back to article Epiphany hits Raspberry Pi founders, users

The Raspberry Pi now has its very own web browser. The Pi foundation has been working on the app since December 2013, when it announced its intention to create a browser that offers “a good multi-tab experience,” ARMv6-optimized 2d rendering and accelerated image and HTML5 video decoding and bake it into future versions of …

  1. jzlondon

    If the Raspberry Pi is intended to help children experiment and learn to code, why all the focus on end-user desktop software?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      A $2 microcontroller with some LEDs, motors etc running BASIC would be a lot more suitable IMHO.

      /me prepares for all of the downvotes from the "I know nothing about coding but we must teach kids CODING! WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!!?!?!?" crew.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "... prepares for all of the downvotes from the "I know nothing about coding but we must teach kids CODING! WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!!?!?!?" crew."

        This is El Reg, not BBC HYS.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          going way OT..... but I just wish they'd teach the kids English first. Or at least how to properly use a word processor. Lets get back to basics before we try and teach all 7 year old kids assembler please.

          1. Stuart 22

            English first - rest of the world can wait

            " ... but I just wish they'd teach the kids English first"

            Ahem - my Z80 Assembler is better than my English. Some of my fellow kids were wonderful artists but couldn't do 'rithmetic. Forcing people towards a particular method of communication and hold particular subjects higher than the rest closes real opportunity.

            Expose everybody to everything and then encourage them to develop along the new found strengths rather than follow rigid curriculum aimed at grading people (Huxley like) with terminal (or is interminable?) exams.

            That's if we want a really creative community with people wedded to and enjoying their skills.

      2. werdsmith Silver badge

        A $2 microcontroller with a $500 laptop to do the actual coding work on? Why not just code on the laptop then?

        A kid can code on a Pi, they can also learn a bit of Linux admin, as well as many things that a full size box can do. A microcontroller with some blinking LEDs and a whirring motor is pretty limited by comparison.

        BASIC? Hang on, while I fetch the DeLorean. 88MPH. GOTO 1985.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          @werdsmith

          Why do you need a $500 laptop to talk to basic running on a microcontroller? You realise that old school BASIC can run entirely on the chip itself and thus you only need something that can run a serial terminal right? If you wanted to go crazy you could put a small LCD and a keyboard port on a little micro controller board. Maybe you could get the advanced kids to do that. They might even learn something!

          "they can also learn a bit of Linux admin"

          Ah, so you're one of the "I have no idea but let's teach it!" crew.

          "BASIC? Hang on, while I fetch the DeLorean. 88MPH. GOTO 1985."

          BASIC is perfectly fine for kids to pick up the notion that computers take commands and generally run them in order but sometimes there are branches and iteration. What better way to learn branching than to make them make their little LEDs do something different depending on if a button is pressed or not. The reason you sort of people don't understand that is because you have no idea what you actually want kids to learn.

          1. James 100

            Re: @werdsmith

            I was helping teach a 1st year embedded/robotics course last semester - some of the students were doing the development work on a Pi, plus monitor and keyboard. Desktop, file system, text editor - and they were running a little HTTP server to serve up the images from the camera they'd attached.

            Could you do that over a serial port? No chance. Could they have put something together to stream the pictures and commands over a serial link? Yes - but it would actually have been much more work for them to do that, rather than talking HTTP over Wifi from Python. End result, instead of having built a little web page where they could move the camera around the floor, they'd have spent all their time fiddling with serial transport, packing and unpacking images and commands! A tiny little Linux system made a lot more sense.

          2. werdsmith Silver badge

            Re: @werdsmith

            Yes, you are right, you don't need a $500 laptop to work with the Microcontroller....you could just use a Raspberry Pi.

            I am one of the 'I have no idea what Daniel Palmer is talking about crew'.

            Seems I have no idea what I want kids to learn. Seems you have no idea about me.

      3. frank ly

        @AC

        The principles of logical thought, planning and abstract construction could easily be taught using BASIC and are in fact a necessity to get most BASIC programs working eventually. The fault finding and bug hunting skills would quickly follow on from the children's early attempts; with adequate teacher guidance of course. All this would give children a regular 'slap in the face', which is what they need to get used to if they want to function in the adult coding world.

        You get an upvote from me.

      4. chrisf1

        If you are teaching physical computing and have some way of programming the microcontroller that's sort of true enough. However that then means multiple computers. As an all in one the Pi is impressive and this makes tinkering on a connected pi much easier and means you only need give access to one device.

        Also more device increases complexity and connections and more time is lost handling that in a class room.

      5. Gene Cash Silver badge

        An R-Pi is nice because I can be lazy and code things in Python, instead of having to drop down to C or Java and bum out every cycle I can.

        It's small enough to be cheap but big enough to get the job done.

        I'd have used an Ardunio except wi-fi shields were $85 when I priced them. Oh and it's got a stupid name that I can't spell.

    2. Allan George Dyer

      So the kids can watch the YouTube videos talking through how to flash lights and spin motors?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I'm not knocking the remarkable achievements of the Pi folk, but I do agree that something like the Arduino is a better fit for introducing school children to programming.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Because going forward more and more applications will be either entirely HTML5 based, or at least have html front ends to them I assume?

      Article doesn't say, but I assume the browser supports full screen/kiosk type mode so will enable the Pi to be used in a whole lot more new scenarios such as bolted to the back of a TV on a VESA mount running and kind of HTML content in any number of scenarios.

    5. Tom 7

      Re End User Desktop

      And what better way to present up-to date coding lessons than through the browser?

      1. Captain Scarlet

        Re: Re End User Desktop

        hmm did Basic type programming on Windows 3.1 with Lego something or other.

        Was fantastic until my brick sorting crane ignored a command and then ripped itself apart in front of the teacher. I do remember it as being a bit of fun which for most children it needs to be to start with.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Meh

    >ARMv6-optimized 2d rendering and accelerated image and HTML5 video decoding

    I'm all for supporting crappy old hardware for the sake of it but I'm not sure why they needed their own browser to do this.

  3. NP-Hardass
    Holmes

    That name...

    So Gnome's web browser dropped the name "Epiphany", and changed it to "Web", RPi Foundation adds some features to it, and then calls it "Epiphany" again? That's really confusing.

    1. brooxta

      Re: That name...

      Not sure it's confusing, it just makes clear where the code has come from. "Web" with a lightweight GTK interface promised for the RPi's hardware combined with the preference for a name with "pi" in it somewhere makes the choice obvious.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: That name...

      That was my thought as well - the article gives the distinct impression that it's a new application, but it's actually just a tweaked version of the GNOME Epiphany browser that's been around since 2003 and is itself a fork of Galeon that had been around for a few years prior to that.

  4. Salts

    Just a small point...

    A Rose is still a Rose...

    Will check this out tomorrow on my test setup, this is good news, why? Crappy old hardware! Takes less than 4 watts, the RPi as a server can easily handle a class of 15 with Khan Academy Lite, with the RPi also working as a desktop client with modern monitors, the implications for village schools in the back of beyond, running on small solar arrays, other renewables or limited shore power, with battery and inverters are fantastic.

    Yes, fan of RPi, for a good reason, you do also realise that not all the world has affordable energy, never mind modern computers, but education is important for all?

    Name = who cares?

    Old = does it work and is it affordable and reliable?

    $2 = don't give a shit about coding, not even close to that bridge.

    Hmmm, that does seem rather aggressive for me, oh well, let it stand :-)

    1. werdsmith Silver badge

      Re: Just a small point...

      " the implications for village schools in the back of beyond, running on small solar arrays, other renewables or limited shore power, with battery and inverters are fantastic."

      Unfortunately this ideal of using a 4W device from a small solar array falls absolutely flat on its face when you suddenly remember the power consumption of your monitor/HDMI TV.

      I absolutely love the Raspberry PI as a tinker device that I can put to work for little jobs etc. It's community strength outweighs its hardware disadvantages, and its prime aim was to create a splash get people thinking about educating the kids properly with regard to coding (doesn't matter if they end up using something else, as long as they are doing it then the mission is accomplished) looks to be coming to pass.

      Snobby scorn from hardware bigots with overclocked thyroids aside, this is one fabulous success story and it just keeps on getting better.

      1. Salts

        Re: Just a small point...

        With regards to monitor power, modern monitors can be had, that have low power requirements http://www.aoc-europe.com/PDF-Generator/aoc.pdml.php?uid=233& I should have been a bit more specific on small solar.

        When you have seen almost $30,000 spent on a solar array to power $4,000 worth of twenty, second hand dell desktops... :-(

      2. Francis Boyle Silver badge

        Re: Just a small point...

        The Adafruit 2.8" touchscreen uses something less than 500 mW. Admittedly at 320x240 it's not something you'd want to use for extended periods but its shows what's possible with a little ingenuity.

  5. James Boag

    pi's Rock

    I must admit i find the GUI too slow and the browser was a real pain. I normally SSH onto the pi and using this it's a fantastic device, Hopefully this browser will make it more usable for the Kids as that's what it is designed for, Well done raspberry pi keep up the good work.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  6. oddie

    interesting

    I finally decided yesterday to set up the PI B my gf got me for my birthday... loving the device... one of the first things I did in Raspbian (after failing to find the wifi setup wizard in the 'start menu' - it was on the desktop all along, was trying to play a youtube video to see if it could pull it off.. no success... means I got to play around with other areas of it though :)

    maybe its time to give catvideos another go :D

    1. DJMatus23

      Re: interesting

      The Pi easily streams and plays a youpube video, the thing it can't do very well is the UI around the video. Install XBMC on it, then use a different UI, e.g. Youpube on android, then just send the link to XBMC and you're laughing. The same goes for SoundCloud and a bunch of other services. :)

  7. hammarbtyp

    Wayland?

    Surely what is even more important is the Wayland API and the hardware accelerated Desktop.

    Anyone know where they are with that?

  8. Mage Silver badge

    Cheap PIC

    The Pi is fine if you want / need RiscOS or Linux and I/O.

    If you want a veroboard and PIC, and a £10 (inc everything) solution then PIC programmed in JAL is far superior learning or DIY embedded environment to BASIC (or C). What ever bits of OS you need you write or port yourself. Ardunio is a 3rd different market again.

    1. Androgynous Cupboard Silver badge

      Re: Cheap PIC

      After 30 years of programming proper computers and 5 years on embedded hardware, I am prepared to categorically say that debugging embedded software is an absolute ****.

      Start kids on embedded hardware and ask them to do something more complex than blink an LED and they'll get stuck, solid, when it doesn't work. Give them Python or Java or JavaScript - anything with no pointers and access to a console - and tell them to print out the values of all their variables when things don't work as expected, and they'll soon figure it out.

      1. Tom 7

        Re: Cheap PIC

        Debugging embedded hardware is a shit - unless you have a decent emulator. Then you dont need the hardware for educational purposes - at least not a classfull.

  9. John Styles

    All together now...

    Give someone a program and they'll be frustrated for a day, teach them to program and they'll be frustrated for life.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: All together now...

      That made me chuckle cof more than a few seconds. Have an upvote!

      Actually, I wonder - what is generally considered the *most* fun programming language to mess around in? I know this is personal pref but there must be one that starts to shine amonst you lot.

      Basic was fun in the 80s. Maybe not on the C64, though it did show you how to access features that were not wrapped in dedicated commands.

      thoughts?

      1. Expectingtheworst
        Happy

        Re: All together now...

        I enjoyed BBC Basic, a great advance on previous versions and with Procs it was possible to do some good structured programing. Oh those missing GOTOs.

        It was also a good stepping stone to Turbo Pascal then on to C etc.

        I started with a Commador PET, 8k static RAM and upgraded to 32K dynamic for £350 in 79-80.

        Oh those Rhinos.

        Playing for fun now with a RPi.

  10. b166er

    Can it be?

    A modern broswer that uses less than 100MB per tab? Here's hoping.

  11. razorfishsl

    Problem is the number of sockets the Network chip can handle at any given time

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