"DISCUSS AMONGST YOURSELVES"
Posted on 04/21/2009 2:43:07 PM PDT by martin_fierro
6 Reasons Why Firefox Dude May Want to Switch to Chrome
Apr. 21st, 2009 By David Pierce
I did it. About a week ago, I took the plunge. I made Google Chrome my default browser, and now do almost everything within Chrome. I do miss Firefox every once in a while (after all, we were in a relationship for quite a while, and over a number of version changes), but I’m glad I’ve moved on.
Chrome is only getting better – rolling out more features, making existing features work even better, and generally getting faster and awesome-er.
Here are the six reasons that ultimately lead me to checking that “make Chrome my default browser” button:
(1) One Tab, One Process
My biggest issue with Firefox was always that it’s a memory hog. Leave it open overnight, and suddenly it’s taking up 400MB of RAM. That’s a lot of RAM. The only solution would be to close Firefox, and restart it – either losing all my tabs, or waiting approximately 19.5 hours for them all to open again.
Chrome’s better – each individual tab runs as its own process in Windows Explorer. There’s a task manager within Chrome that lets you see which, if any, tabs are using tons of memory, and close just that one. Similarly, if a tab crashes, you’ll be able to just close that one tab, rather than having to close Firefox entirely. With Chrome, browsers don’t crash: pages do. That’s a huge plus.
(2) One Box, Many Searches
With the address bar in Chrome, you can do a ridiculous number of things: search your history, do site-specific search (by typing a domain and then Tab), search Google, or get suggestions based on your browsing history. To search just about anything within Chrome, type Control+L and then whatever you’re looking for. Chrome’ll find it.
(3) Better Downloader
Firefox’s native download manager is awful – it’s a new window, doesn’t make finding documents easy, and does a bad job of showing you what’s downloading without lots of hunting. In Chrome, when you start a download, it just starts. There’s a status bar at the bottom of the page, and you can easily click to open the file, or right-click to do a number of other things with it. Though there are Firefox extensions to mirror the functionality Chrome has, I’d rather have it native – plus, Chrome’s is better anyway.
(4) The New Tab Page
Every time you open a new Tab in Chrome, you’re presented with a page full of possibilities. There’s a list of recently-closed tabs, in case you closed one by accident. There’s a box to search your history, in case you forgot the site you want to get back to. There’s a list of recent bookmarks, for some reason that I never really figured out. And, best of all, there’s a list of sites you visit most – easy access to your top 9 sites is pretty great – not to mention sad that addictinggames.com makes my list.
But that’s beside the point. There’s a ton you can do quickly and easily, right from the second you open a new tab in Chrome. Again, there are Firefox extensions that do some of these things, and the new build of Firefox promises a similar new tab page, but I’ll stick with Chrome.
(5) Application Shortcuts
Ultimately, this was the feature that sold me on Chrome: the ability to turn single sites into standalone applications. Now Gmail, Google Calendar, and Remember the Milk each have their own application that can be launched from the desktop, lives in its own window without a nav-bar, and looks and feels just like a desktop app. Click on a link, and you’re taken to a new tab in Chrome, so your page always stays open. That, plus Chrome’s great use of Google Gears, means your calendar, email, tasks and more can be available online and off as desktop apps.
(6) Tab Around
This one’s not as big a deal as the others, but I think it’s pretty fantastic: Tabs are incredibly easy to manipulate in Chrome. You can pull a tab out to make it its own window, or pull one back in to consolidate your browsing. You can even – I just discovered this – drag a Firefox tab into Chrome and it’ll load right there! If you’re reading this in Firefox, try it. I’ll wait.
Awesome, right? All over Chrome, tabs are easy to move around, open and close, and they live at the top of the page which makes them even easier to find and use.
To put it simply, Chrome is faster and smarter than Firefox. I liked Firefox a lot, but Chrome seems to get how I intuitively want to use a browser. I can’t switch permanently until Chrome has extensions, or at least functional Greasemonkey support; for my regular browsing, though, Chrome’s the clear winner.
"DISCUSS AMONGST YOURSELVES"
Techie Pingie
How much of your activities feed back to Google, the people whose stated goal is to control all the World’s information [and help dictatorships control their people]?
I have used Firefox and don’t have the problems the article speaks of.
Chrome is pretty cool. So fast, especially if you have an older computer.
Yeah, it’d take an awful lot to sway me away from Firefox.
I’ve been using Safari for a while now and I am impressed with its speed and features. The only beef I have with it is I like the text as large as possible, and this makes the pages kinda funky looking at times. Bear in mind I’m no techie (I don’t even play one on TV.) How does Chrome compare to Safari?
Eff Google.
Google is an evil leftwing conspiracy.
Gunner
Is anyone familiar with the Google Latitude cell phone location tracker?
I’ve had it installed for 6 months.
I almost never use it.
No third party add-ons.
No Chrome. No way.
Try it. You won’t like it.
I tried Chrome awhile back. It’s probably better now but at the time it couldn’t hold a candle to Firefox. In any case, I use the Delicious Firefox plugin for bookmarking and toolbar organization and I think it would not be possible to improve on their design. Easy to tag and you can build a toolbar that is filtered on any tag you like. That is an unbeatable implementation of bookmarks. For me it is easy - no Delicious plug-in - no chance for Chrome.
When will Chrome be on Linux?
Windows only. No sale.
I use Opera on Linux.
I’ve tried Opera before, but it just didn’t appeal to me.
I used to use Konqueror for everything, but now am using Firefox (actually Iceweasel) for most things.
There are things I dislike about Firefox...on x86-64, you can run the 32-bit-only Flash player, but there are weird problems sometimes. And, as the article states, it is a memory hog. It’s also pretty slow, even on a fairly powerful machine.
I don’t know why, but it seems Firefox crashes a lot on Linux.
I don’t care how good it is. I have never had the problems mentioned above with Firefox. I want NOTHING to do with The google gestapo.
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