Mozilla Foundation Meets The GNOME Foundation

An anonymous reader writes "The board of directors of the GNOME foundation recently met with a few representatives of the Mozilla foundation - discussing how they could collaborate a little closer in future. A number of interesting things were discussed, including XAML/Avalon and the future of Firefox in GNOME/Linux. Check out the minutes of the meeting on the Gnome mailing list."

Comments

It'd be nice

[GigsVT]

Better to standardize on Firefox rather than have the desktop environment people keep churning out half-assed browsers like Konq and Nautilus.

Re:It'd be nice

[BuddieFox]

Konqueror, Nautilus, Epiphany, Galeon, Firefox, Mozilla et etc.. I have to agree that its getting kind of ridiculous.
Ok, choice is nice and all, but this duplication of functionality and work is probably extremely unproductive as a whole for the progress of open source software. It should be enough with 2-3 choices for browsers instead of 20: one or two lightweight ones á Firefox, and one or two "fully featured" like Mozilla.

Re:It'd be nice

[Moridineas]

Half-assed browsers like Konq?! It may be hard for you to believe, but some of us actually find Konq better to use than Mozilla.

That's certaintly true for APPLE, as Safari is based on kparts as well. Because of that alone, it wouldn't seriously surprise me if KParts browsers have a higher marketshare than mozilla.

Re:It'd be nice

[arkhan_jg]

Actually, I use konqueror these days as my primary browser, rather than firefox.

For a start, being able to have a tab with an sftp session next to a samba session next to a webdavs session next to a https session is very useful when web developing, or even just integrating stuff between different servers.

Secondly, konqueror launches a damn sight faster.

Finally, it integrates a lot nicer into my kde desktop than firefox or it's other gtk-varients.

Now, if you could use the gecko engine as a kpart, that would rock quite nicely. That said, with safari feeding back their improvements into khtml, konqueror is moving ahead by leaps and bounds, and it's a rare page i have rendering problems with these days.

All power to the mozilla team - I deployed thunderbird onto the staff windows machines at work as the standard imap client - and I think integration of firebird further into the linux desktop is a very good thing for both parties.

Ultimately though, a bit of healthy competition is a good thing - otherwise, we'd all just be using IE!

I find it odd indeed... (slightly OT)

[henriksh]

It is really odd that Gnome opted for Epiphany as a default browser in 2.x, when Galeon is a better and more featureful choice. I've read that the reasons were that Galeon did not follow some UI guidelines (this could surely be worked out?), and that Epiphany is simpler to use.

I just find it hard to believe than anyone would pick Epiphany over Galeon, even considering simplicity, since Galeon mostly works like Mozilla. Galeon seems simpler to use to me - Epiphany doesn't look or feel like any other browser I've used.

Re:GNONE-ME

[ajs]

Comparing Nautilus with Konqueror is pure nonsense, comparing GNOME with KDE is even bigger nonsense. If we get a team of developers on a Table and discuss all the crap we find between KDE and GNOME then I can tell from own experience that the answer is clearly that GNOME will fail horrible here.

What can you say... most of that isn't even coherent enough to be deemed english.

But KDE had exactly all these things 2 years ago already. There is a development difference of 4 years between both Desktop solutions.

And there's a development difference of 2-4 years in the other direction on other issues. What's surprising about one (very good) desktop system having different priorities than another (very good) desktop system?

Re:Is OSS going the Microsoft route?

[dAzED1]

no one said integrating a web browswer into the desktop was evil.

one company controlling the browser, the desktop, the OS, the applications, the server apps, and...whatever else...that is what is innappropriate. Not having a choice - that is what is wrong.

Don't want your browswer to be integrated? Use KDE, or the gnome fork that won't be integrated. Take the source and do it yourself, if you'd like. Not that you're making a serious question...

Progress, but someone needs to lead

[Ars-Fartsica]

One inherent advantage Microsoft has over collaborative projects is that they don't need to persuade their own developers - they just point the boat and say "go here if you want to get paid". In the open source world, the consensus approach of feeding/starving projects based on their relative merits, and the unwillingness to leave anyone out in the cold definitely hampers major moves.

Such is the case here. The need to more closely integrate the web rendering model and the desktop model is clear, and Microsoft is probably on to something compelling with Avalon/XAML. ActiveX was a disastrous first brush with integration but its clear they see a need and there is a need. Safe local applications integrated with the network do make sense.

On the open source side someone will have to lead to get this done - and not be afraid to leave some groups out. Epiphany should be an early victim - a "default" app no one uses.

Re:Be careful how close you get to Mozilla

[The-Dalai-LLama]

I hate to feed the trolls but criminy...

can only be useful in the context of searching for and downloading hardcore or violent pornography

The emphasis is in the original post and it's an utterly ridiculous claim. Trust me, these fantastic features are every bit as useful and functional for downloading and cataloging even low-key, family-friendly porn that has nothing to do with whips, chains, or farm animals in leather pants.

Besides which, your cheap attempt to inject a little extra hype carries a distinct tone of shrill hysteria, which detracts from any attempt at a more reasoned argument. Your attempt to use one narrow aspect of the whole broad, rich spectrum of glorious pornography is misleading enough that it probably has its own latin name.

I guess it also goes without saying that the uses for tabbed browsing are limited only by the imagination and intelligence of the person who browses.

Consequently, your options may be severely limited. Let me help you get started.

• The glorious power of tabbed browsing:
• Allows you to open up every category of the Chadwick's Catalog at once
• You can do a Google search for "Moral Purity" and open each result in its own tab
• Each article on the American Family Association's Website can be opened in its own tab. You can read the current article while the others load.
• You don't have to use Firefox's handy extensions on pictures of porn. Because Satan and his Mozillian Minions made them available through the GPL for free, you can use them to collect and trade pictures of Jesus or even pictures of beautiful cathedrals, without ever worrying that your licensing fee will be used to fund sex-correction surgery for a 16-year old Taiwanese lady-boy.
• If you have Bible questions, you can open a tab for each answer, drastically reducing the amount of time it takes to hide those words in your heart.
• Tabbed browsing is so useful that you can go to the Anti-Porn Guy's website and open each of his informative links in its own window to find others who will help you with your crusade against tabbed browsing.

To sum up: tabbed browsing is your friend. Whether you are cruising www.hotasiansluts.com or www.jesus.com, tabbed browsing can make your internet experience faster, easier, and better.

The Dalai Llama
...tab for the children...

P.S. - I gather that your tirade against tabbed browsing is a recurring theme. Feel free to bookmark this post and refer to it as needed.

good idea that....

[zogger]

...mozilla wants to collaborate closer with GNOME and that they asked for it first, according to the release of the minutes of the meeting. Cool Beans. Something that I like, more focused direction on unification for a polished product. *Choice* is good,but it's subjective without some sort of rational goal, choice by itself is mostly used as a buzzword, there must be a *goal* in making the choice and having multiple choices, not just that there *are* multiple choices extant.

And my choice and I bet millions of others would be a "linux thing" that worked cohesively together, and that just won't happen very quickly with thousands of directions taken, many of them just parallel trails with each other.

I most certainly would *chose* an operating system/distribution that worked all well together. A choice of a chaotic mish mash of thousands of incompatable apps and a so-so functionality is not much of a choice if you want quality over quantity.