Galeon
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![]() Galeon 2.0.4 | |
Original author(s) | Marco Pesenti Gritti |
---|---|
Developer(s) | Philip Langdale Tommi Komulainen Ricardo Fernández Pascual Yanko Kaneti Crispin Flowerday[citation needed] |
Initial release | June 2000 |
Final release | 2.0.7[1] ![]() |
Written in | C |
Operating system | Unix-like operating systems |
Type | Web browser |
License | GNU General Public License |
Website | galeon |
Galeon is a discontinued Gecko-based web browser that was created by Marco Pesenti Gritti with the goal of delivering a consistent browsing experience to GNOME desktop environment. It gained some popularity in the early 2000s due to its speed, flexibility in configuration and features.
The disagreement over the future of Galeon split the development team in 2002, which resulted in the departure of the browser's initial author and several other developers. This event marked the beginning of the browser's popularity decline, which led to its discontinuation in September 2008. Some of Galeon's features were subsequently ported to Epiphany (now called Web) – the descendant of Galeon.
Features
Galeon made use of Gecko's features including configuration options and standards support. Apart from that, Galeon had several features that were uncommon in browsers at that time:[2][3][4]
- mouse gestures
- configurable user agent string
- configurable display of favicons
- customizable toolbars
- configurable position of tab bar
- smart bookmarkswith search history
- ability to specify own fonts and colors for web content
- configurable MIME types handler
- configurable history expiry
- page zooming
Development history
The project was started by Marco Pesenti Gritti with the goal of creating a web browser that would be fast and consistent with the GNOME desktop environment. The first public version (Galeon 0.6) was released in June 2000.[3]
On the rise
The first releases of Galeon were criticised for lack of such basic features as
At the time of Galeon's creation, the most popular
Galeon was widely seen as one of the best Linux browsers available.[6][9] The polls revealed the substantial usage share of Galeon,[10] though its popularity was regarded as owing to lack of stability evident in Mozilla's browsers.[11][failed verification]
Split of the development team
With the release of new version of the
In November 2002,[3] as the result of several discussions on the topic Gritti made the decision to cease his work in Galeon and fork the project and started development of a HIG-compliant web browser he called Epiphany (now known as Web).[13][14]
After the split
As Gritti no longer controlled the development of Galeon, the previous functionality was restored in subsequent releases and some new features were added,
Eventually the Galeon developers announced plans to halt development of Galeon, saying "the current approach is unsustainable" regarding the resources required to maintain it. Instead, they planned to develop a set of extensions for Epiphany to provide similar functionality.[13][16]
Persistence
Even after development ceased in September 2008, the browser remained popular and in December 2011 was still available in some Linux distribution's repositories, such as Debian 6 Squeeze,[17] although it was not part of Debian 7 Wheezy.[18]
Reception
Galeon was praised for its customizability and speed, as compared to Netscape Navigator and Firefox, though Konqueror and Opera were still faster on older hardware.[2][5][6][19] Galeon was noted for its session handling and crash recovery.[6]
In November 2002,
Critics noted Galeon's tricky plugin installation.[2]
See also
References
- ^ "galeon Files"
- ^ a b c Galeon at a glance, FreeOS.com, 15 June 2001, retrieved 16 November 2011
- ^ a b c d e f DeRosia, Chris (29 July 2003), Galeon History, archived from the original on 13 October 2011, retrieved 15 November 2011
- git repository, archived from the originalon 3 May 2013, retrieved 16 November 2011
- ^ Linux Planet, archived from the originalon 4 April 2012, retrieved 16 November 2011
- ^ a b c d Valliere, Rob (9 May 2002), Valliere: 2002 Linux Browser Review, Linux Today, archived from the original on 11 February 2005
- ^ Dahle, Håvard (May 29, 2001), "[Opera-linux] The road ahead: features in linux vs. ms win client", opera-linux mailing list, archived from the original on April 15, 2012
- ^ aaron (May 29, 2001), "[Opera-linux] The road ahead: features in linux vs. ms win client", opera-linux mailing list, archived from the original on April 15, 2012
- ^ Krause, Ralph (March 2000), "Browser Comparison", Linux Journal (95), retrieved 17 November 2011
- ^ a b Loli-Queru, Eugenia (1 November 2002), Poll: Vote for the Best Mozilla/Gecko-based Browser, OSNews, retrieved 16 November 2011
- ^ a b Whitinger, Dave (9 February 2004), Firefox 0.8 is the release that won me over, LXer, retrieved 16 November 2011
- ^ Benson, Calum; Elman, Adam; Nickell, Seth & Robertson, Colin Z. (2002), GNOME Human Interface Guidelines (PDF) (1.0 ed.), The GNOME Usability Project, retrieved 3 April 2012
- ^ a b c d Min, Andrew, "Epiphany, the ultimate Gnome browser", The Ubuntu Applications book (under construction), Free Software Magazine, archived from the original on October 31, 2008, retrieved November 7, 2008
- ^ Former Galeon Maintainer Starts New Epiphany Browser Project, 19 February 2003, retrieved 16 November 2011
- ^ Topher The Web Guy (26 July 2003), Galeon Developer Interview, archived from the original on 13 November 2011, retrieved 16 November 2011
- ^ Langdale, Philip (22 October 2005), The future of Galeon, archived from the original on 27 September 2011, retrieved 15 November 2011
- ^ Debian, Package: galeon (2.0.7-2.1 and others), archived from the original on 16 September 2014, retrieved 27 December 2011
- ^ Debian, All Debian Packages in "wheezy", retrieved 29 December 2011
- ^ Jon (October 16, 2005), GEEKY FUN: Galeon Web Browser, archived from the original on March 8, 2012, retrieved November 16, 2011
External links
Media related to Galeon at Wikimedia Commons