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Epiphany is usually the first choice for GNOME users who want to use a web browser which is lighter than Firefox and integrates well with GNOME. Of course, there are alternatives like Konqueror or Opera out there, but they are either too bloated compared to Epiphany, or they don't integrate very well with the GNOME desktop environment. Being the default web browser in GNOME and built using the GTK toolkit, Epiphany became over time a well-known web browser especially for the fact that it is lightweight and has a basic, clean interface.
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Epiphany is usually the first choice for GNOME users who want to use a web browser which is lighter than Firefox and integrates well with GNOME. Of course, there are alternatives like Konqueror or Opera out there, but they are either too bloated compared to Epiphany, or they don't integrate very well with the GNOME desktop environment. Being the default web browser in GNOME and built using the GTK toolkit, Epiphany became over time a well-known web browser especially for the fact that it is lightweight and has a basic, clean interface.
Epiphany Browser 2.26.1 running in Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope
The rendering engine used by this browser is the same as Firefox, Gecko and has a score of 72/100 at the Acid3 Test. By comparison, Firefox 3.5 got 93/100, Opera 10 Beta got an impressive (and expected) 100/100 and Konqueror 4.2.95 (included in KDE 4.3 RC1) got 89/100.
Epiphany 2.26.1 Acid3 test: 72/100
Firefox 3.5 Acid3 test: 93/100
Opera 10 Beta 1 Acid3 test: 100/100
Konqueror in KDE 4.3 RC1 Acid3 test: 89/100
Epiphany comes with a common interface for a web browser and has all the main features included: extensions, bookmarks, possibility to increase or decrease font size, tabs, fast access to back, forward, stop, reload, home, history and bookmarks functions in the toolbar, support for text encoding, it allows to open the page source by default in Gedit, a fullscreen mode (accessible from the menu or using the F11 keyboard shortcut) and a personal data window which stores and shows cookies and passwords.
Epiphany also has a bookmark manager and it allows to import Firefox or Galeon (an older web browser, currently unmaintained as far as I know) bookmarks.
The preferences window offers the possibility to change the basic settings, like font sizes and the fonts to use for displaying web pages, settings for privacy, temporary files, language encodings and how files are downloaded.
Epiphany ships by default with many practical extensions. To list a few:
- Greasemonkey, the powerful add-on to run various user scripts
- Ad Blocker, to block unwanted ads across Internet websites
- Gestures, to enable mouse gestures
- Page info, to view information about the current web page
These are just a few, Epiphany comes with even more, which you can view and enable or disable from Tools -> Extensions.
YouTube videos - no problems using Flash
Documentation is available online and offline via the Help -> Contents menu entry (or using F11).
Using Gecko, Epiphany will successfully display all the pages Firefox 3.0 displays (or it should, theoretically). I had no problems viewing YouTube videos (provided that Flash plugin was installed on the system) or writing a Blogger post.
Extensions private data
In conclusion, if you're looking a GTK alternative to Firefox, then Epiphany is the way to go. Lightweight but very powerful due to the use of included extensions, with mostly all the necessary features built-in, Epiphany can prove a viable alternative to more bloated solutions.
Official homepage
Ubuntu users, notice that you'll have to type sudo apt-get install epiphany-browser to get it installed, since the epiphany package is a game. Full Story |
