Firefox GTK+ Integration [LWN.net]

Firefox GTK+ Integration

Posted May 28, 2008 19:53 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
In reply to: Firefox GTK+ Integration by GreyWizard
Parent article: Fsyncers and curveballs (the Firefox 3 fsync() problem)

Are you seriously unable to understand why Firefox ships their own file browser while GTK+ applications don't?

I understand it perfectly. What I don't understand is why they don't use it by default. The gtk+ fans could always change the setting to get the gtk+ browser, but it seems to me that you should choose sensible defaults, not orders-of-magnitude-slower defaults.

Have you ever participated in a substantial software development project in any way? That's a rhetorical question: it's clear that you haven't.

Funny man. I've been writing both commercial and open-source software for the last 18 years in areas ranging from large EDA systems to image-processing, text-processing, networking and personal productivity tools. I own a company that develops commercial software. If you really want, I can e-mail you my resume.

However, you don't need to be a software author to realize that breaking formerly-working functionality (especially core functionality like printing) is a Bad Thing.

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Firefox GTK+ Integration

Posted May 28, 2008 20:29 UTC (Wed) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link]

As I've already explained, using the Mozilla file browser by default would be the wrong
choice.  For most users the GTK+ file browser is used infrequently and works more or less
instantaneously.  Almost no one would even notice a three order of magnitude performance
improvement in an number that's nearly zero.  But they most certainly *would* notice and
suffer from a file browser that's inconsistent with the rest of their working environment.
Cognitive resources are much more important than the computational kind, so doing what you ask
for would be a serious usability mistake.

Now, you may have some unusual usage pattern that makes you particularly sensitive to file
browser performance.  Go ahead and switch to the built-in file browser if that helps.  Better
yet, find the bug in the GTK+ file browser and submit patches.  But don't burden everyone else
with poor usability just to satisfy your absurd obsession with a boring corner case.

No, I don't want your resume.  That would be even less convincing than your chest thumping
about "18 years" of writing software.  Whatever your experience you've somehow managed to
avoid mastering enough of the fundamentals to understand why breaking printing functionality
for one user out of millions in a release *candidate* that delivers major performance
improvements and new features is not a catastrophe.

Firefox GTK+ Integration

Posted May 29, 2008 1:37 UTC (Thu) by ikm (subscriber, #493) [Link]

> Almost no one would even notice a three order of magnitude performance improvement in an
number that's nearly zero

You should try "Open with..." sometimes. Then you'd actually understand what the fuzz is all
about here.

Firefox GTK+ Integration

Posted May 31, 2008 3:00 UTC (Sat) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link]

I have.  I use it quite often with Firefox 3 Beta 5 on a low end laptop and it's practically
instantaneous for me.  I'm not sure what your problem is, but the right answer is to identify
the bug and fix it in GTK+ not to leave an inconsistent file browser as the default.

Firefox GTK+ Integration

Posted May 29, 2008 2:50 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

For most users the GTK+ file browser is used infrequently and works more or less instantaneously.

Umm... have you tried it? Try the Open With... dialog.

Look, I don't know what percentage of Linux users use GNOME, but it's probably 50% or less. So the people who don't use GNOME have the choice between an irritatingly non-standard but fast file browser, or an irritatingly non-standard and agonizingly-slow file browser. GNOME users are luckier; at least their agonizingly-slow file browser is "standard".

On my machine, the gtk+ browser takes about 25 seconds to browse /usr/bin wherease the Mozilla version is too fast to time. Why is that? The gtk+ browser, when faced with files without extensions, opens and reads a bit of every single file to identify the file type (by "magic") so it knows which pretty little icon to display. If that isn't abominable, I don't know what is.

Better yet, find the bug in the GTK+ file browser and submit patches.

I filed a bug with the gtk+ authors. Someone else has even submitted patches. They have not (to my knowledge) been accepted.

As for breaking printing not being a "catastrophe", you are right. But it is a major regression and stumbling block, and to argue otherwise is simply absurd.

Firefox GTK+ Integration

Posted May 31, 2008 3:35 UTC (Sat) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link]

I suspect you're running an ancient version of GNOME and GTK+.  On a Fedora 9 system browsing
/usr/bin from "Open with..." seems snappy to me even on a low end laptop.  Most likely the
file magic problem you're describing got fixed some time ago.  Furthermore your point about
GNOME is similarly outdated because the file browser is part of GTK+ itself these days.  So
it's standard for all GTK+ applications.

Breaking printing for all users would indeed be a catastrophe (or at least it would in a final
release, which hasn't happened).  But that isn't the case here.  So far all we've established
is that printing is broken for one user with an unusual configuration.  That's unfortunate and
certainly a stumbling block -- for you -- but it's not a major regression from the perspective
of the Firefox team and certainly doesn't indicate that the project is moving in the wrong
direction.

To argue otherwise is to expose an inflated sense of your own importance.