Will Epiphany be able to compete with Firefox's extensions?
31 May 2008
I recently looked at the forthcoming Epiphany browser based-on-Webkit. However, some people told me that Firefox has so many extensions that it would not be possible for a new browser to compete, even among the target audience of GNOME users. Is this true?
I am not a C hacker and don't want to be at this stage, so I can't really help with the heavy lifting in finishing the new Epiphany. However, the previous Gecko-based version allowed you to write extensions in Python, so if that is true in the new version, I could write an extension or two.
The old gecko version of Epiphany had various extensions, and a dozen or so of the best were bundled in the Epiphany-Extensions package.
Firefox extensions
It is early days because, as far as I know, the new Epiphany extension API is not written yet, however, we can do a little research about Firefox extensions, and seeing which ones are worth replicating on Epiphany. I myself have FireGPG (allows you to use GPG with webmail), Flashblock (blocks Flash movies unless whitelisted) and FireBug (see below).
There are 2353 add-ons and themes in the Firefox add-on database, several are abandoned in that they have not been updated to work with modern versions of Firefox. The bottom 1000 have had very little impact. For example, the "Et Lolcat" extension translates English to 'locat', it has only been downloaded 26 times ever. I doubt the lack of a lolcat extension is going to prevent anyone from using Epiphany.
As you might expect, outside the big hitters, the popularity of extensions tails off pretty fast. The top few add-ons have been download hundreds of thousands of times, the 100th add-on has been downloaded 10,000 times, the 1000th add-on has hardly ever been downloaded by anyone.
So lets ignore all the themes as Epiphany themes according to your desktop theme; lets also ignore all the abandoned extensions and the extensions which have never really been downloaded by anyone. So we can say there are less than 500 extensions that are actually relevant for our purposes. This is still a massive number. I cannot think of another piece of software that has 500 active extensions.
In the rest of this post, I look through the list of the top 100 downloaded-add-ons. This list of course is dynamic, so will change according to when you view it. So where I have included a number, it is the position in the top 100 when I looked at it. Do not worry I don't talk about 100 add-ons, a lot of the top 100 add-ons are themes and dictionaries which I have ignored.
The top three
Video DownloadHelper (1) - This allows people to rip videos out of sites like Youtube, as does UnPlug (37) and a million others. This could be easily replicated by Epiphany but maybe a better approach would be a "save-as" button in Gnash? Likewise Flashblock would not be required if Gnash has an option for "only play when the user agrees to".
Adblock Plus (2) provides advert blocking, as does Adblock and Adblock Filterset.G Updater (38). In the old Epiphany, there already was a decent adblock. This can and no doubt will be easily replicated by an Epiphany extension.
NoScript (3) provides blocking and white-listing of Javascript. This could be easily replicated by an Epiphany extension. Epiphany already gives you the ability to turn Javascript on and off globally, the extension just needs to give the ability to control this behaviour per site.
Not all extensions are priorities
IE Tab (7) allows Windows users of Firefox to open non-standard webpages in IE. This is not available on Firefox for Linux so is irrelevant. People should not write IE only webpages.
Next we have the replacements for Firefox's rubbish download dialog: DownThemAll (4), Download Statusbar (6), PDF Download (10), Fast Video Download (15), ScrapBook (28). Hopefully Epiphany's download dialog will be good enough out of the gate. So these are not a priority.
Foxmarks (9) and Speed Dial (29) are replacements for Firefox's annoying bookmarks dialog. Epiphany's bookmark manager is better, so these extensions are not a high priority.
Greasemonkey (5) is a higher level extension tool, it basically makes it easier to write extensions for Firefox, especially per site extensions. If Epiphany's extensions are easy to write, this will not be needed.
The Fasterfox (17) extension allows you to prefetch pages, as well as make concurrent connections, i.e. download the same page ten times at the same time. I am undecided weather this extension is a good idea for the web. I wouldn't want people using it on my sites.
A web browser is not a desktop environment or package manager
Quite a few of the extensions use Firefox as a convenient way to make and distribute an application, not surprising as Windows does not have a package manager. These extensions may have none or only tangential connection to the fact that Firefox is a web browser. Many of these in Linux would work just as fine or better as a separate application, indeed many equivalent applications already exist and are probably better.
FireFTP (18) is an FTP client, GNOME has GFTP which is perfectly fine. FoxyTunes (27) is a media player frontend, Linux has billions of media players. Forecastfox (12) tells you the weather, the GNOME desktop already tells you the weather, we can even look out a window. Likewise, FoxClocks (30) tells you the time, which the GNOME desktop does by default. After 40, we have RSS Readers such as the "Feed Sidebar" and "Sage", as well the IRC client ChatZilla. GNOME has lots of RSS Readers, e.g. Straw and Liferea, and Linux has lots of IRC Clients. The best way to use IRC is to use a client that can run 24/7 on the server, such as Irssi.
ScribeFire is a Firefox extension that provides a text editor for blogging. There is GNOME-blog available through all the package managers, but I prefer to use a real text editor. FoxSaver is an extension to provide a screensaver and photoviewer, GNOME has the Eye of GNOME image viewer and its own screensaver. ReminderFox (35) provides reminders, as GNOME already does.
PicLens (8) provides desktop effects for Firefox on Windows. It is not available for Linux, but Compiz with Epiphany does a better job. The same applies to "Tab Effect" (21) and FireGestures (24).
The Firebug (13) extension is a fantastic toolkit for web designers that turns your browser into a complete Dreamweaver clone. This would perhaps be better as a webkit based application, the same goes for "Web Developer" (20).
"Better Gmail 2" (14) provides extra options for Gmail, turning Gmail into a rich desktop application. The whole point of web-based email is that you can access it from any computer anywhere without special software. If you want to use installed software, then Gnome has Evolution which is richer than any web application.
I also skimmed through the 100 to 200 most popular add-ons, and it was more of the same. I hate to be a snob, but it seems that the most downloaded extensions are not necessarily the best ones!
Conclusion
There are many hundreds of Firefox extensions, some of them are absolutely fantastic, however many are repetitive, many also replicate things that already exist on a GNOME based system by default or are quickly available in the package manager. A large number of the extensions are old and have not been ported to modern versions, and some of them are just bad ideas.
This survey has convinced me that it is quality not quantity that matters, that with just 20 well chosen extensions, Epiphany could offer the features that 80% of GNOME users want, with 50 well chosen extensions, it could offer the features that 95% of GNOME users want. I am talking about extensions that actually have something to do with web browsing, not turning Firefox into a jukebox, or into a calendar, into a Compiz replacement, or into an operating system of its own.
1 ParadoxHeart says...
I have a few points to make.
First, you've missed the point of Foxmarks. It's a method of synchronising bookmarks between different versions of Firefox, which I'd consider separate from a simple UI improvement to the bookmarks. Does Epiphany offer bookmark synchronisation between multiple computers? If not, you can't discount this extension.
"People should not write IE only web pages." While this is a statement I believe very much in, there still remain several sites that will not function correctly without it (even with user agent string faking). Obviously making this extension work on Linux would be no easy task (probably involving Wine, and being somewhat buggy), but I suspect being able to view pages in Epiphany with the IE engine (but hopefully fudge the user agent string and other identifying features to appear to the server to still be Epiphany) would benefit some users.
gFTP is, IMO, not the best example of a Linux (S)FTP client; for instance, it only allows overall rate limiting, not separate limits for upload and download, which is madness for anyone on an ADSL connection. I still agree that a separate FTP client is the way to go for anyone who needs advanced rate limit and queueing features, but I'd suggest either KFTPGrabber or Filezilla.
Windows has as many audio players as Linux does. FoxyTunes isn't trying to replace them, it's merely trying to give people who do a lot of web browsing quick access to their player. I suspect that a well engineered Gnome panel would probably fill this role though, and carry on filling it when the browser is not at the front.
irssi is a nice stable IRC client, but it's not exactly a down hill ride learning to use it. Still, there are plenty of graphical choices that are easy to use. There's even one installed by default on Ubuntu, Pidgin.
FireGestures, as the name implies, appears to be a mouse gestures extension. This does not appear to be anywhere in Compiz that I can see. Beyond simple "close the window" gestures it really belongs in the application IMO, as most gestures will be for application specific features which Compiz will know nothing about.
Now we come to web developer. As a web developer, I can say right now that any dedicated web kit application sufficiently capable to act as a replacement for Firefox/Epiphany with a web developer extension, will end up being Firefox/Epiphany with web developer features. It must continue to be a browser in its own right, or it isn't going to be useful beyond trivial web development tasks. At this point I would argue that, if the extension system is sufficiently capable, you might as well make an Epiphany extension.
Posted at 8:41 a.m. on May 31, 2008
2 Karfau says...
Great artikel!
Isn't it always the question about using one "universal" tool wich can do a lot of things for me, or using one specific piece of software for each action. I think this is a kind of taste and got-used-to s.
Me (being a user of Windows most of the time, just because i dont have the time to find all the according cool linux/unix-tools for the windows-ones I'm using every day), having some simple examples from my everyday work:
In a webdevelopment-case I dont want to use an extra tool do sync with my ftp-server, but if there is no IDE I like which supports it, then i have to. (Not talking about previewing developed site(s) in different browser(engine)s)
For newsreading I dont want another programm running, Mozilla does this fine enough for me. Same with IRC: using chatZilla as a Firefox-extension, because I find irc-links in the web when i need them.
OK, mostly my favorite way is the unitool-way, but if I know a program wih fits my needs for one simple aspect better than a aio-wonder I'll use it.
I love to read your articles, keep going!!!
Greetings with my first blog-comment here from germany, Karfau
Posted at 6:36 p.m. on May 31, 2008
3 Mark says...
I think you should get Stumble to write an extension. Then you would be set.
Posted at 11 p.m. on May 31, 2008
4 Jonas says...
Personally, I've never really seen the appeal of the extension system. I've tried quite a few (some just out of morbid curiosity) but most promise a lot but fails to deliver. And I'm wary to have too many installed even if they were good for the simple reason: the more of them you have, the more likely it is that one or several will have more or less severe bugs that will one day bite you in the behind.
Just give me the equivalent of noscript and adblock and I'm set :)
Posted at 3:48 a.m. on June 1, 2008
5 menachem says...
What about Tab Mix Plus. This extension gives you full control over tab behavior. Does Epiphany have an equivalent.
For what it's worth (not much), I was a Galeon user back in the day, but Firefox had some "must-have" extensions that I couldn't replicate in Galeon, so I moved over to firefox.
Posted at 6:14 a.m. on June 1, 2008
6 Adam Bielinski says...
I like using epiphany because it's fast and lightweight, and is more intuitive in a GNOME environment. I don't think extensions are everything.
Posted at 1:41 a.m. on June 15, 2008
7 Bryce says...
Sorry to comment on an older post, but I wanted to point out that you misunderstand the purpose of at least two of the extensions you mentioned: Foxmarks and Greasemonkey.
As mentioned above, Foxmarks is more about bookmark syncing between computers. Greasemonkey isn't about helping write extensions, although it can and has been used as such. It's more about being able modify the form or function of arbitrary web pages _without_ writing a full-blown extension. IMO, with Greasemonkey, there's no need to write an extension unless you want to modify Firefox's UI. As far as I'm concerned, it's required functionality for any browser I'm going to use.
Posted at 7:47 p.m. on June 25, 2008
8 michael says...
what about Galeon? in Gnome i use Galeon mostly. it is fast and stable and has a nice portal with search masks for Debian, FSF, Freshmeat and so on.
wtf uses IE? a real CommandLine Warrior uses anyway Surfraw with w3m...
Posted at 4:17 a.m. on July 8, 2008
9 Cliff Wells says...
I personally cannot live without the Web Developer extension or Firebug. Unfortunately these are probably both among the more difficult to port extensions.
Given how poorly Firefox functions on Linux these days (have all the FF devs switched to Mac?), I'd happily switch to Epiphany (or Galeon) except my job would be much more painful without these particular extensions. Also, at least on Fedora 9, both of these browsers tend to crash frequently.
Posted at 9:37 a.m. on July 17, 2008
10 bkil says...
1/4.) "I hate to be a snob, but it seems that the most downloaded extensions are not necessarily the best ones!" -> That's a universal TRUTH!
2/4.) You must keep in mind that not everyone has access to a UNIX-like PC. :)
3/4.) GTK and Gecko-tied extensions could be ported to non-gecko browsers. This has been demonstrated in the case of Opera >=9.50 vs. Adobe Flash player >=9.0.115.0 (compare: Opera =<9.27 vs. FP =<9.0.48.0).
4/4.) If I'm not mistaken, the most essential extensions were already available for Epiphany (as you've stated, but you do not place proper emphasis on it). Some Iceweasel addons can also be installed for Epiphany (Java, Flash, Flashblock, etc.). What I'm still looking for is a noscript solution.
From the output of "apt-cache show epiphany-extensions": Adds extra features to GNOME's Epiphany web browser, including action, adblocking, auto-reload, auto-scroller, console, extensions manager, find, greasemonkey, javaconsole, mouse gestures, move tabs between windows, python-console, pushscroller, rss extension, error viewer and validator, certificate viewer, sidebar, smart bookmarks, page info, CSS Stylesheet, favicon.ico, tab states and a GNOME Dashboard interface.
Posted at 12:24 p.m. on August 9, 2008
11 Seth Kriticos says...
bkil: "GTK and Gecko-tied extensions could be ported to non-gecko browsers." cough Epiphany is running on gecko currently and integrates some extensions thereof, they are just planning to switch to webkit /cough
For the main article: I'm currently using Epiphany. Until some time ago, I used firefox/iceweasel, but it is too much of a resource hog and does not integrate well. Still have it around and fire it up once in a while for checks / nifty features, but most of the time I'm on Epiphany (like now).
The extensions provided by Epiphany are quite nice and do most of the things I need. The download window is, well.. minimalistic, but still integrates good with the desktop. DownThemAll! has some nice graphics and functions, but man, that thing uses the CPU..
The web developer is nice for error checking, but this is not a must have.. That's what web editors are for.
Mostly agree with the article, and I will happily stay with Epiphany.
ps: I generally don't care, what kind of browser other people are using as long as it tries to keep to standards (read w3c). Diversity is good.
Karfau: I know, it's hard. I'm from Germany myself, but please get a spell checker. Oh wait, windows user.. Never mind.
Posted at 11:07 p.m. on August 19, 2008
12 GreenCookie says...
A combination of screen,elinks,irssi,vim works wonders for me, as im usually playing around in command line. However if there was ever ONE reason I'd never leave firefox is because of its Vimperator addon.
Posted at 7:54 p.m. on September 24, 2008
13 bkil says...
@Seth Kriticos: Sure that's true. I have been running Epiphany (and now Epiphany-gecko - I have also tried Epiphany-webkit, but it still has rough edges) for years now. I need every little bit of performance I can squeeze out of this old, though passively cooled hardware. I sometimes fire up Links2, Dillo, Konqueror and Arora too.
It's clear from the title of the article that it is referring to the webkit one: "31 May 2008, Will Epiphany be able to compete with Firefox's extensions?"
"However, some people told me that Firefox has so many extensions that it would not be possible for a new browser to compete, even among the target audience of GNOME users."
Wait a second, Epiphany-webkit is not a new browser, it is the upcoming version of the former one, so there's no need to compete! XD Though, it hit me hard that I can't use the webkit and gecko version at the same time on Debian :-/ What do I need to configure to achieve that?
Cheers! :)
Posted at 5:49 p.m. on October 16, 2008
14 starshadow says...
I just installed Epiphany, and promptly discovered how much I have come to rely on Speed Dial in Firefox. It should be interesting to see how I can work around this situation - surely there must be a simple solution out there somewhere.
:)
Posted at 5:32 a.m. on February 22, 2009