14 DAY TRIAL // The GNOME developers are preparing to release the first development version of the upcoming GNOME 3.24 desktop environment, versioned 3.23.1, and we can't help but notice that some of the core apps were updated recently.
GNOME's Epiphany web browser was never a major player, but it looks like version 3.24 shapes up to be a great release, which will be distributed as part of GNOME 3.24 next year on March 22. First and foremost, you should know that its license was changed from GPLv2+ to GPLv3+. And now for the biggest change ever, Epiphany 3.24 will use the Sync service from the popular Mozilla Firefox web browser to store arbitrary data.
You're probably wondering right now what's the relation between Epiphany and Mozilla Firefox, so we'd like to tell you that, even if it might be possible sometime in the future, Epiphany is not yet capable of syncing data with a Firefox instance. Also, please try to keep in mind that Epiphany is not based on Firefox and not produced or endorsed by Mozilla. Epiphany stays true to the WebKitGTK+ engine.
HTTPS Everywhere support now enabled by default
Another exciting new feature of the upcoming Epiphany 3.24 web browser is the enablement by default of HTTPS Everywhere support, providing users with a more secure web browsing experience. Moreover, it looks like the bookmarks management interface was redesigned and you'll finally be able to sync your bookmarks between Epiphany browsers via the new Firefox Sync implementation.
Among other enhancements, we can mention that the address bar is once again visible at all times, but not in the Web App mode, the Overview page now displays three rows of three previews each, a "Never Remember" option was implemented to the remember password info bar, a basic app menu was added for Web Apps, which are now confined to their original domain. Also, Epiphany 3.24 will utilize the Prism JavaScript library.
While the application gained a new dependency, namely the libhttpseverywhere library, it's no longer dependent on X11, avahi-client, avahi-gobject, gdk-x11-3.0, and gsettings-desktop-schemas packages. You can download the source archive of Epiphany 3.23.1 right now via our website if you want to get an early taste of the new features, but please try to keep in mind that it's a pre-release, unstable version.