1.2 and 1.3 and they look forward to ceasing to use it. They've also been hit hard by being dropped by both Red Hat and Slackware! Fortunately, they're getting back on their feet now since some people have stuck with Galeon (which is a pretty fine browser, if not the prettiest) and so it's been gradually improving. I believe a new version was released just a few hours/days ago.

Go download it! Show your support!

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[Anonymous Coward]

They've been hit badly because the developer of Epiphany is a *major* ass kisser of Havoc Pennington (Red Hat) -- it's hugely embrassing really, watching the brownnoser politics at work. The Epiphany browser is dogshit... literally... it's is unusable for anything real like browsing, and yet Pennington feels the need to put it as a default in RedHat because the developer backs him up on his extremist "no features" jihad.

Gnome is rapidly becoming a major clusterfuck these days. Which is a shame, because the only other real option is selling yourself to SCO (aka... Trolltech's owner), and subjecting yourself to the full GPL just to write desktop apps, or paying SCO $3000 for every developer.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[owenb]

Gnome is rapidly becoming a major clusterfuck these days. Which is a shame, because the only other real option is selling yourself to SCO (aka... Trolltech's owner), and subjecting yourself to the full GPL just to write desktop apps, or paying SCO $3000 for every developer.

Enough with this FUD. SCO own less than 2% of Trolltech. Trolltech put out an extremely high quality GPL'd product, and you complain? Write a better one, fix the problems in Gnome, or shut up.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome is rapidly becoming a major clusterfuck these days. Which is a shame, because the only other real option is selling yourself to SCO (aka... Trolltech's owner), and subjecting yourself to the full GPL just to write desktop apps, or paying SCO $3000 for every developer.

So, contribute to a sane, working, API

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[IamTheRealMike]

What a load of rubbish. It's the default in Red Hat Rawhide because it's the default in the next version of Gnome, that was not a decision red hat made.

As for the reasons why it is the default in Gnome, that might have something to do with the fact that MPG is co-operative and convinced the gnome release team he was aligned with their goals, as opposed to the Galeon team, who did not.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Which is a shame, because the only other real option is selling yourself to SCO (aka... Trolltech's owner),

What the crock is this horse shit? The SCO group owns 1.6% of TrollTech.

Teach yourself some motherfucking economics you fucking jew.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is it asswipe. One person eariler claimed it was "only" 6%, now someone says 2%, and finally you say 1.6%. My guess it's closer to 25%

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[Xoro]

Couldn't agree more about HP's destructive anti-feature craze. It's even hurt Galeon. Where did "Save Session" go? Where did "File Bookmark" go? I use Gnome because I find KDE too circus (cirKus?) -like, but man, they've got to leave *some* features in.

Some other silliness:

• No float on top feature to Metacity? Too complicated?
• Ugly list of useless "put on workspace" choices (also Metacity) because nested listing is "unintuitive"?
• New GTK file-save box -- much-needed upgrade but no way to access .(dot)files? Sure, it's much cleaner when they're hidden, but it meant I had to type in a filename five levels deep just to point my program to it.
• And you said it about Epiphany. I've seen more features on a kiosk.

I hope the galeon people take getting dropped as a liberation rather than a punishment. Let them get back to making a great browser rather than trying to conform to someone's warped interpretation of monkey-computer interface guidelines.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[juhaz]

Since when RedHat has any obligation to follow Gnome defaults when deciding what software goes into THEIR distribution?

It's damn certainly RH's choice, and I'm going to be DAMN pissed if Galeon will be missing from RH X or whatever it's going to be called.

And what comes to Gnome release teams "goal" these days it seems to be to target people with iq10, fine, they may find most potential users there, but at the same time that totally alienates more tech-knowledgeable people, how do they think they're going to get any more developers if those said developers can't even use their own software because it's too damn braindead?

Most people that write software for free do so primarily because they wish to use it themselves, not because they wish to make world better place to live.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[rmohr02]

Qt isn't GPL'd for Windows.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[JanneM]

The Galeon developers basically do not wish to follow the Gnome HIG. This is certainly fine - and Galeon is a good browser - but I'd say it's pretty reasonable that an application that is so central to a desktop should also follow the common guidelines set up for the core apps.

And as usual, there is absolutely nothing stopping the knowledgeable user from simply running whatever apps they want on their desktop. As for Redhat, they have switched to a more open process, where outside people have a lot more say in what should go in - make yourself heard!

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where does the HIG say: Thou shalt not include any useful features? That's the only reason why galeon should be excluded... simply because Havoc throws his weight around.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's libbonoboui.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[ttk]

The Galeon developers basically do not wish to follow the Gnome HIG. This is certainly fine - and Galeon is a good browser - but I'd say it's pretty reasonable that an application that is so central to a desktop should also follow the common guidelines set up for the core apps.

This is simply not true. We are trying to follow the HIG as much as we can, but when it comes to a choice between blindly following the HIG or a feature we feel is essential, we'll probably always be choosing the feature.

It's Human Interface Guidelines, we are still allowed to think for ourselves.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[Anonymous Coward]

It time to boycott every company in which the Canopy Group has more than $10,000. Where can I get this information ?

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[owenb]

Well buy a licence then. Or port the Unix GPL'd version. Or start from scratch. Or give up on that lame platform and develop for Unix. But stop moaning.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[Somnus]

I used to use GNOME, then switched to Fluxbox, then back to GNOME (v.2, with Epiphany). I think the HIG decisions make it clean (like Fluxbox and co.) but featureful like KDE (which, I agree, is way too cartoon-like).

I don't understand all the whining about Epiphany -- it'll save the session if it crashes, and the session saving on GNOME exit will work when it's stable. I use Epiphany for all my web browsing, including "mission-critical" stuff like paying my bills.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[hendridm]

I really like KDE, but I hate the fact that they're associate with SCO. I don't want to support anything that could potentially help SCO, even that which is insignificant. Alas, I continued to use KDE in conflict because I don't care for Gnome. :/

I hope IBM wins.

Re: They've had a lot of trouble.

[Black Parrot]

> his extremist "no features" jihad

This is about to drive me away from GNOME, which I've used since pre-1.0 days (0.4, IIRC).

Too bad I don't have time to fork a Havoc-free version for power users; I keep hoping someone else will.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[Mordibity]

Can anyone elaborate on what bonobogui is, esp vs the EggToolBar? (And why it sucks, how long it's sucked, etc.?) thx.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[Psiren]

Big deal. The trolltech guys are selling a product. The fact that they are selling it to Windows developers whilst freely giving it away to *nix users doesn't bother me in the slightest.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[justsomebody]

And that might be the reason.

Full moherproof browser (epiphany) for default, and yours on demand for people who need features.

As for me I'm very pleased with Epiphany, dumped Galeon just because I don't wanna bother with features and second reason are bookmarks

What default browser needs is not features it's higher usability as a non brainer.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's "libbonobui" and it didn't exist for version 1.2. It's not the cause of the rift, everyone agrees it's bad.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[Cid Highwind]

New GTK file-save box -- much-needed upgrade but no way to access .(dot)files? Sure, it's much cleaner when they're hidden, but it meant I had to type in a filename five levels deep just to point my program to it.

You don't *have* to type the whole path. Type the first few letters in the file name field (eg. ".gno") and hit tab. All the files starting with ".gno" will be shown in the right pane, and the matching directories will be shown in the left pane. From there you can navigate through folders with the mouse as normal. You can even type "." then tab, and have all your hidden files and folders in the list.

As for float-on-top, good riddance! Modal dialogs are a nuisance anyway. I agree with you about Epiphany, though.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[RdsArts]

Gnome is rapidly becoming a major clusterfuck these days. Which is a shame, because the only other real option is selling yourself to SCO (aka... Trolltech's owner), and subjecting yourself to the full GPL just to write desktop apps, or paying SCO $3000 for every developer.

*looks at his XFCE 4 desktop*

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your GNOME and KDE.

RC 3 is due out tomorrow, why not give it a try? You might be pleasantly suprised.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't know what version of Galeon you are using, but there's one of those hidden options to always save the session. You can find it on the web site somewhere if you look--it didn't take me long.

You don't need "File bookmark" because you can just right click on the bookmark folder in the menu and select "Add bookmark here."

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[rmohr02]

It's not a big deal to me. I'm just pointing out to the parent of my post that Qt isn't fully GPL'd.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[rmohr02]

I'm not complaining. If I see a reason to, I will buy the Qt license for Windows (that's doubtful, because I mainly develop for *nix and prefer Gtk to Qt (just personal preference--I don't mean to start a flamewar)). I was merely pointing out that Qt isn't fully GPL'd.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[Nodatadj]

> but when it comes to a choice between blindly
> following the HIG or a feature we feel is
> essential, we'll probably always be choosing the
> feature.

Umm, where does the HIG say anything about features?

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[mobets]

I have tried both KDE and Gnome, and the thing that keeps me going back to KDE is feature where if I mouse over a shaded window, it unshades, then reshades when I move the mouse away. It is a small detail. It is realy annoying to have to keep clicking to go back and forth between what I am doing and Gaim. Also, the file manager in Gnome seems a little too simplistic. Other than those two things, I don't see much difference between the two. Maybe some one could enlighen me on some of the things Gnome offers, or how to fix these issues.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[Josh Booth]

Bonobogui is a way to turn CORBA servers (the way GNOME allows different programs to talk to each other) into GTK+ widgets (graphical stuff used mostly in GNOME). I have never actually used any of this stuff, but according to EggToolbar and EggMenu, the stock bonobo stuff doesn't allow for cool stuff that is used by browsers a lot:

• Some desired toolbar layouts are impossible.
• Right aligned items.
• items that expand (such as the location bar in a web browser).

Re: They've had a lot of trouble.

[jonadab]

> > his extremist "no features" jihad
>
> This is about to drive me away from GNOME

Where else could I go, though?

I've tried other things than Gnome (KDE, Enlightenment, Win32,
WindowMaker, icewm, and numerous others...) but I can't find any
with an equivalent for the panel drawers in Gnome, which are IMO
an essential can't-live-without feature. So I use Gnome for the
panel, which I prefer for one feature, drawers. Most of the rest
of Gnome I don't use anymore either. Metacity is the only window
manager I ever really truly hated, and I've used a number of them.
(So I switched back to sawfish; why sawfish isn't still the default
I'll never understand; it's a billion times better than metacity.)
I removed Nautilus from my Gnome session. I user the calculator
from KDE, the samba browser from KDE, the web browser from
Mozilla.org, the office suite from OO.o, and so forth. I do use
the Gimp, but is that part of Gnome per se? Oh, there's one other
major Gnome thing I really like: the terminal app. gnome-terminal
absolutely rocks; its terminal classes are useful in the uttermost.

But yeah, a lot of Gnome2 is worse than the Gnome1 equivalent. If
you're using Gnome1 and thinking about upgrading to Gnome2, don't
bother, unless you've got good reasons. It's not an upgrade.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[readams]

As a metacity maintainer, I feel I have to respond to this.

First, HP (Havoc Pennington) isn't on an anti-feature craze. The point is to develop a desktop that works well for everyone without requiring you to go through dozens of preference dialogs to get something that will work correctly. KDE actually has a preference, off by default, to be not horribly broken on a xinerama setup.

But, aside from that, metacity does support an always on top keybinding (I commited this about a month ago) It's just not bound by default; you can edit it using gconf-editor though.

Also, there has been talk of changing the put on workspace menu. Perhaps if idiots like you could stop whining for two seconds on slashdot and perhaps join in a useful discussion on bugzilla, you can have a say in how that gets done eventually:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cg i?id=110904

Also, there is no new GTK file save dialog yet; this is a feature that won't appear until gnome 2.6, since gnome 2.4 is based on gtk 2.2. The dialog you may have seen is a ximian patch to GTK, and is certainly not the final incarnation of the GTK file save dialog.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[leek]

Since when RedHat has any obligation to follow Gnome defaults when deciding what software goes into THEIR distribution?

Since when have you had any obligation to follow RedHat defaults when deciding what software goes into YOUR computer?

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing that keeps me going back to KDE is feature where if I mouse over a shaded window, it unshades, then reshades when I move the mouse away.

That's more a function of the window manager than of the desktop.

You simply need to go to your window manager's "preferences" or "settings", usually through the main program tab on the bottom left. Change "focus behavior", and how you want windows "raised" or not during focusing.

This is one of the very first things you should do when considering a new desktop, like changing the mouse sensitivity. All window managers / desktops have some degree of control over this.

If your window manager doesn't offer the degree of control you want, consider a different window manager (e.g. sawfish) but still consider using the same desktop (e.g. Gnome).

As for file managers, I wonder why these are even included in desktop managers -- they would seem better as standalone apps. (I'm sure there are standalone file browsers, but I don't have any suggestions since I mostly use command-line for this kind of thing.)

Re: They've had a lot of trouble.

[Black Parrot]

> > > his extremist "no features" jihad

> > This is about to drive me away from GNOME

> Where else could I go, though?

I wonder whether we could start a grassroots movement to vote Havoc off the board next time they have electons? I've never payed much attention to that rot before, but it may be only way to save GNOME.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[flacco]

Couldn't agree more about HP's destructive anti-feature craze.

I agree. I still use the core red hat distro for my desktops, but i rip out metacity and most of the gnome features (gnome-panel, menus, nautilus, etc) and use IceWM for that stuff.

No float on top feature to Metacity? Too complicated?

no kidding. how about the minimization window animation? Did anyone else follow that endless, idiotic jerk-off fest trying to get a pref in Metacity to TURN OFF ANIMATIONS?!! He simply would not put it in there.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[leviramsey]

However, it's useful to be able to designate a window as floating-on-top...

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[leviramsey]

Sawfish can do that (and more).

Just "killall -15 metacity && sawfish" and save your GNOME session...

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[Anonymous Coward]

The dialog you may have seen is a ximian patch to GTK, and is certainly not the final incarnation of the GTK file save dialog.

Umm...this has been around for like 2 years now, right? And while it isn't perfect, its worlds better than the default dialog. Why in the world hasn't it become the default, at least until someone writes something better?

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[leviramsey]

The point is to develop a desktop that works well for everyone

...which is a recipe for disaster. I've never used metacity (because sawfish kicks every other wm's ass in every possible way...), but to think that you can design something that works well for every user is beyond stupid.

...without requiring you to go through dozens of preference dialogs to get something that will work correctly....

But, aside from that, metacity does support an always on top keybinding (I commited this about a month ago) It's just not bound by default; you can edit it using gconf-editor though.

Ah... so having to wade through dialogs to get a working configuration is bad, but going through another poorly designed, poorly documented, unintuitive to the core, configuration database to do the same thing is good? Jesus H Christ...

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[readams]

Well, since you've never used metacity, you obviously don't have any idea what you're talking about. The window manager is supposed to be unobtrusive. The window manager really needs to just work without requiring you to configure everything. That's what metacity does.

Why don't you go and look at the window manager in windows or in Mac OS X -- two desktops renowned for good user interfaces -- and ask yourself how configurable they are. They answer is they aren't. At all. Metacity is much more configurable out of the box than either system.

And the always on top keybinding is a compromise for advanced users only. gconf keys with no user interface are commonly used in the gnome desktop for advanced options that aren't really needed. And if you don't think that gconf-editor is sufficiently intuitive, why don't you stop whining and write some fucking code.

Man you people just piss me off.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[leviramsey]

Well, since you've never used metacity, you obviously don't have any idea what you're talking about. The window manager is supposed to be unobtrusive. The window manager really needs to just work without requiring you to configure everything. That's what metacity does.

I briefly used metacity, last summer, when Mandrake made it the default in GNOME. From what I saw, metacity simply did not "just work". It was a pain in the ass trying to get it to a sane configuration that approached what I had with sawfish, only to find that it couldn't be configured to have sawfish-esque functionality; at the very least the dialogs offered no options and searches on gnome.org could not find gconf keys to accomplish what I wanted. Finally I said, "Fuck it," and I killall -15'd metacity and went back to sawfish. Since then, the only times I've used metacity are for the few seconds it takes to killall -15 it and start sawfish.

The point is that no program can work out of the box for every user. Configuration and customization will always be required for a substantial portion of any userbase. By removing configuration options, you guarantee that not only will your program not work out of the box for a substantial portion of users, but that it will never work for that portion of the users.

Why don't you go and look at the window manager in windows or in Mac OS X -- two desktops renowned for good user interfaces -- and ask yourself how configurable they are. They answer is they aren't. At all. Metacity is much more configurable out of the box than either system.

I use Windows on a fairly regular basis, and I can barely work with its window manager. TweakUI helps a little. As bad as Windows is, MacOS (any version) is worse, AFAIC. I'll grant that metacity is better than the Windows and Mac WMs, and given a choice, I'd take metacity. I'll also grant that SARS is better than cancer or AIDS, and given a choice, I'd take SARS.

gconf keys with no user interface are commonly used in the gnome desktop for advanced options that aren't really needed. And if you don't think that gconf-editor is sufficiently intuitive, why don't you stop whining and write some fucking code.

It's gconf itself (not the editor) that I have a problem with. I have yet to see a Registry-esque configuration system that surpasses user-readable configuration files. Maybe part of the problem is the fact that there is no real documentation as to what keys are available (this is true, as far as I can tell, of both the Windows Registry, and of gconf). Windows went from a simple, easy-to-understand, well-documented system of human- and machine-readable INI files to an obtuse, poorly-documented system based on a non-human-readable database. gconf at least is XML underneath, but XML isn't that human-readable.

Feel free to ignore this; the very word metacity (where the fuck does that word come from?) will, unless a new version comes down the pipe that blows my socks off, continue to make me retch.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[qeltiq]

Hi Xoro,

>> no way to access .(dot)files?

tab completion works in the file dialogs. Just begin typing the filename and tab out

cheers

todd

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to break this to you, but GNOME and KDE are not really desktops for users. They are collections of software components for software developers to use to build applications for users to use... the "desktop" is just an application using those components. XFCE 4, like most wannabe desktops, fails miserably at providing this function.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[Anonymous Coward]

GTK doesn't have a stable release for Windows.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh for fuck's sake! Although SCO does have a small holding in Trolltech, in no way do they own Trolltech fully, tell them what to put in Qt. As KDE is a full community based desktop environment, they certainly don't own KDE. KDE simply uses Qt, which is under a GPL license on Linux.

If by a miracle something where to happen, we'd simply get a forked version of Qt. Not in Trolltech's interest at all.

Fuck off, get a brain and don't comment on things you don't know about.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[jdub!]

Hrm, no, Red Hat would have gone with Epiphany regardless of the GNOME Desktop choice. They had pretty much made up their minds before we even started discussing it. Although it would have been annoying for both Red Hat and GNOME if we'd chosen differently, their choice wasn't particularly important to ours, as evidenced by the discussion on d-d-l.

FWIW, I'm still using Galeon. Epiphany hasn't sucked me in yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did at some stage in the future. :-)

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[epfreed]

Personally, I am on the fence. When I updated to RH 9 and Ximain 2, I was very disappointed that I could not have an always on top keybinding--only after a little gnashing of teath did I find (stumble upon) the feature in gconf-editor. Once I understood how (relativly) easy gconf-editor was I was happy--perhaps clearly pointing documentation to gconf-editor might alleviate such complaints. It would have made my transition easier.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[jdub!]

Havoc had very little to do with the decision.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[jbolden]

SCO's owner owns a percentage of Trolltech, SCO itself doesn't. Fidelity management company has several percent of SCO and of IBM. That doesn't mean there is a conspiracy.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[__past__]

Just "killall -15 metacity && sawfish" and save your GNOME session...

Which is obviously more user friendly than bloating the metacity prefs tab even more. I mean, there are already 5 options!

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[readams]

Gconf is self-documenting. Every gnome application includes a schema file which describes every gconf key, and its functionality in excruciating detail. Clicking on a key will give you all the details in gconf editor. But, if you don't like using gconf-editor, you can always just edit the user-readable XML configuration files generated by gconf-editor by hand.

But you're right in one respect: metacity used to be a not-very-good window manager. This is why I decided to take action rather than complaining and wrote some code. Metacity is far better than it was a year ago now that I've put some work into it (of course, I'm not the only one...)

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[Anonymous Coward]

No shit... I wrote myself a patch which:

1. Makes metacity max/min toggle on double clicking the titlebar. This bit of the patch is now obsolete and has been removed; as Havoc eventually, after months of harranging, made it an option instead of the utterly useless shade option (which can be accomplished in three ways in metacity, so much for the simplicity lark).
2. Stops all animations
3. Makes Metacity *only* raise a window when I ask for it (by left click on the title bar) in click focus mode. The lack of this feature in Metacity is simply unbelievable and shows just what a freaking headcase HP is.

When a new metacity release is made, I have to get the source RPM.... unpack it... add the path the spec file and rebuild. What a fucking pain... and all because HP doesn't think "power users" should be catered for at all.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[flacco]

i forgot the other thing that i hated about metacity: it was windows-like in that it did not show dialogs in the taskbar. it showed normal windows, of course, but if you had a preferences dialog or something open, it didn't show. So, if you popped up another window over it, instead of just clicking a button in the taskbar, you have to hunt around through all your open windows until you find it.

stupid.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ughh... point 3 should be "right click on the title bar. It allows me to arrange and size windows without changing their depth.

Re:They've had a lot of trouble.

[javamutt]

I agree with you. When I made the transition from RH8 to RH9 I lved the look, but felt trapped by the lack of configurability.

It since hasbecome obvious to me that Metacity can do a lot more than the default options. Just load the Sun Gnome environment, and compare it to RH9. I wish Sun would adopt some of RH's tweaks!

Bottom line is that a little documentation (maybe I missed something?) would have gone a long way towards making power users more receptive to the change.

Galeon - use it!

[kwenda]

This used to be the default in the Slackware distro of X/KDE. Now they've switched to Konqueror... Galeon works better though, I recommend it.

Re:Galeon - use it!

[Deusy]

I second this, Galeon is an excellent browser.

It also has something innovative I've yet to find in another browser: the homepage - 'myprofile:' - which is basically a html version of your bookmarks. It's ingenius!

You have all your bookmarks well laid out and all visible at once. Since it's your home page, you just pop up a new tab and then you can find and load your intended bookmarks without the fuss of navigating through a menu.

If only all areas of the OSS world were endowed with such excellent choices - there's many very decent browsers out there.

Uh

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this, and why should I care?

The gecko family of browsers...

[SharpFang]

...puts us in the new age of environmental consciousness.
Not only you can reuse the same parts of code on different platforms, but the Mozilla mailer is the first one to have separate folders for trash and junk.

Re:The gecko family of browsers...

[ChiChiCuervo]

I don't know about the environment, but I always think of car insurance when using a gecko-based browser.

Re:The gecko family of browsers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Explanation: gecko=GEICO.

Re:The gecko family of browsers...

[Anonymous Coward]

I still don't get it. Is this an American thing?

Re:The gecko family of browsers...

[Feztaa]

the Mozilla mailer is the first one to have separate folders for trash and junk.

Oh, it's even better. The icon for junk mail is quite clearly a recycle bin, so you know those tree-hugging hippies over at Mozilla are really thinking about the environment :)

Re:The gecko family of browsers...

[Paul Bain]

Yes, it is. GEICO is an American company that writes insurance policies for cars (automobiles).

Brillant

[Teahouse]

Most bikes are for transportation, not for extreme downhill. This is a brilliant adaptation of old and new. Great idea IMHO.

Re:Brillant

[AntiOrganic]

Yeah, and those heat pockets on Mars? Great.

Re:Brillant

[Anonymous Coward]

Why'd you have to bring up SCO in this story!?

Re:Brillant

[Anonymous Coward]

17 hours a week? Hell, I spend 17 hours a DAY on slashdot!

Re:Brillant

[Anonymous Coward]

RIAA can't subpoena Chinese, French or Russian users. And it is not even very clear if RIAA's sister organisations in their respective countries can, because laws are different over there (remember Sklyarov and how PDF encryption breaking is legal in Russia?).

Re:Brillant

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it was funny to begin with but how many times are they going to post this 'evil bit' story?

Re:Brillant

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, Scientology has succeeded in removing a small article posted on Slashdot but they have gained now full exposure with a dozen links to anti-Scientology sites. ROTFLMAO.

Re:Brillant

[Anonymous Coward]

If you stand up and recite the Pledge and just omit "Under God" no-one will even notice, let alone care. Is that too hard of a solution?

Oh yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

I *love* those fonts!

Why can't you open sores hippies come up with some nice fonts, or something?

Re:Oh yeah

[Dave2 Wickham]

Those fonts are disgusting. Argh. That MUST'VE been before Bitstream Vera was released :/.

Re:Oh yeah

[sremick]

Not sure if this is really flamebait or not, but for argument's sake, I wanted to post a screenshot of MY Galeon, showing the fonts are just fine:

http://vtbsd.net/galeon_shot.png

This is Galeon 1.3.7 on FreeBSD 5.1, with all ports kept up-to-date.

Re:Oh yeah

[juhaz]

/. Front page in the screenshot, first article:

Posted by Hemos on 10:46 AM September 28th, 2001

Two years is an eternity in IT world, check out something bit more recent and you might be pleasantly surprised...

Those ancient screenshots sure aren't very good for PR, though :)

Re:Oh yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with those fonts ? Everyone replies aggreeing with the poster, but the screen shot looks fine to me.

Re:Oh yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

I am very devastated by your screenshot. Can you contact with me (ICQ UIN 9783023), I would like to make my mozilla have such beautiful fonts.

What is better?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is better?

a) The Galeon browser?

or

b) Sex with a mare?

The comment form: broken?

[Bootsy Collins]

The comment form would be a lot more useful if it had a "submit" button, so that you could actually give them the comment.

Unless it's not showing up because my browser is broken. But in that case, I'd like to comment on that, since I'm using Galeon.

my question

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is my question.

Why don't you do something useful for a change? Your software sucks shit. It is bloated, slow, riddled with bugs, and an embarrasment to the open source community.

The world does NOT need another shitty half-ass browser.

FOAD

Sex with a mare

[Anonymous Coward]

Taking a horse cock in my ass is less painful than looking at those goddamn fonts.

Re:Sex with a mare

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, you don't have to take it up your ass, just push the tip against your anus and rub along and he will pump his whole load into you. Besides, reasonable amount of stretching lets you absorb whole stallion cock, together with the flare.
(although fonts stink worse than layer of smegma on a stallion who hasn't been let coles to a mare for a year.)

Re:Sex with a mare

[Anonymous Coward]

Funniest. Post. Ever.

come closer

[Tablizer]

"Sssssoooo precioussssss, what do you want to knowwww about Galeonnnnn".

Ooops, wrong Galeon. Sorry.

Galeon is unbloated without XUL interface

[zymano]

From the Manifest-

MANIFESTO A web browser is more than an application, it is a way of thinking, it is a way of seeing the world. Galeon's principles are simplicity and standards compliance. Simplicity: While Mozilla has an excellent rendering engine, its default XUL-based interface is considered to be overcrowded and bloated. Furthermore, on slower processors even trivial tasks such as pulling down a menu are less than responsive. Galeon aims to utilize the simplest interface possible for a browser. Keep in mind that simple does not necessarily mean less powerful. We believe the commonly used browsers of today are too big, buggy, and bloated. Galeon addresses simplicity with a small browser designed for the web -- not mail, newsgroups, file management, instant messaging or coffee making. The UNIX philosophy is to design small tools that do one thing, and do it well. Galeon also addresses simplicity with modularity to make a light and powerful application. If something can be implemented using external applications or components, we use it rather than wasting resources in the web browser. Integration will be achieved with CORBA, Bonobo, and the ever popular command line. Mail will be handled with your favorite e-mail application (Evolution, pine, mutt, balsa, pronto, whatever); GTM (Gnome Transfer Manager) will be used to download files in a standardized manner. Standards compliance: The introduction of non-standard features in browsers could make it difficult or impossible to use alternative products like Galeon if developers embrace them. Alternative (standards complying) browsers could not be able to fully access web sites making use of these features. The success of non-standard features can ultimately lead to forcing one browser, on one platform to dominate the market. Standards compliance ensures the freedom of choice. Galeon aims to achieve this.

Re:Galeon is unbloated without XUL interface

[Anonymous Coward]

I noticed you changed your signature text to not include a certain word. Why?

Re:Galeon is unbloated without XUL interface

[Anonymous Coward]

This is lovely.

Their MANIFESTO:
"While Mozilla has an excellent rendering engine, its default XUL-based interface is considered to be overcrowded and bloated"

The interview:
"We still have problems dealing with the bad image we have of 1.3 as a featureless POS"
"We've come a long way after hitting rock-bottom"

So, what is that 'problem' ? Let's see, what they want to do:
"Dump the albatross called bonoboui"
"getting rid of the pain called bonoboui"
"Getting rid of libbonoboui. I hate libbonoboui."

But what IS bonobo UI ? Bonoboui is the UI widget set they used, instead of XUL:
"While quite nice for static UI, it's painful for dynamic menus and toolbars"
"Using it has caused a lot of harm to galeon"

This is funny shit. Their MANIFEST says that they wnt to do a XUL-less browser because XUL sucks (they know better), and their replacement sucks two orders of magnitude more.

I have an idea for them: why don't they use XUL for the interface ? It is quite nice for both static _and_ dynamic UI... And I know a couple of XUL browser that are really fast. And modular. And extensible. And maintained.

Re:Galeon is unbloated without XUL interface

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to get into the XUL Sucks argument (even though it does), but Galeon had a stable, responsive interface 2 years before Mozilla did.

MOD PARENT UP INSIGHTFUL

[Anonymous Coward]

And funny. If I'd had any Pepsi in my mouth I would've spewed it on my keyboard. Oh, and by the way, I got the FP. Ha!

Re:The comment form: broken?

[NightRain]

Well you'll no doubt be glad to know it does the same thing in IE :)

Ray

No, sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera is the best browser yet.

(And don't give me any "not free" shit. You can crack it, and I don't give a fuck about the source code)

Re:No, sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't give a fuck about the source code

HA! Like you would understand it if you saw it.

Mirror of the interview, decently formatted

[James A. A. Joyce]

Galeon Developer Interview, July 2003

Due to his own curiosity and the apparent curiosity (or vocal ignorance) of folks around the net, Topher The Web Guy asked some of the Galeon developers a few questions. If your curiosity is not satiated, there'll be a form at the bottom to ask your own questions.

ric: Ricardo Fernández Pascual
yaneti: Yanko Kaneti
philipl: Philip Langdale
tko: Tommi Komulainen

How "healthy" is the galeon project?

philipl:
Stable but serious. :-)

We're operating at a fairly low level right now but we've gained a lot more focus recently and Crispin has been a great help. Having the whole gnome farce behind us is also a relief. ximian deciding to ship galeon as their primary browser is a big boost, especially given redhat has thrown us out (no surprises) and slackware too *sniff*. We still have problems dealing with the bad image we have of 1.3 as a featureless POS; most people don't realise how far we've come since October 2002. But we're getting there, slowly but steadily. Galeon isn't going away.

yaneti
Pretty healthy all things considered. Not being "the official GNOME browser". Excluded from Red Hat rawhide. Dissed for all the wrong reasons by uninformed people. - Yet people still seem to be interested and most importantly "external" patches seem to have picked up recently, which is just great. Many thanks.

tko
We're progressing nicely, if a bit slowly. We've come a long way after hitting rock-bottom and more people are starting to realize that, so the bad image we got last year should be a thing in the past.

In an interesting twist of events, the Epiphany team has started developing an extension system, and the first extension is mouse gestures - the sort of feature the whole disagreement that eventually lead to Epiphany's birth was all about. After a fashion they're sharing our view on the 'advanced' features after all, and I'm guessing by GNOME 2.6 it'll get where we are now. I only wonder why we couldn't start that last October when I was suggesting it, and skip all the fla^Wfriendly discussions. Oh well...

ric
It is surprisingly healthy if you think that it has not had a stable[1] release in a lot of time and that it no longer considered "the" gnome browser. I think that there is an important niche for galeon as the usable and *useful* gnome browser.

[1] even if the released versions are only development versions and not officially stable, they are quite stable actually. I use CVS builds always and it does not crash easily. discussions. Oh well...

How much work is left before Galeon 1.3 becomes Galeon 2.0?

philipl:
I've just updated the TODO list.

Mainly, we want to:

* Dump the albatross called bonoboui
* Reorganise the prefs dialog to actually be useful.
* Make the bookmark editor not suck big fat rocks
* get the stylesheet chooser back. that is really missed.
* polish! polish! polish!

Unfortunately this means we do have a big architectural step left which is exorcising bonoboui and switching to the egg library. The other stuff is comparatively straightforward.

yaneti
Thats a kind of managerial question which would be best left to philip. I count whats left by looking at the number of bugs on the 2.0 milestone, which might be entirely bogus because its only me who puts them there :)

tko
A fair amount. While we have a good set of features and a few more coming, they're not presented well to users. For example, mouse gestures have been implemented since last September, but still people keep asking about them. We need to go through the preferences and decide which ones to show in the dialog, which ones to keep semi-hidden in GConf only, and which ones to remove.

Another large task to do is to update the documentation, although I'm not sure anyone reads it anyway ;) I hope we can get someone who's both willing an

Re:Mirror of the interview, decently formatted

[SharpFang]

* polish! polish! polish!

I'm happy you want to support my native language so enthusiastically, but don't you think people from other countries could feel a bit neglected?

Re:The comment form: broken?

[topher1kenobe]

that's odd, it shows on every browser I've tried.

C'mon Michael!

[Junks Jerzey]

First you post a story about Reiser4 without any indication of what Reiser4 is. I read Slashdot regularly, but never heard of it. Then you post a story about Galleon, again without any hit to the reader about what it might be.

Re:C'mon Michael!

[Anonymous Coward]

you obviously don't use linux... which makes me wonder: why do you even read slashdot?

Re:C'mon Michael!

[Anonymous Coward]

you obviously don't use linux... which makes me wonder: why do you even read slashdot?

1) /. != linux
2) ReiserFS != linux
3) Galeon != linux

Re:C'mon Michael!

[whereiswaldo]

First you post a story about Reiser4 without any indication of what Reiser4 is. I read Slashdot regularly, but never heard of it. Then you post a story about Galleon, again without any hit to the reader about what it might be.

I admit I knew what the ReiserFS is and what Galeon is, but I think a link would have been helpful.

My biggest pet peeve of computer magazines (eg. PC Magazine) is that they feature new products in the index and don't say what they are. They review cameras, printers, scanners, computers, cpus, hard disks, displays, and so on and I'm supposed to know what a "Super DTA Zapmeister" is. Say what?

Re:C'mon Michael!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you have obviously mastered C.

Re:C'mon Michael!

[Wouter Van Hemel]

Hah... he doesn't know the Super DTA Zapmeister.

What's this world coming to...

The Super DTA Zapmeister, my friend, is the solution to all your problems. It could make your life so much easier, giving you all luxury and comfort you deserve. There isn't anything quite like it on the market; and although you might expect such a miracle to sell for a high price, you might be pleasantly surprised to know that we will give you a 50% reduction if you buy now, and, on top of that, an option to upgrade to the Ultra WOW Blastomatic!

Super DTA Zapmeister... what would you do without it.

Wanted to get more words in there.

[zymano]

Ice T is the biggest FRAUD. He's now on TV playing a policeman. What a joke . EH.

Re:Wanted to get more words in there.

[Anonymous Coward]

You changed your signature AGAIN. Did it not contain the word "nigger" before?

Question for the developers

[Bold Marauder]

Programming for libbonobo

-or-

Sex with a mare?

Re:Question for the developers

[Anonymous Coward]

You compare these ugly bonobos with sleek, lean mares? Come on!

The big question is....

[Anonymous Coward]

When will you dump gecko for the native gtkhtml engine. Its faster, its got DECENT fonts and its easier to develop for.

Re:The big question is....

[Anonymous Coward]

> When will you dump gecko for the native gtkhtml engine. Its faster, its got DECENT fonts and its easier to develop for.

Sure. They dumped XUL for the mess libbonoboui is, so they should just dump gecko too...

To be honest...

[James A. A. Joyce]

...I hope RedHat takes something like Firebird for its browser. It's featureful and it wouldn't be difficult to whack an even simpler configuration interface on it. Plus, being descended from Mozilla, it would be immune to all of the GNOME/KDE infighting that's going on. It's really a shame that there's so much politics going on among all of the OSS organisations-cum-factions. That's why I prefer Mozilla based browsers; their developers don't get embroiled in "Konq sux! Galeon rulez!" flamewars. GNOME and KDE people who say that they're neutral soon show which side they're neutral on!

Re:To be honest...

[juhaz]

Um. Galeon and Epiphany are Mozilla based browsers just as much as Firebird, in case you haven't noticed. They're just wrapped in native toolkit to fit in with themes etc.

Re:To be honest...

[snilloc]

All this "neutrality" is giving me flashbacks to a Futurama episode.

"I have no strong feelings one way or the other!" [cheering in background]
"It's a beige alert!"
"If I don't make it, tell my wife I said, 'hello'."

For the uninitiated...

[James A. A. Joyce]

...Galeon is a GNOME World Wide Web browser that seems to constantly hover towards being accepted without actually being embraced as has Mozilla or Konqueror, alternating between being in disrepute and in popularity more often than Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker! This seems to be because of past attitudes regarding its bugginess and not-so-good graphical bugs due to the graphical APIs and libraries that it uses.

as a galeon user who doesn't use gnome...

[intermodal]

I haven't had stability problems with it, and I rather like it better than Mozilla itself. I know it could use some work, but I find it disappointing to know that my favorite browser is being dropped...

Re:as a galeon user who doesn't use gnome...

[JanneM]

It isn't being dropped. It has the same status it's always had. Until now, Gnome has never had an "official" browser, and, well, while Galeon isn't the "official" one now, it never was before either. 1.2 is/was a great browser, and the upcoming version is likely just as good if not better. Just continue to use it and enjoy it!

Re:as a galeon user who doesn't use gnome...

[intermodal]

I didn't phrase my post very well. Basically, since I'm a Gentoo user, it just makes it even less likely that I'll ever pay much attention to those distros, since not only am I happy where I am, but they don't make it any more difficult than any other program to install it.

contantly changing ui

[ChiChiCuervo]

I think people wouldn't be dropping galeon if they core team were vigilant with maintaining the UI from version to version.

For instance, I used to be able to have my tabs on the bottom, then i couldn't, then i could, and now i can't again. I vastly prefer galeon's tabs to mozilla's, being one of those features that keeps me with galeon even now, but i'm sick of this on again , off again feature.

Another on again, off again feature I like was the ability to right click on the handle of one of my custom toolbars and opening the entire folder in tabs. They recently re-added this feature in the bookmarks menu, but I really miss it on the toolbar itself.

Frankly, if there were another browser that had a similar level of control of bookmarks and custom toolbars, I'd switch to it in a second. Nothing else comes quite that close to galeon's level of customizibility.

I just wish Galeon wasn't so flighty in it's feature set.

Re:contantly changing ui

[viperblades]

In the new Galeon you need to use gconf-editor to set up "advanced" settings such as where the tabs are located etc etc. Sorry for my horrible grammar.

Re:contantly changing ui

[gnalle]

Another on again, off again feature I like was the ability to right click on the handle of one of my custom toolbars and opening the entire folder in tabs.

I disagree with you on the usefulness of this feature. Actually I was close to writing a bug report asking them to remove it. In the Galeon version of Redhat 8.0 the feature is assigned to middle click. The problem is that I activate this feature by mistake several times a day, and even with the nice Galeon tabs, it takes a while to delete 20 tabs.

I wish that the developers of Galeon will find strength in this slashdot debate to keep up the good work.

Re:contantly changing ui

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla Firebird may have the features you like. Most features are available as extensions. You may have already looked at that page, but, if not, you might be suprised at what is available.

Re: contantly changing ui

[Black Parrot]

> I wish that the developers of Galeon will find strength in this slashdot debate to keep up the good work.

Meetoo, but they need to go back to 1.2 and start improving from there, rather than redesigning it to take away all the features and customizability. The upgrade from GTK1 to GTK2 needn't have involved anywhere near so many changes as it has.

Nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Now how about fixing the filedialog, adding scrollwheel desktop switching, and color scheme changing and we won't be laughing at gnome.

Galeon RIP

[grzebo]

It used to be my favourite browser, but fore some reason or other the developers have decided to destroy it. While Galeon 1.2.x was superb, version 1.3 is just slightly better than IE.

IMHO they got exactly what they worked so hard for - rejection from everyone.

A far-from-complete list of features they broke:

• Tab settings - how wide they are, if they should get shortened, etc.
• favicons on tabs - supposedly it's possible to turnt them on using some magical commands, but I haven't managed
• a button to erase the address bar - I don't want its content on my clipboard
• focus of newly opened tabs/windows - additional clicks necessary
• rocker style mouse gestures - just pressing RMB and then LMB used to go back
• stability
• saving sessions as groups of bookmarks
• setting individual handling programs for different extensions

Galeon used to be an example of how an Open Source Product can be better than proprietary one (i.e. Opera). Now it's just pathetic. One more reason to dislike anyting GNOME-related (and I used to run Galeon from KDE).

Re:Galeon RIP

[multi io]

Galeon used to be an example of how an Open Source Product can be better than proprietary one (i.e. Opera). Now it's just pathetic. One more reason to dislike anyting GNOME-related (and I used to run Galeon from KDE).

I agree. The major problem with Galeon is that it is a GNOME program instead of a simple GTK one. I really don't know why they chose to do this...

Re:Galeon RIP

[Mr.Ned]

I'll second this - a lot of great features just seemed to disappear from 1.2x to 1.3x. The GTK2 is awesome, but dropping all those features was killer.

Re:Galeon RIP

[Anonymous Coward]

I like alot of things in galeon that I cannot find with another browser...especially the smart bookmark that actually has a separate text field and the right click clone tab/detach tab feature.

Re: Galeon RIP

[Black Parrot]

> It used to be my favourite browser, but fore some reason or other the developers have decided to destroy it. While Galeon 1.2.x was superb, version 1.3 is just slightly better than IE. IMHO they got exactly what they worked so hard for - rejection from everyone. A far-from-complete list of features they broke [...]

Are those deliberate breaks, or just signs that 1.3 is still transitional?

I agree that 1.3 sux; I've built a couple of releases, found a massive lack of functionality, and returned to 1.2 every time, but I always thought it was because they were in the middle of a major rewrite rather than deliberately crippling it. I'll be disappointed if that's wrong.

[Posting from Galeon 1.2.7 - nice browser.]

Re:Galeon RIP

[uhmmmm]

I just installed galeon 1.3.7 to give it another try after switching to phoenix .. err .. firebird. here's my take on some of these complaints:

* Tab settings - how wide they are, if they should get shortened, etc.
Agree - need this feature back

* a button to erase the address bar - I don't want its content on my clipboard
Definately needed

* focus of newly opened tabs/windows - additional clicks necessary
Edit->Preferences->User Interface->Jump to new tabs Automatically

* rocker style mouse gestures - just pressing RMB and then LMB used to go back
Works for me ...

* stability
Haven't had any crashes yet ...

Re:Galeon RIP

[LinuxGeek8]

* focus of newly opened tabs/windows - additional clicks necessary
Edit->Preferences->User Interface->Jump to new tabs Automatically

No, the other way around. If you open a link in new tab, without automatically jumping to it, it still gives focus to the new tab.
It should keep the current tab in focus, which for example will give you a PageDown on hitting the spacebar (very usefull when reading /. and skimming the comments in a story).

* stability
Haven't had any crashes yet ...

I had almost daily crashes with early 1.3 releases. At least since 1.3.5 things are shaping up, I only get an occasional crash now and then, about once a week or so. Version 1.2.x was rocksolid here, I could keep the same window on my desktop for weeks without having it crash. I hope they get 1.3/2.0 that stable, it would be great.

Re:Galeon RIP

[grzebo]

"the right click clone tab/detach tab feature."

It's gone in 1.3. Don't upgrade.

Re: Galeon RIP

[grzebo]

Some things are probably transitional, it's surprising how long the whole process takes them though. Unfortunately the crippling of preferences stems from new GNOME viewpoint of "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity", which seems quite misapplied to a 'power browser' that Galeon used to be.

Hopefully getting shunned by Red Hat and Slackware and the advance of Epiphany will make the developers reconsider.

Re:Galeon RIP

[grzebo]

The issue with focus is a different one - when I do the 'down' mouse gesture, a new empty tab gets opened. Galeon should, as it did in older versions and as Opera and Firebird do, bring focus to the address field - after all what else would I want an empty tab for.

There's a bug in their database about a reverse behaviour - it would bring focus to the address field when switching between already opened tabs, which is bad, because then you want for instance to use the spacebar for navigation. Probably when correcting that they broke the other thing.

It's just a quirk, yet a highly annoying one - opening a new page requires an additional click (and reusing current tab is just as hard without the erasing button).

A simmilar quirk is that it's impossible to move to the autocompletion list that appears when you press [tab] in the address bar using the down arrow. To use it you have to take your hand off the keyboard and click the list.

Things like that add up, ruining a previously excellent browsing experience.

Re:Galeon RIP

[slux]

Couldn't the select-clipboard be disabled altogether for the location bar somehow?

Still, I don't want a button for that on my browser even if it's not possible to disable, seems clumsy. I usually just ctrl-l there and hit backspace to clear. That way the clipboard doesn't get replaced.

I've been using Galeon as part of XD2 and while I do like Firebird more, I don't think they've done a bad job. The integration (filetypes, default browser) to the GNOME desktop is the major selling point. I wonder why Mozilla/Firebird can't do that?

Re:Galeon RIP

[Eros]

It is in 1.3 dumbass. Go to Edit Bookmarks -> Bookmarks -> New SmartBookmark or is that too fucking hard for you. You can also just import your old bookmarks.

And no I'm not going to apologize for swearing at this dumb mother fucker for posting ignorance.

Re: Galeon RIP

[Black Parrot]

> I had almost daily crashes with early 1.3 releases. At least since 1.3.5 things are shaping up, I only get an occasional crash now and then, about once a week or so. Version 1.2.x was rocksolid here, I could keep the same window on my desktop for weeks without having it crash.

I think there's a very slow memory leak in 1.2, since it gradually eats memory and crashes on me very predictably every 2-3 weeks or so.

Of course my usage habits may be somewhat out of spec. Once they introduced tabs I almost completely quit using bookmarks. Right now I have 1-5 Galeon windows open on each of 12 virtual desktops, and 1-50 tabs open in each window. I may be asking for trouble.

Of course that makes it a big pain when I have to restart Galeon and let it reload a few hundred pages over an unreliable telephone link.

> No, the other way around. If you open a link in new tab, without automatically jumping to it, it still gives focus to the new tab. It should keep the current tab in focus, which for example will give you a PageDown on hitting the spacebar (very usefull when reading /. and skimming the comments in a story).

I'm not quite sure what you're describing, but it sounds similar to the one thing that I find most annoying other than the crashes. I like to read a story, opening interesting links in other tabs as I go, and then read the tabs when I've finished the story. But apparently the scrolling focus is lost whenever another tab finishes loading. I use the arrow keys to scroll down a story, but something happening in another tab will make it lose focus and I have to click the page or the scollbar to make the scrolling work again.

Re:Galeon RIP

[jasontheking]

I can still detach a tab by clicking and dragging it outside the window. The menu option for it is gone , yes. But the feature isn't.

Re:Galeon RIP

[Anonymous Coward]

More missing features:

• You used to be able to move tabs between windows (go to the tab menu, click "Move to window" and select any open Galeon window). Now you can only detach tabs.
• Detachable favorite menus. These were great when you wanted to open many links from the same bookmark folder. You'd detach that favorites menu, click the links you want to open, and close it. (There's still an option to open ALL of a folder's bookmarks, but I rarely want to do that. You could also use the sidebar, but I've never liked that interface.)
• When using the drop-down history menu (on the back/forward toolbar buttons), you could right-click on any menu item to access a popup menu. This provided features like "open in new window", "open in new tab", and anything else you'd find if you right-clicked a link in a webpage.
• The ability to prevent the browser from recording your actions (history, URL bar history, find history, etc.) by making various files read-only. In the new version, you can make the gconf files read-only, but Galeon shows an GConf error every time you type something.

Another problem (not Galeon's fault, the same problem happens with GIMP for example) is that GTK2 doesn't work well with WindowMaker. Occasionally GTK2 apps like to have focus-wars - a new window pops up, and it fights with the old window for focus, causing both titlebars to flash until you click something.

Re:Galeon RIP

[thenextpresident]

So let me get this straight. Rather than try the latest version, 2.0, you are trying an older version? There is this thing, it's called upgrading. It exists for a reason.

Re:Galeon RIP

[damiam]

1.3 is the latest version. Galeon 2.0 does not exist and never has.

Re:Galeon RIP

[LMariachi]

Middle button paste turned into middle button 2-axis scroll. Grr.

Re:Galeon RIP

[Anonymous Coward]

Many of this conf settings are still avalaible through gconf-editor. See Galeon advanced settings

In fact the new gnome philosopy is that normal users
have acces to a limited set of settings avalaible from yhe application but advanced users should use instead gconf-editor to control everithing else.

Galeon is unstable under KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

I have used Galeon since the 0.x days however since 1.2 version I have had Galeon crash on me numerous times running under KDE. The problem is Galeon's interaction with KDE's aRTs (sound daemon). None of the crashes happen with e.g. Mozilla or Phoenix and Galeon people are unwilling/unable (?) to fix Galeon to play along with aRTs. There are numerous bugs filed in Bugzilla about the issue but the developers mark it "NOTABUG" ie. not a Galeon bug. Regardless of whose bug is it it is shame that Galeon people haven't been able to address the issue. I have thus moved on to Mozilla Firebird.

Re:Galeon is unstable under KDE

[life Acolyte]

Ah no, I have to disagree very strongly here.

I use Galeon as my primary browser. Version 1.3.5.20030714 in Debian
unstable.

My desktop is KDE. I listen to my music with XMMS through the aRts plugin.

And galeon does not crash on me at all. And it's opened for days, until I
need to plugin some or the other hard drive.

Hey look, you're being immortalized....

[whiteranger99x]

Look at this screen shot for the parent post with improved graphics ;)

Re:Hey look, you're being immortalized....

[fault0]

looks um.... blurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry.

Do you have a LCD or CRT?

Re:Hey look, you're being immortalized....

[topher1kenobe]

that would be a electron22blue IV 22" CRT running at 24 bit with 1920x1440 resolution.

Why Galeon is not included in GNOME

[Alethes]

From Final Modules List for the GNOME 2.4 Desktop Release:

There was a lot of vocal support for Epiphany on the mailing list, but little for Galeon. So, the consensus points to Epiphany. That was due to a number of factors: The Epiphany project goals seem to be better aligned with GNOME's goals, the Galeon developers do not seem to be 100% behind GNOME's goals; Epiphany has had regular releases for GNOME 2.3.x; the Epiphany hackers are working within the project to define standards and code for toolbar editing and other functionality, etc. While there are a lot of reservations about offending the Galeon hackers, and great disappointment that the two projects have not been able to cooperate, Epiphany does seem to have the consensus, and make the most technical sense. That is not to say that Epiphany is without faults, or that Galeon is not excellent software -> we do need to make a choice at some stage: Right now there is strong support to add a browser to the Desktop release, and strong support for that browser to be Epiphany.

my 2 cents

[snilloc]

1) "File bookmark" is a great feature. More browsers should have it.

2) Galeon's primary raison d'etre is that Gecko is good but Mozilla is bloated. With the growing popularity of Firebird (and the eventual mainstreaming of FB into Moz), will there really be much of a need for Galeon?

Re:my 2 cents

[gnalle]

I have used both for half a year. It wasn't really visible for me whether or not Mozilla was bloated, but I am very happy with the user interface of Galeon. It isn't very different from Mozillas', but the developers have made a lot of small good choices.

As an example each tab has a small cross in the right corner This cross allows you to close the tab without using a pulldown menu. This is not a big thing, but still I have grown to love it. (Perhaps Mozilla has something equally fast but in that case I never discovered)

Re:my 2 cents

[adric]

Middle-clicking on the tab will close it. ;-)

Re:my 2 cents

[self assembled struc]

firebird still runs slow as a dog on my linux machine, but galeon runs really quick.

so until they can get firebird to be as responsive, it'll always be annoying to use.

Re:my 2 cents

[golgotha007]

firebird still runs slow as a dog on my linux machine

ya, i had the same problem. then i upgraded from my 486/33 machine.

i dunno, maybe you should try upgrading to 16MB ram?

LOL!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh. my. god.
I RULE!

bloatzilla is dead

[minus_273]

konqueror and safari are the new browser kings on *nix. The problem with the mozilla is the bloat and galeon went along way to fix that. I havent used ang gnome browser i a while since iswitched to kde lat year and then to OSX this summer. I think a light browser that is just that , only a browser is the way to go. Safari is king for a reason it does what it is supposed to do --browse the web and thats it.

Re:bloatzilla is dead

[Znonymous Coward]

konqueror and safari are the new browser kings on *nix

So where can I get safari for AIX or konqueror for Solaris? Part of the reason Mozilla is so big is because of it's cross platform design.

What a great content free post.

PS...

Konqueror sucks and Safari is not 100% open source.

Re:bloatzilla is dead

[Rhone]

I like Konqueror, but never manage to keep using it. Every time I try it, within a day or two I stumble upon a page that renders poorly or doesn't work at all in Konqueror--so I switch back to Mozilla, Firebird, Galeon, or whatever gecko-based browser I prefer at the time (currently Galeon) and it views the page fine.

Re:bloatzilla is dead

[Tet]

konqueror and safari are the new browser kings on *nix.

Ha ha ha ha. If KHTML could render half of the sites I view properly, then maybe I'd agree with you. As it is, they've made a good start and have a solid foundation on which to build a decent browser. But there are a lot of bugs to fix, and a long way to go before they're usable for everyday browsing...

Re:bloatzilla is dead

[Cid Highwind]

The problem with that is, a lot of the "bloat" is the code that lets Mozilla render the last 10% of the web that Konqueror chokes on.

Re:bloatzilla is dead

[fault0]

> So where can I get safari for AIX or konqueror for Solaris?

KDE runs on both platforms, and as such, khtml browsers such as Konqueror also do.

> Konqueror sucks and Safari is not 100% open source.

It's subjective but I much perfer the rendering of Safari to the rendering firebird/mozilla/Camino.

I think a lot more Linux/UNIX users will also start to prefer Konqueror once all the Safari changes are rolled in.

KHTML is wicked fast, and I've noticed perhaps 3 pages since I made Safari my only-primary browser in May. I was pretty happy with Camino before that.

Re:bloatzilla is dead

[Spy Hunter]

So where can I get safari for AIX or konqueror for Solaris? Part of the reason Mozilla is so big is because of it's cross platform design.

LOL! Just in case this wasn't a troll, you can get Konqueror for AIX here , and it comes with Solaris on an extras CD, at least in Solaris 8. Also, you can run Konqueror on your PDA. Try that with Mozilla.

Re:bloatzilla is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

> Ha ha ha ha. If KHTML could render half of the sites

That's odd. Is your istallation current and in decent shape?

I can't even remember the last time I had problems viewing sites with konqi (have been using it daily since version 3 came out). Of course, there are some small problems, but hardly more than in any other browser (none of them is 100% perfect).

Is it just me...

[.com b4 .storm]

Or is this "interview" really not all that interesting? For someone, such as myself, who has not followed Galeon closely for the last year or so, it would help to provide some concrete background on the problems they've had. Instead, this so-called interview is basically comprised of two topics, rehashed over and over: libbonobo sucks, and Crispin 0wnz.

This interview sheds very little light on Galeon's past, present, or future. It seems mostly like a page full of bitching by the main developers, with little substance. Tell us about the recent history of Galeon, good and bad, the direction the project will hopefully take in the coming months, etc. "We need to get back to 1.2" is not very helpful, especially for people who don't follow Galeon closely.

Re:Is it just me...

[noda132]

... libbonobo sucks, and Crispin 0wnz.

You forgot: "Epiphany is coded by a bunch of assholes."

Which is funny, because it was forked by Galeon's original author....

To do list

[Znonymous Coward]

I like this item on their to do list...

polish! polish! polish!

It really great to see that open source developers are working a the linux desktops final flaw.

Re:To do list

[70043570592]

Is Poland really that important to Linux on the desktop?

Re:Why Galeon is not included in GNOME

[Seth Finklestein]

Open Source: The freedom to follow a different herd.

Open Source: Join the crowd or be FUDded and LARTed to death.

Open Source: Build it yourself, fucktard!

Open Source: Read the fucking manual. If the manual hasn't been written yet, write it and then read it.

Open Source: 50,000 pre-alpha Tetris clones can't be wrong!

Open Source: Follow the singing beards to Freedom. That's Freedom as in (insert newspeak word here).

Open Source: Where do you want a bunch of egomaniacal bergeeks to drag you today?

Open Source: Here today, gone tomorrow.

Open Source: What happens when you stop throwing money at the problem.

1.6%

[hendridm]

Yeah, cuz it's really hard to look it up:

SCO Group - 1.6%

> My guess it's closer to 25%

Where did you pull that arbitrary number from? Me thinks you are spreading FUD.

Re:1.6%

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm... are you aware that the Canopy Group is the owner of SCO... so even that page says 5.7%. They list them separately so that assholes like you can "spin" it.

Scream all you like, the people who took money from Microsoft to throw shit around te Linux world and kill it are the same people who 0wn Trolltech, and by extension control access to the KDE desktop (the Qt license), and couldn't give a shit about the GPL.

Re:1.6%

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey bitchtits, 1.6% + 4.1% doesn't mean control of a private company. Maybe it is in your "jew" reality but back here in the "real" world it means jack shit. /me calls again for a complete banning of all niggers and associated jews here on slashdot so that the average intelligence per user goes back up

Re:1.6%

[Anonymous Coward]

Bitchtits... so you've seen "Fight Club" (I doubt you've read the novel)... clever boy.

I use Galeon 1.2.5 on Debian 2.2

[Anonymous Coward]

A Day in the Life of a Galeon/Debian User

It's the nearest thing to Phoenix (Mozilla-Firebird) that I could get to run on Debian 2.2. I'm using it now, and it's doing a good job getting the websites rendered correctly and all. Highly recommend it. For those on Debian, just have your internet connection going, then:

# apt-get install galeon

All of the mozilla stuff is needed, so I received about 40 mb of files from apt-get to get Galeon up and running. I had it running on an old IBM PS/1 with 32 MB 30-pin ram, 25 mhz bus, and an ISA Trident TVGA 8900D 1MB graphics card, all on a 1 GB HDD. It did work with Debian 2.2 and WvDial on that old box.

(using FVWM2)

Once done, I moved the HDD to slave position on a faster machine, and wound up having to cobble together an XF86Config from the Mandrake 8 partition (mouse section on down to the end) to get X running after switching machines.
Who ever invented cut and paste anyway? He gets a gold star.
My Debian XF86Setup returned a "segmentation fault", couldn't use that, and there's no Xconfigurator to use either.
Used tomsrtbt 1.7.361 linux (on a floppy) to get the /etc/fstab pointed at hdb, since I did move the drive around.
Anyway, Galeon is fun to have and surf with on this setup. I'd like to use Opera 6.12, too, but have trouble getting rpm version to work, even with --nodepts, apparently somethings broken with my Debian RPM setup. I'm gonna try the .deb version and keep my fingers crossed.

Re:The comment form: broken?

[Bootsy Collins]

that's odd, it shows on every browser I've tried.

Yeah, it's there now.

I would have complained to them directly, to get them to add the submit button; but . . . .

Re: Why Galeon is not included in GNOME

[Black Parrot]

> the Galeon developers do not seem to be 100% behind GNOME's goals

The same can be said for the newsreader Pan: the author ripped all the GNOME stuff out a while back.

I wonder whether this might be the beginning of a trend, and kind of hope it is. IMO GNOME 2 has been a major step in the wrong direction.

Re: Why Galeon is not included in GNOME

[macshit]

> the Galeon developers do not seem to be 100% behind GNOME's goals

Yeah, there's something vaguely creepy about the above quoted sentence... It smacks way to much of petty corporate (or academic!) politics.

I really doubt everybody in the Gnome project is in such unanimous agreement about every single one of their goals -- and that's good, because some degree of dissension is healthy!

Galeon: A functional browser...

[billsf]

Does anybody remember "The web and only the web"? No true Unix user wants a browser that does it all. For mail, use a mailer, for IRC use a client like "BitchX" and so on. For 90% of my browsing Galleon is just fine and just about any sort of 'extra functionality' for the web can be hacked in. I surely would like to see features used in the past like the 'zoom indicator' brought back. Only the newest of the newbies uses a full page browser and therefore that new feature is disapointing. (Fullscreen) It is also disappointing that 'helper applications' are not easy to set and are not automatic, seemingly a 'nobrainer'.

Sometimes it is necessary to use Mozilla, mostly for proper Javascript functionality, something that one would think Galeon would inherit. Absolutely no browser can keep up with Apache and the web. This goes for the super bloated and slow
IExplorer too. Opera is fast but 'links' looks like the fastest graphical browser of them all and by many times. There is also the issue of some organisations allowing Windows or Mac browsers to protect their streams. This is the most absurd excuse of them all as it is trivial to intercept and store any 'protected' media.

Lets get some good features back into Galeon. It would be nice if it could completely spoof Mac or Windows for services that require that. (and save the streams at the request of the user) Any serious browser maker would team up with Apache or atleast use their modules if necessary. It is ironic that the 'most popular' browser is slow, insecure and made by a minor player in the server market. I'm sticking with Galeon for the moment. If it gets anymore 'user friendly' (and administrator hostile) I will end up using some other browser that may not even exist today.

Re:Galeon: A functional browser...

[bobintetley]

You can put the zoom control back on the toolbar by clicking Edit->Toolbar.

As far as I was aware, Gecko handles rendering (including Javascript) within itself, so javascript should functionally be no different in Mozilla or Galeon since the same lump of code is doing the job (I forget the name of the javascript engine Gecko uses). I use Galeon and I love it - I say good luck to the development team and don't give up, it's still *my* browser of choice.

Likewise, to be honest

[spokes]

I haven't heard much GNOME/KDE infighting lately. What I hear is people bitching about the HIG, exemplified by the galeon/ephy situation. And sorry to be blunt, Mr. Joyce, but from what I've seen in this thread, you are nothing but a pontificating troll.

Re:Likewise, to be honest

[Anonymous Coward]

"And sorry to be blunt, Mr. Joyce, but from what I've seen in this thread, you are nothing but a pontificating troll."

In saying that, you have demonstrated yourself more perceptive than 95% of those who have replied to me. I am indeed "nothing but a pontificating troll" who karma whores desperately in order to gain M1 and M2 to help fellow trolls. Congratulations. But please don't diss in future. I wrote Ulysses, you know.

Konqueror for Solaris?

[Kickasso]

Just compile KDE. Good luck :)

Re:The comment form: broken?

[topher1kenobe]

I am they. That would make a great sig, eh?

Defaults suck: make your own choices.

[jonadab]

> As for the reasons why it is the default in Gnome

Presumably same reason metacity is default in Gnome: the defaults
in Gnome are being deliberately shoved toward featureless, on the
theory that it's somehow cleaner, or something like that.

*shrug* People who care about features don't have to live with the
defaults, though. It's not to hard to install whatever browser you
want, whatever wm you want (I like sawfish...), and so forth.
Defaults are just that: what happens to you if you default on your
options. So, if you don't want that to happen to you, don't default:
when you install, set up all the options however you want them and
be happy.

Hey, when it really comes down to it, the default computer setup is
currently Windows XP. Feel free to live with the default if you
want, but don't complain when it sucks, because you had your choice.

Almost Perfect

[Markus Registrada]

It's funny -- of the "top 3 bugs" each developer lists, I have encountered only a couple. Of the top unimplemented features they list, I don't want any of them. To me, the only really critical bug was crashing within a few minutes every time I turned on Javascript, but they might have licked that in the 14 July snapshot I run. After that, being able to right-click on an image and get a menu reliably (not just after the third try) would help. The only "new" feature that would make much difference for me is honoring the Gnome emacs key-binding preference. (ctrl-A, E, N, P, B, F, K, particularly.) That worked fine in the 1.2 series, and is the only feature I miss from it.

I have to admit that I'd like to see the per-site preference behavior of cookies extended to Javascript, image loading and animation, font forcing, color forcing, zoom, etc. Probably the most valuable improvement would be a way to use a different text editor entirely, in another window if necessary. But, mainly, it now has almost exactly the feature set I need in a browser, and hardly anything else. I wish it would stay that way.

I've been using 1.3 since the beginning, and it was pretty sucky for a while, but I'm glad they did what they did. The version I'm using now is so much nicer, all around, than Epiphany, that it is clearly only politics that made Gnome switch to the latter. I'll never switch, because the Epiphany developers are a bunch of ideologues who have announced they will never add the features that make the browser useful and usable for me.

Re:Almost Perfect

[ReinoutS]

Please read a little background info to learn what's really behind the "politics" you mention.

the Epiphany developers are a bunch of ideologues who have announced they will never add the features that make the browser useful and usable for me.

The Epiphany developers have a vision on what a browser should and what it shouldn't be. However I can't recall an announcement "We, the Epiphany developers, will never add the features that make the browser useful and usable for Markus Registrada." Do you? Perhaps it would be nice if you'd point out which features exactly you had in mind...

Panel drawers WAS:They've had a lot of trouble.

[stuntpope]

Aren't the popup menus on XFCE's panel similar to Gnome's panel drawers? I never cared much for Gnome's drawers, but FWIC, you click an icon on the panel, it expands to show several launchers. XFCE has that.

Galeon is Dying

[Anonymous Coward]

It is official; Netcraft confirms: Mozilla is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Mozilla community when IDC confirmed that Mozilla market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all web browsers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Mozilla has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Mozilla is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Mozilla's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Mozilla faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Mozilla because Mozilla is dying. Things are looking very bad for Mozilla. As many of us are already aware, Mozilla continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Netscape 7 is the most endangered of them all, having lost 100% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant firing of all 50 Netscape developers by AOL only serves to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Mozilla is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Mozilla.org leader Mitchell Baker states that there are 7000 users of Mozilla. How many users of Firebird are there? Let's see. The number of Mozilla versus Firebird posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Firebird users. Galeon posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Firebird posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Galeon. A recent article put Netscape 7 at about 80 percent of the Mozilla market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Netscape 7 users. This is consistent with the number of Netscape 7 usenet posts.

Netscape went out of business and will probably be taken over by AOL who sell another troubled browser. Now AOL is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that Mozilla has steadily declined in market share. Mozilla is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Mozilla is to survive at all it will be among browser dilettante dabblers. Mozilla continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Mozilla is dead.

Fact: Mozilla is dying

Galeon is RUINED and OVER

[Anonymous Coward]

Galeon 1.0 and 1.2 were awesome.

1.3/2.0 is stripped of all useful features. The developers went on some stupid, stupid, stupid tirade about how having no features makes it easy to use. You couldn't be more WRONG! You learn the hard way -- no one wants your Galeon 1.3/2.0.

Go FIREBIRD!

FYI: also dropped by Knoppix

[EdlinUser]

I loved Galeon, it was my browser before I switched to Knoppix as my primary distro.

Small loss though; Knoppix is just incredible.
Using it brings back memories of using Google(beta).

Download a copy from a mirror at knoppix.net
or buy a copy from cheapbytes.com.

You, too, will be amazed.

The lizard on your PDA.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Try that with Mozilla."

If you insist

Re:The lizard on your PDA.

[Spy Hunter]

I wouldn't want to try running that on my PDA. It's an older iPAQ, and that thing would take up over half the Flash RAM by itself! And 32 MB of runtime memory consumption wouldn't leave room for anything else to run, like the OS. I'll stick with Konqueror/Embedded, thanks.

Re:bloatzilla is dead-The last mile.

[Anonymous Coward]

" The problem with that is, a lot of the "bloat" is the code that lets Mozilla render the last 10% of the web that Konqueror chokes on."

All the more reason for standards, instead of the "one off" that's the present web.

They've had a lot of trouble.-Owners manual.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The point is that no program can work out of the box for every user. Configuration and customization will always be required for a substantial portion of any userbase. By removing configuration options, you guarantee that not only will your program not work out of the box for a substantial portion of users, but that it will never work for that portion of the users."

Um, no. Mere removal doesn't guarentee anything. Removing what the 90% is using will. Whom the 90% is, is were the argument starts.

"It's gconf itself (not the editor) that I have a problem with. I have yet to see a Registry-esque configuration system that surpasses user-readable configuration files. Maybe part of the problem is the fact that there is no real documentation as to what keys are available (this is true, as far as I can tell, of both the Windows Registry, and of gconf). Windows went from a simple, easy-to-understand, well-documented system of human- and machine-readable INI files to an obtuse, poorly-documented system based on a non-human-readable database. gconf at least is XML underneath, but XML isn't that human-readable."

Well one. Believe it or not, the registry is documented. It's a rather thick book, but it is out there. XML tagged right is quite readable. Don't confuse verbose with hard to understand. Tedious maybe, but not hard.

wake up, galeon

[Anonymous Coward]

Although the Galeon people are surely doing good things, they give me a strange feeling.

Are they aware that a majority of Internet users in USA still connect through a modem? That this majority is even bigger in Europe? That it is practically 100% outside Europe and North America? They are not.

Are they aware that outside North America local calls, incl. Internet access, are metered and have to be paid according to effective usage? They are not.

Are they aware that a majority of users (especially in the Third World) has old hardware, like slow processors and 15" SVGA monitors? They are not.

Are they aware that their basic insticts are to consider the Web a sort of accidental television with all the tricks and decorations that this entail and no restriction at the user end? They are not.

I can report from my personal experience that connecting to www.yahoo.com from South Africa times out if graphics and javascript are enabled. It is only possible to connect with graphics and javascript off.

So why is Galeon (actually Mozilla) abolishing the graphic toggle on the fly so I can go somewhere text-only and request the images afterwards (if at all)? Why is there no on-the-fly toggle for javascript given all the abuses and errors of javascript programmers? Why is the feature gone (was available in Netscape 4.x) to blow up a single frame to full screen?

What I am missing at Galeon is the awareness that the Web is turning into a problem of self-defense against crap. They prefer to work to extend television - in the convinction that they are working for more freedom.

Wake up, Galeon.

I want one feature back:

[squarooticus]

C-a should go to the beginning of the line, NOT "select all." Look, I don't give a fuck if you want to make "select all" the default: just give me a freakin' dialog box somewhere in which I can change it!

I'm sick and tired of waiting for the Gnome2 guys to actually have a keyboard bindings control panel that does something, and this one little feature has made me consider downgrading to 1.2 on several occasions.

you read the wrong magazines

[DrSkwid]

two desktops renowned for good user interfaces

better to reign in hell than serve in heaven

Re: Why Galeon is not included in GNOME

[jdub!]

You're right. There are lots of differing views in the GNOME community.

For instance, between the eight people on GNOME's release team, we have all sorts of disagreements. Trying to decide between Galeon and Epiphany, and trying to analyse the wishes of the community were particularly difficult. Incredibly, the following points of view were held amongst the eight members of the release team:

We shouldn't ship a browser with the Desktop release at all

We shouldn't ship Galeon or Epiphany until they're ready

We should ship Epiphany

We should ship Galeon

So, it also turns out that I wrote the sentence you referred to as "petty corporate or academic politics". :-) You're vaguely right, I suppose. It was worded that way because we had to be very diplomatic about our rationale; it was a fairly heated issue.

Without the thickened diplomacy, it means that the current Galeon developers didn't seem to care about GNOME. They've viciously criticised the direction of the project, and did not get involved on the mailing lists when we were discussing the module selection process (so, in a way, they forfeited). Given these issues, it would not have made sense for the project to commit to Galeon.

Before you flame...! I wasn't convinced that we should have chosen a browser at all for the 2.4 Desktop release, because I don't think they're "ready" (qualitatively and philosophically). I use Galeon, and haven't enjoyed using Epiphany so far, yet my choice has nothing to do with "features" or "options"! :-)

But, as you can see, there are more important factors that we have to deal with than random personal opinions - even those of the release team!

Re:The lizard on your PDA.-II

[Anonymous Coward]

Your choice, but I think I answered your "Try that with Mozilla." quip.

Anyway complaining about bloat is a bit silly. As someone pointed out, the 10% difference that allows Mozilla to render what Konqueror will not, accounts for most of the size. When Konqueror gains the capability to render the same as Mozilla will you complain about it's size then?

Also PDA's are following Moore's law just as well as their bretheren, and the "bloat" will not be the issue you think it will be.

File Bookmark is there

[Markus Registrada]

To file a bookmark, go down to the folder where you want to file it, and right-click. There you go: "Add Bookmark Here". "File Bookmark" was always confusing. Not having it is an improvement.

In general, do a bit of exploration with the right mouse button. You'll discover all kinds of good things (besides a few remaining bugs).

gconf setting to change the tab bar location

[Sits]

There are a lot of hidden prefs (in keeping with the style of GNOME 2) which control behaiour that cannot be set by a preference dialog (some of these were in a pref dialog in Galeon 1). See the tab location part of the ExtraPrefs document on how to change it.

Firebird can't use GNOME settings...

[Sits]

... because there is not guarantee that the GNOME settings will be there. You don't have to have GNOME installed to use Mozilla (you could be running KDE, Window Maker etc.) but you do have to have the fundamental parts of GNOME installed in order to run Galeon.

Could someone summarize/point to 1.3 problems?

[KMSelf]

I'm a big Galeon fan, have been since early days, but am currently running 1.2.5, so I haven't seen the 1.3 problems. I also keep a fairly popular Nix Browser Reviews page.

I'm not much of a GNOME fan, and note the extensive GNOME deps as a misfeature of Galeon -- recently rediscovered as it turns out that some user.js prefs are ignored and need to be set through gconf instead (user-agent). Though I can see some benefits in principle, the results of GNOME in terms of the actual desktop are not to my personal liking. Fortunately, this doesn't get in the way of running WindowMaker instead.

There's a lot of assumed knowledge about the 1.3 issues in the interview. Could someone point to where this has been discussed?

Pitching my own $0.02: I've got lightweight browsers. I'm not looking for that in the niche Galeon currently fills. I'm also not looking for the fscking kitchen sink (browser, mail, news, composer...). A browser, but a solid browser, with user-friendly preferences, giving solid user control over presentation, privacy, security, with stability and decent performance. But wait, I already covered that rant....

If Galeon's seriously fscked up (and its slavish devotion to GNOME has always been more a detraction than a benefit), I'll be happy to move on. Pity losing a few years of accomodation, configuration, and utility.

Strongly recommend the core team listen to its users.

Re:The comment form: broken?

[Gherald]

probably

Remember when Galeon rocked?

[raindog2]

I'm surprised no one else has mentioned some of the cool stuff, especially crapware-blocking stuff, that has gone away in 1.3.

• "always use these fonts/colors" top level menu items
  
• "block all images from this site" context menu
  
• middle-clicking in the history to open in a new window, or even right clicking and getting the standard link context menu
  
• for that matter, being able to sort by "Last Visited" and "First Visited" in the history
  
• the ability to make my toolbar buttons icons-only, or text-on-the-side
  
• the ability to edit helper apps, mime types and the associated applications! why on earth would you take that out? I could see if it used your desktop's settings but it won't even bring up kmail to handle mailto links...
  
• the "use stylesheet..." submenu. I can't believe I'm the only person in the world who used this regularly.
  
• Assorted other little niceties that are missing, like the ^U shortcut for "view source" (and just pressing the key while hovering over the menu item doesn't seem to work anymore in Gtk2...) and showing the name of the image file in the context menu when you right click.
  

And in return, about the only real advance I can see is that my fonts are all antialiased now like they've been in Mozilla and Konqueror for about a year already. Maybe if I ran Gnome I'd find something to be impressed with, but I don't, and I haven't.

Overall, I don't think I've ever seen a minor version release of a program that took away so much functionality. I know it's due to the conversion to Gtk2/Gnome2 and there are still speed bumps to be worked out, but it's actually left me with a bad taste in my mouth for Gnome apps in general, which is pretty weird for me as a former avid Gnome user. If I end up switching to Firebird, as seems likely, I actually won't be running any more Gnome apps at all.

Maybe the thing to do is find out if Galeon has a bugzilla and see if all these have been filed already, but honestly, don't you think it'll be less effort to switch to Firebird? It would mean I would be running no Gnome apps at all anymore, which would be weird, but maybe the way Galeon's existence caused the Mozilla guys to build a browser like Firebird means it's fulfilled its purpose and there's no need to feel loyal to it for whatever reason.

Re:Defaults suck: make your own choices.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't agree that the defaults applications in gnome are featureless. The advanced features are still avalible throug gconf-editor. Check for example the apps->methacity options in gconf-editor to see the missing config settings. In summary:

Normal users: basic config avalaible in the applications settings menu
Advanced users: Use the gconf-editor and go to the apps -> your application folder for full settings