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

Mozilla meets Gnome.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Tokyo get stomped?

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

[Bricklets]

I use Firefox when I'm working in Windows and Linux, but I use Safari when working on a Mac. Safari uses KHTML (developed for "Konq"). Different strokes for different folks. Just because you don't like a particular browser does not mean others feel the same.

And by standardization, that does not mean the elimination of all other browsers. It just means basing multiple browers on the same standard (i.e. user interface, rendering of pages, etc.)

Re:It'd be nice

[jdifool]

The socialists, the communists, the social-democrats, the conservatives, the libertarians, the absenteists.. I have to agree that its getting kind of ridiculous.
Ok, choice is nice and all, but this duplication of thinking and criticism is probably extremely unproductive as a whole for the progress of democracy. It should be enough with 2-3 choices for political parties instead of 20: one or two lightweight ones as the libertarians, and one or two "fully featured" like the democrats and the republicans.

oh wait...

It's genius

[teamhasnoi]

They're going to incorporate the browser into the OS. It's a sure sign that linux is ready for the desktop, because obviously you can't have an OS that isn't tightly integrated with the internet.

Vision like this could only come the linux community.

Re:Be careful how close you get to Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. No sooner have I downloaded and installed Mozilla browser that I have noticed by 17-year-old son looking at pornography and the images of filthy women on the Internet. Plus he started talking somce Communist manifesto stuff and once said he was going to install Lunix on our home machine.

I am not a violent man, but from good father's perspective I had to whip out my belt and show him that's the road to hell. That changed his perspective entirely, so right now he's quite happy using Internet Explorer 6 on Windows ME and paying for all the applications he uses except some cheap crap, that's so bad they have to give it away for other people to pick up.

I also own 100 shares of Microsoft stock in my portfolio, and so does my wife, so no Lunix talks are permitted in my house, since we are all planning for happy retirement.

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

[13Echo]

This topic about Epiphany really opens a new can of worms. Now, I'm going to go off about Gnome in general. Epiphany, itself, really is a good example of one of Gnome's major problems.

I'm finding that many Gnome developers are going with making things so ridiculously simple at times that it is almost getting stupid. I use Epiphany, but I prefer Galeon as well. Comparing Epiphany to more feature-rich browsers like Galeon/Konqueror/Firefox makes Epiphany seem almost like IE to some degree. I suppose that is the point. I can browse with Epiphany and still get a reasonably good experience, where if I am forced to use a Windows machine (and IE) I am greeted with a slow browser with no features, tons of pop-ups, lack of tabbed browsing, lack of middle click, etc. Sure, you can add these extensions, but that's not the point.

The Gnome project seems to be interested in keeping things as simple as possible without taking too many features away. There are some things about Galeon/Firefox that I never used. There are some things about Epiphany that I would love to have. Any choice is better than IE for most browsing. I guess that is the point.

What is really odd about Gnome's usability though, is that it is really inconsistent between apps. Even more annoying is that there are such major changes between different versions of Gnome, that really negate the "ease of use" concept that they seem to promote. For example, what in the hell is up with the new spatial Nautilus? Sure, it's fast. Sure, it works well in some respects. Sure, I'm getting used to it. Sure, I can enable "classic mode" and browse that way. But it seem to be *unfinished*. That's the big deal. Someone above mentioned that Gnome feels half-finished in many respects, and I tend to agree (in spite of it being my desktop of choice). Perhaps if they would stick to keeping major UI standards for major versions (between 2.x and 3.x, for instance), maybe someone could finish implementing a product or feature and make things consistent for once. Though I kinda like the new Nautilus spatial file manager, there are a lot of things that are missing that really make it difficult to use for certain things.

So, back to Epiphany... While I feel that it feels a lot like Galeon or Firefox in most respects, some design decisions are just weird! For example, the way that it manages tab organization, or the slim feature-set that give you the ability to customize it. I like the browser, but I feel that Marco is going way too far in some respects. I really appreciate his work; Don't get me wrong. It's just something that I'm seeing from many Gnome-centric projects as well.

It's just weird. You have an app like Evolution, which is kick-ass as far as mail apps are concerned, but other things seem to be broken or incomplete; Epiphany, Totem, (the new and improved) Nautilus in spatial mode, G-Streamer, etc. To the guy that posted that really long response of above; I feel your pain. I love Gnome, but I can't help but think that the head developers are a little lost at times. There really isn't a very good sense of group direction and planning... At least compared to KDE, in my opinion.

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.