Editing GNOME Web (section)

=== Development ===
==== Galeon ====
{{main|Galeon}}
Marco Pesenti Gritti, the initiator of [[Galeon]], originally developed Epiphany in 2002 as a [[Fork (software development)|fork]] of Galeon. The fork occurred because of the disagreement between Gritti and the rest of Galeon developers about new features. Gritti regarded Galeon's monolithic design and the number of user-configurable features as factors that were limiting Galeon's maintainability and usability, but the rest of the Galeon developers wanted to add more features.{{Citation needed|date=March 2022}}

Around the same time, the GNOME project adopted a set of [[GNOME Human Interface Guidelines|human interface guidelines]], which promoted simplification of user interfaces. As Galeon was oriented towards [[power user]]s, most developers disapproved. As a result, Gritti created a new browser based on Galeon, with most of the non-critical features removed. He intended Epiphany to comply with the GNOME HIG. As such, Epiphany used the global GNOME theme and other settings from inception.<ref name="galeon-history_website" /><ref name="FSM" />

Gritti explained his motivations:

{{quote|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 is less than responsive.

Epiphany 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. Epiphany 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.

[..]

Epiphany's main goal is to be integrated with the gnome desktop. We don't aim to make Epiphany usable outside Gnome. If someone will like to use it anyway, it's just a plus. For example: Making people happy that don't have control center installed is not a good reason to have mime configuration in Epiphany itself.|Marco Pesenti Gritti<ref name="mozdev-home"/>}}

Galeon continued after the fork, but lost momentum due to the remaining developers' failure to keep up with changes in the Mozilla platform. Galeon development stalled and the developers decided to work on extensions to bring Galeon's advanced features to Epiphany.<ref name="FSM" />

Gritti ended his work on Epiphany and a GNOME team led by Xan Lopez, Christian Persch and Jean-François Rameau now direct the project.<ref name="webkit-announcement" /> Gritti died of cancer on May 23, 2015.<ref name=gritti />

==== Gecko-based ====
The first version of Epiphany was released on December 24, 2002.<ref name="epiphany-turns-7" />

Epiphany initially used the [[Gecko (layout engine)|Gecko layout engine]] from the [[Mozilla]] project to display web pages. It provided a GNOME [[graphical user interface]] for Gecko, instead of Mozilla's cross-platform interface.<ref name="dont-click_book" />

The development of Epiphany was mainly focused on usability improvements compared to major browsers at the time. The most notable was the new text entry widget, which was introduced in version 1.8. The new widget supported icons inside the text area and reduced the screen space needed to present information, while improving GNOME integration.<ref name="new-text-entry_devblog" />

The next major milestone was version 2.14, which was the first to follow GNOME's version numbering. It also featured network awareness using [[NetworkManager]], [[smart bookmarks]] improvements, and the option to build with [[XULRunner]].{{Citation needed|date=March 2022}}

The latter was critical. Previously, Epiphany could only use an installed Mozilla web browser as a web engine provider. The XULRunner support made it possible to install Epiphany as the only web browser on the system.<ref name="pi-1" /><ref name="198_devblog" />

==== WebKit-based ====
[[File:GNOME Web 40 (released in 2021-03) -- Web Inspector.png|thumb|Web Inspector, showing a [[Safari (web browser)|Safari]]-like user interface]]

The development process suffered from major problems related to the Gecko backend. Notably, the release cycles of the two projects did not line up efficiently. Additionally, Mozilla increasingly disregarded third-party software that wished to make use of Gecko, until it became viewed as an integrated Firefox component.<ref name="webkit-announcement" /> To address these issues, in July 2007, the Epiphany team added support for [[WebKit]] as an alternative rendering engine.<ref name="port-buddha" /> On {{dts|2008|4|1}}, the team announced that it would remove the ability to build it using Gecko and proceed using only WebKit.<ref name="webkit-announcement" />

The size of the team and complexity of porting the browser to WebKit caused version 2.22 to be re-released with bugfixes alongside GNOME 2.24,<ref name="epiphany-loves-webkit" /> so the releases stagnated until {{dts|2009|7|1}}, when it was announced that 2.26 would be the final Gecko-based version.<ref name="gecko-eol" />

In September 2009, the transition to WebKit was completed as part of GNOME 2.28.<ref name="ars_garden" />