To be fair about Chrome's bookmarks...

The Windows version has joined the 21st century and now lets you drag a site over a folder on the bar, having it open the folder, and let you drop it in at the top (or wherever you want). It's only those of us on non-MS operating systems that have to suffer the IE4 bookmark system.

I spoke too soon about Firefox 7

The memory leaks are still there, just improved. It still eventually takes over my (admittedly underpowered and outdated) system. I guess I'll take another look at Chrome, though I still prefer Firefox's superior extensions library, excellent bookmarking system, configurability, and the way it makes pinned tabs sticky.

Update: As if I'm really going to leave Firefox. No, I'm sticking with it. They did make a big improvement in the memory leaks so that I have to restart it maybe every two hours instead of every twenty minutes. I've stayed with Firefox this long through the last version or two with abysmal memory leaks, I'll certainly stay now. Especially since the Smooth Gestures developers proved themselves untrustworthy by making their extension spyware. Update: Now I'm not so sure. It definitely swells up, but when I recently tried switching to Chrome again I noted that Gmail and Google Reader (which I have as pinned tabs wherever I am) tend to swell up in memory usage over time in that browser, so that may be the source of the memory loss over time (especially since Chrome ends up using just as much memory as Firefox 7 overall). I also noticed that with Firefox 7 the memory loss has a ceiling, so it isn't really a leak.

Finally! Firefox 7 delivers!

From using it for about 20 minutes, I can say the memory usage is down and the memory holes appear to be fixed. I can actually read articles at The Economist without crashing my computer (previously it would just keep chewing up more and more memory). My Chrome temptations are now purged (though Smooth Gestures turning out to be spyware was a prohibitive impediment; no other mouse gestures extension for Chrome works right).

Gmail Offline Returns, Chrome Only

This really isn't a big deal anyway, since Gmail provides both POP3 and IMAP access. If you need offline email, chances are you're already using one of those. Still, it is nice to be able to stick with the web interface in all situations, I suppose.

Firefox appears to finally be dealing with memory holes

The memory holes that Firefox is plagues with are the only thing that makes me consider switching to Chrome, which I have so far been highly reluctant to do (read other posts in the Browser Wars category to see why). Fortunately, that is supposed to change with the next release. Here's hoping it pans out.

Update: Or not. The fairly early beta they have out doesn't appreciably fix the memory problem as far as I can tell and is even slower than Firefox 6. Trying it did have one salutary effect: it made Firefox 6 seem fast instead of sluggish. Hopefully this will change as the development process continues. Hopefully.

Update 2: Fed up with the sluggishness of Firefox, and seeing little reason to hope in the new release, I seriously considered switching to Chrome today. Then I found out that Smooth Gestures, the only mouse gestures extension that really works on Chrome for Linux, has been taken down as spyware. I guess I'll stick with slow old Firefox for the time being. At least until the original author releases his fork of the project, anyway.

Update 3: Apparently the creator of Smooth Gestures intends to make his fork a paid browser extension. Assuming it doesn't have a free basic functionality mode, that does it for me. I am not going to pay for a browser extension, especially not one that produces functionality that should be universally available. I wonder why it isn't simply built in to Chrome and Firefox. An Opera patent issue?

What is Mozilla thinking?

They seem to be planning to kill off the Profile Manager feature quite soon. Idiots. Hopefully Thunderbird won't face the same fate in the near future, as that is where I use Profile Manager more (due to my use of a backup profile). Maybe that'll be the silver lining to their sidelining of Thunderbird (another dubious decision).

 

Single HTML Archives: Firefox's Superiority

Internet Explorer has had the ability to save pages as .mht files for over a decade. Approximate functionality has yet to make its way into either Firefox or Chrome yet, unfortunately. Very fortunately, there are extensions that do the trick. On Firefox there is the fantastic Mozilla Archive Format extension that not only allows Firefox to seemlessly read and create .mht files, but also lets it use the open and far superior .maf file format (and allows the conversion between .mht, complete web saves with folder created by Firefox, IE, and Chrome, and .maf en masse). MAFF files are universally readable once unzipped (they, like ODF and Microsoft OpenXML, are really zip files with a different extension) and can contain multiple tabs saved at once (great for sites that use pagination, like most newspapers). Oh, and it also saves the originating address of the page and makes it easily accessable when viewing. That in itself is invaluable.

Chrome's SingleFile produces a special single-archive html file. The good side is that its files are compatible with all major browsers without having to unzip. The bad side is that the whole thing is a horrible kluge. It's a mess all the way from the fact that the extension overloads a .html file with graphics and other non-html data to the need to download a second add-on to make it work to the ridiculous process you need to go through to save a file (read the instructions on the linked page; I can attest, it's even more of a pain in the ass than it seems). And Chrome still cannot read let alone write .mht files. If someone sends you one, you're out of luck.

Paul Thurrott on Firefox 4

It's not a bad write-up, though Thurrott still is a Chrome+IE9 (naturally) guy. I just don't get why the tech crowd is so into Chrome. Beyond some under the hood stuff (like a separate instance for each tab and installing extensions without restarting), speed is the only thing it has on Firefox 4 and Thurrott himself said the speed difference on modern browsers isn't dramatic. Firefox 4's interface is heavily Chrome-inspired (see this post in order to de-Chrome it). Okay, it lacks the ability to create standalone applications, but unlike Thurrott I much prefer pin-tabs anyway (a feature first available in the Chrome Browser, not just ChromeOS, which Firefox improved on by making links outside the pinned website's domain open in new windows--I love that since it makes the pinned website stickier). If you really want standalone apps, get Prism.

Here's what Firefox has that Chrome doesn't:

• A modern bookmarking system. Chrome's is pre-Netscape 4.0x and pre-IE5. In other words, it's a 20th century bookmarking system in 2011.


• A good history interface, including the ability to reopen recently closed tabs. I use this all the time (Chrome has that, at least you can reopen the last closed tab by either right-clicking the tab bar or doing Ctrl-Shift-Tab; you can keep doing it to open previous closed tabs in order of closure). Also, you can access your history without having to open a separate window/tab which is really nice. You can also search and delete items at the same time, something Chrome won't let you do.


• A full-screen mode that includes a compact hideaway tab and navigation bar. Finally they got rid of the grey line at the top when it's hidden so you have the best of both worlds: real fullscreen and full browser functionality when you need it. And with the bookmark sidebar you get access to your bookmarks when you need them with a simply Ctrl-b without having to leave fullscreen.


• A larger and richer extension ecosystem. Many people say this bogs down the browser because people have too many extensions. I say: use a little self-control and only keep the ones you really need active. Of course this would be a lot easier if, like Chrome, Firefox allowed extensions to be turned on and off without restarting.


• Mouse Gestures that don't screw up the right mouse button in OSX and Linux. Not an issue for the Windows-using majority, though.


• Customizability. My Firefox 4 is much different in appearance than the standard. restored the menu bar, added back the RSS icon in the address bar, restored the status bar, and removed the status bar-like functionality from the address bar. My Firefox basically looks like the old Firefox 3.6 with tabs on top and the new theme. This isn't something you can really do in Chrome. Paul Thurrott does list this as an advantage of Firefox.

As for the lack of search functionality in the location bar, I've used Smart Keywords on Firefox for years to search from the location bar. Actually, I used pretty much the same feature on IE4 (via QuickSearch.exe from IE PowerToys) way back when and missed it when I moved to Linux until I'd discovered that it had been implemented in Mozilla's browser (no doubt it had been there for a long time without my knowing about it).

Maybe it's the task manager. I have to admit that does make me drool (no, not literally).

Firefox 4 is finally released

I've been using it for quite some time, but it's good to see it finally out there officially. Maybe now Firefox can staunch the bleeding of users into Chrome-land. The way I see it, Chrome now only has the advantage in the areas of performance (which isn't as dramatic as before) and the way processes and extensions are handles (e.g., not having to restart when you enable or disable an extension). Everything else is Firefox's advantage, some things dramatically so (Chrome's bookmarking interface is still pre-IE5/Netscape4, i.e., 12-13 years out of date).

I had just moved to Chrome when...

I found the (mostly) stable version of Firefox 4 available for Ubuntu (excepting the official version with its hideous text display). Phew. Chrome's awesome-fast, but the bookmark interface sucks. And when I say sucks, I mean it is horrible. Netscape Communicator 4.06, released in August 1998, has an infinitely better interface (I have it running under Wine right now). Chrome a) won't let you drag the page your on onto the bookmark bar folder and open said folder to drop it anywhere you want in the folder. This is something I do all the time, as I like to have new Notable bookmarks at the top rather than the bottom. More than that, there is no way to make a bookmark below the top level (which includes all top-level bookmark bar folders, to be fair) without deleting any copies of said bookmark that might be hanging around. This means that if I want more than one copy of a bookmark, I have to open the damned bookmark manager. There's no keyboard shortcut to do that, which there was in Netscape 4.06 in 1998 and ever since, and the bookmark manager doesn't even support drag and drop copying. You have to copy and paste.

If you want Firefox 4 for Ubuntu...

forget about the Daily Builds PPA. Go with the Mozilla Team Firefox Next PPA. That will give you a much more stable beta. Plus you won't have to fool around with pinning Thunderbird in Synaptic to prevent it from updating to a daily build too.

Mozilla apparently embraces stupid versioning

Four, count 'em four, new 1.0 releases slated for this year. Why not just rebrand Firefox 4 as Firefox 10 and keep the sane versioning system they have right now? Then they'd "beat" Google and not drive people (or rather, me) nuts.

Google strikes a blow against HTML5 Video and H.264 Hegemony

Chrome is dropping H.264 video support. Adobe should be cheering, considering that this will likely artificially prop up Flash video. If you want to host videos, you have four choices: do HTML5 with H.264 only and lose all Firefox and Chrome users, do WebM only and lost Safari and IE9 users, do both, or do Flash and get everybody. Okay, everybody except mobile users, but still.

Update 01/15/11: Or maybe it won't kill HTML5 video, since Google will be providing a free plug-in to make WebM video work on Safari and IE9. Good for them.

Firefox 4

I just started using the beta of Firefox 4 and I have to say that the Chrome vs. Firefox issue is finally settled for me. It's almost as snappy as Chrome (it's much faster than 3.6, at any rate), has the wonderful pin-tab feature of Chrome, and has Firefox's excellent bookmark system. The best of both worlds.

It's the simple things that keep me from switching to Google Chrome

In every major way, I find Chrome to be far superior to the public release version of Firefox. It's the minor things that get me:

1. Bookmark Management. Firefox is simply far, far superior. Not only can I conveniently search through my bookmarks in the sidebar, I can much more importantly drag and drop links into folders on the toolbar and choose where they go (rather than have them always fall to the bottom). This is how I use bookmarks and until Chrome fixes that I don't see myself switching.
2. RSS Support. True, extensions and bookmarklets can help with this problem, but Chrome's native inability to deal with RSS feeds at all really irks me.
3. History. Chrome's history interface is a joke. Not only is it highly difficult to plow through, you cannot both search and delete simultaneously. So one foolishly browsed along embarrassing lines outside of Incognito mode, searching for that subject and deleting all history pertaining to it is not an option. The smallest of the three points, but still highly annoying.

Chrome has the oddest gaps in its feature set

There is no simple image properties. Yes, you can inspect element, which gives you a massive amount of information about the styles attributed to the image, and if you dig deep enough even the natural height and width of the image, but I'd still very much like to cut through that cacaphony with a simple Image Properties dialog that tells me the size, the file size, and the url of the image. Like in other browsers, and image viewing programs for that matter.

Another peeve I ran into today is Chrome's lack of facilities for handling RSS and Atom feeds. Not only does it not help you subscribe, like Firefox, it doesn't even display the RSS feed in a readable way. It's just a jumble of text. I can live with it, but it's annoying.

On the bright side, I just discovered Chrome's tab-pinning feature and I love it. There are four or five sites I use constantly and being able to make them take up less space, and make them harder to close, is fantastic. I've found myself using the same windows all day rather than constantly opening, closing, and reopening them.

I'm back on Chrome

Firefox's big annoyance, on my Lucid Lynx system at least, outweighs Chrome's annoyances: Firefox will periodically start opening the dropdown menu on the Awesome Bar behind the browser window so I can't see it. I have to switch between programs to fix it. Very annoying.

Firefox, Chrome, and Me

I have to say that while I'm very impressed with Chrome, I'm back on Firefox again. The two main reasons are, I really like being able to drag-n-drop bookmarks into specific locations within folders on my bookmarks toolbar (rather than have them go automatically to the bottom) and I like having a mouse gestures extension that doesn't screw up context menus for me (the premier Chrome gestures extension makes you double-right-click to open a context menu). History is also handled much better.

Oh, and just to vent a little frustration at Firefox while singing their praises: I'm on the latest stable version because every frakking major new version breaks all the extensions. Naturally most extension writers haven't caught up with 4.0 Beta yet.