Acknowledgement of Chrome and other browsers
Red Hat should acknowledge the existance of browsers other than Firefox for management tool interfaces. The support line of "we only support Firefox" is getting a little long in the tooth.
For a start it would be nice to see browsers like Chrome as optional in the repositories (yes I know there are big issues at play here, but this is a wish list right?). Could a strategic shift even be considered here to replace Firefox as the default browser with Chrome?
For products with WebUI's such as Satellite, a more inclusive methodology needs to be looked at. Many shops will run management tools through an ops team who more than likely have locked down desktops with IE installed. No option for Firefox. I have seen shops using Mac OS X to browse management interfaces. As for Chrome - it's user base is on the up whilst Firefox is declining.
Responses
It would be helpful if you give an example of something that does not work in some browser. Maybe there is a workaround for it, or it is a bug that needs to be addressed, either in the browser or in the web UI.
Or are you talking about some web interface that says it will work only on firefox?
Siddhesh Poyarekar
Software Maintenance Engineer
Global Support Services, Red Hat
Guru
2135 points
I use Satellite daily. I run into browser crashes frequently when dragging a channel from the Channels -> Manage Software Channels view to a new tab.
Happens in Chrome frequently. Not seen it happen in Firefox, but I use Firefox for Internet Browsing and Chrome for browsing inside the corporate network. Not tried IE.
Reported to RH Support.
Response: "We don't support any other browser than Firefox"
My Response: "I know you don't support it, but I'm raising it because it just plain looks bad for Red Hat WebUI's to crash in certain browsers."
It's not like Chrome is a niche browser is it?
I don't have a great issue with this, but the response from Support should have been better. I reported the issue to help - to improve the interoperability of Satellite. I wasn't expecting a normal support level response or to get any immediate fix.
Red Hat
Guru
3695 points
Hi Duncan,
It's not that we at Red Hat "like" Firefox more, it's becuase Google Chrome is a proprietary product and it bundles other proprietary software such as the Adobe Flash plug-in. We in Red Hat should have explained this a bit more than just a flat out "because, that's why" in the support case. Apologies there.
To expand on this, Fedora doesn't include Chrome, nor any upstream derivative of it, therefore it isn't in any version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux yet.
Note that a current Red Hatter is spearheading the upstream community Chrome effort, called "Chromium" which at some point will be included in Fedora.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Chromium
An interesting read:
http://ostatic.com/blog/making-projects-easier-to-package-why-chromium-isnt-in-fedora
Thanks again for bringing this up though - I'll create a KBASE article that explains this better, for any future queries on this matter.
Regards,
Andrius Benokraitis
Red Hat, Inc.
Red Hat
Guru
3695 points
Reading deeper into this, it sounds like this is an issue not with RHEL *including* Google Chrome, but rather using Google Chrome on Red Hat websites.
I would assume the errors you see could be either issues with Chrome or with what the website is sending *to* Chrome.
I'm not familiar with the supported browsers for Red Hat websites, especially RHN - but I'll find out...
Andrius.
Guru
2135 points
Yes - this isn't a request to include Chrome with RHEL 7.
Browser support of WebUI applications can be a big thing (tm). To us, we either have to use IE 6 (yes, I know) on windows desktops or Firefox or Chrome on our heavily restricted Linux workstations.
I use Firefox for connecting to external websites and Chrome to browse internal sites. I'd just like to see Red Hat WebUI products work seamlessly across the widest range of browsers. Perhaps even moving in the direction of HTML5.
Who knows . . . the future of the web might actually be HTML 5!
Cheers
D