Today we released Epiphany 3.4. It includes all the fixes, enhancements and new cool features that we build since September 2011. That is 6 months of cool stuff!

Xan already explained the bigger picture but I want to highlight some details in the spirit of Every Detail Matters.

Improved location bar, and the new history backend

The location bar suggestions now load extra-extra-fast, thanks to our new SQLite backend.

Besides being extra fast, SQLite allows us to make complex queries to offer better results in the completion. Goal for 3.6: to successfully handle searches like “that page, with the dog, you know, that one… with the funny one”.

This also makes possible to have a cool Overview start page for 3.6. Much like Chrome or Opera do.

An awesome UI: cleaner toolbar, loading progress

That is all the chrome you are getting, kid!

Less distractions, more web! All the usual tools are still available in the “gear” menu:

Oh, and this other one is a pretty one. Check out the new load progress indicator:

You might have already noticed the combined stop/reload button. Some other niceties like the new link tooltips are all over the place. I will not ruin the surprise :-).

Reliable download icons

This is my friend Juanjo:



He is always happy. One day he said: “Diego, my PDF documents are shown as ‘boxes’ while downloading. It makes me mad!”

I want Juanjo to keep that happy hacker smile. So I decided to fix this. Downloads now have a better idea of the icon they should show:

Page icons, now a WebKitGTK+ feature

Do you notice something? Yeah, icons for every of the loaded pages. The support for this is now in WebKitGTK+, available to other applications. This means it is better supported and maintained!

Redesigned about: pages

For a time now we have had some geeky about: pages. One for memory (about:memory), one for plugins (about:plugins), and perhaps the most useful one, one to manage applications (about:applications):

And, last but not least… Less lines:

$ git diff --shortstat 3.2.0..3.4.0

328 files changed, 73211 insertions(+), 104528 deletions(-)

Unlike other browsers, Epiphany does not have dozens of engineers behind the project. This means that the more code we have to maintain, the less time we have to develop new features and to even maintain that code! Also, this makes Xan happy.

But luckily Igalia has hackers like Martin Robinson who are willing to show us how hacking should be done:

Epiphany 3.4.0, alias, Web. Is an awesome release. It will soon be in your distro of choice.

Thanks Allan for the screenshot help!