by Rob on September 8, 2009
I am not a fan of the default font settings of Firefox on Linux. I much prefer the way Firefox on Windows displays web pages. And since I do a lot of work designing blogs and websites, I would much rather have Firefox display web pages the same way, whether I’m using Windows or Linux.
After a fresh install of Firefox, you can navigate your way to Edit->Preferences->Content to view the font settings. If you click on “Advanced” in this section, you’ll see that the settings are as follows:
Sure, you’ll see web pages just fine with these settings, but I would much rather have pages look just like they do while using Firefox on Windows.
If you ever check out the default font settings for Firefox on a Windows machine, you’ll see that the settings are different from what is pictured above. If you want Firefox to behave more like it was on Windows, apply these settings:
By using these settings, Firefox on Linux will now render pages almost identical to how Firefox works on Windows.
by Rob on August 21, 2009
I’ve been spending a lot of time lately using Windows as my main OS, jumping between Windows 7 or Vista. This is mostly in part because I’ve been working with some native Windows programs throughout my daily routine. But I decided yesterday to give up working on Windows natively and returning back to my preferred Arch Linux mainly because of one thing.
Multiple desktops.
Yes, something as simple as having multiple desktops is what caused me to ditch my Windows designing environment. Sure, some may say that you can have multiple desktops on Windows, and I’ll be the first to agree with them. But you know what? I haven’t seen anything on Windows work as well or as efficiently as what I can have on Linux.
When I combine multiple desktops with some Compiz features I can be so much more productive than I ever have been using Windows. As most of my work consists of designing and building blogs or websites, I can create a setup that encourages efficiency. I have one desktop devoted to image work, with apps such as GIMP and Inkscape set in there. Another desktop has Firefox and Bluefish laid out there so I can quickly and easily work on a site on my local development server. And then I have one more desktop dedicated to general things, such as email, web browsing, music player, etc.
By keeping certain programs available on their own desktop, I can quickly jump to whatever environment I want with a keystroke, instead of hunting through a horde of open tasks littering my bottom panel. That, my friends, is much more efficient than any Windows alternative.
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There has been a lot of talk lately about Google’s Chrome coming to Linux. Chrome on Windows is a light weight and fast browser and having this browser available on Linux is desirable to many people. Me, I don’t care as much because I already use a fast and lean browser. It’s called Epiphany.
Epiphany, according to their website, is the web browser for the Gnome desktop. If it doesn’t already come packaged with your Gnome distro, it can easily be picked up from the repositories. Epiphany has some advantages over other browsers, so I would recommend others to install and use this browser as their primary or secondary browser.
While some web browsers are competing with each other for the top rank in the speed category, Epiphany is largely ignored in this area. That is a shame, as it is quite fast. I don’t have any benchmark tests to validate my points, but user experience will trump technical data every time.
Try comparing the start-up times for Firefox and Epiphany. Notice how much faster Epiphany is? It takes a couple seconds for Firefox to load up for me while Epiphany loads up almost instantly. The elapsed time is less than a second from the time I click on the Epiphany icon on my panel, Epiphany starts up and my home page is rendered. That is extremely fast if you ask me.
Web browsing speed is faster in Epiphany as compared to Firefox. Again, I have no benchmarks to prove this but my personal experience (or bias?) has proven this. I leave this to you to try out as well. Go to some heavy loading websites and compare the loading times to other browsers that you use and I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with Epiphany’s performance.
While no other browser can compare to Firefox when it comes to customization, Epiphany does have some extensions available. An ad blocker and greasemonkey can easily be incorporated into this browser and there are many other useful extensions as well.
Overall, Epiphany is a light weight and speedy browser that has been largely ignored in the browser speed wars. It has been overlooked by many, but in my house Epiphany is respected as the speed king!
