Firefox is too slow...

[djr33]

Another thread reminded me of the FF version number insanity (from v4 to v15 in about a year).

I think Mozilla has serious organizational problems and FF is bound to die off at some point if it continues. There's no reason at all that Chrome should be better than FF, but I think I must admit that it is-- in terms of speed, etc. That doesn't mean I like its interface or want to use it; I like FF. But the technical quality of FF is really dropping, especially in relation to how other browsers are improving. FF used to be at the top, and now it's barely keeping up.

If Mozilla completely changes strategies, there's no reason FF can't be the best again. But for the moment I do feel like I'm using it while I can until I get tired of it and move to a more modern browser.

[jscheuer1]

Opera doesn't cost anything. The mobile version did, perhaps still does. I didn't recommend it. It's a good fit for me, plus it's already customized to hell and back for what I want it to do. It's a pretty geeky browser, and obscure, so that makes it pretty safe too. If that's what you want, go for it. I like it, it's solved problems (found errors in pages) other browsers were scratching their heads about.

That said, I recommended Chrome and still do. It's rapidly becoming if it hasn't already the most used browser. It's that good. Safari is a lot like Chrome, only way slower, at least Safari for Win is. IE was long the industry leader due in large part to bundling with Windows, but it's always had some things going for it. IE 9 is a really good browser, and pretty fast. If I had to have only one browser and couldn't have Chrome, I would pick IE 9, might anyway even with Chrome in the mix. Thankfully that's not the situation because it's potential security issues scare me. I need to have it for testing and accessing sites that are IE only though, and it's a good browser, so I'd live with the threat, try to minimize it. I'm just glad I can have multiple browsers. I have around 11 or more.

[bernie1227]

@Daniel, the problem for Firefox, is that there are more than two competitors now, there used to have just been ie and Firefox, Firefox is better, ergo, firefox wins. Now that there are more browsers , specifically ons which plan to be asthetically pleasing and fast, such as chrome, people don't care about Firefox anymore. The majority of people don't even know how to define a browser, sp when they see one that's kinda nice and is really fast, they don't go of the slower one with more fetus, simply because they don't need the features.

@John, opera mobile is free, however, it is my least favorite mobile browser, out of the twenty I have, including the default safari. The actual browser looks nice, however tabs are too hard to get to and the layout is just annoying.

[ajfmrf]

I have used firefox exclusively for the last 4 years.I use very few add ons and have had rare issues with it( that will probaly change now that I said that -lol).

I wonder how much different chrome would be.

I might try chrome this week.

Lets vote on it.

Should I try Chrome out?

yes or no?

[djr33]

@Daniel, the problem for Firefox, is that there are more than two competitors now, there used to have just been ie and Firefox, Firefox is better, ergo, firefox wins. Now that there are more browsers , specifically ons which plan to be asthetically pleasing and fast, such as chrome, people don't care about Firefox anymore.

Aesthetically, I personally prefer FF. But the real question, the thing I don't understand, is why Chrome is better than FF. FF used to be better than IE, true. Now there's more competition, true. But that doesn't mean that FF can't be improved to be even better than Chrome. I just don't see why FF has to be behind like this.
On the other hand, perhaps there's a simple explanation: FF was designed to fix the "IE problem", and not that Chrome is doing a better job, there's simply less motivation to keep developing FF, meaning that eventually it will just dwindle as a project and get replaced (even for those who make FF) by Chrome.

[jscheuer1]

What might be getting lost in this is that IE 9 is a very good browser. So currently, if you're looking for the best browser on Windows, it's really between IE 9 and Chrome. Firefox was almost always a little klunky. There was a short period of time when it was becoming faster than IE on some things, but then it stopped moving in that direction. It was always more standards compliant, until IE 9.

Chrome has great developer and geek user resources. It looks simple and bare bones. That's for the masses. But anyone who wants to get under the hood can find a plethora of information and utilities. These are all native and integrated into the browser architecture in a good to very good manner so as to not slow it down much if at all when used. And, inferring from what someone else said in this thread, if you need even more functionality, there are apparently add ons for it.

On that subject, I find that with Firefox, as the version numbers rise and the add on developers adapt and improve their code's look and feel as well as add features, it results in more overhead. That wouldn't be so bad if the basics you needed for developer needs were integrated into it and fast like with Chrome.

IE 9 has very good integrated developer tools rivaling Chrome's. They're a little less stable though. Opera has these as well, about as stable as Chrome's but a little buggier/klunkier/less intuitive.

I don't know if this is truly the case or not, but Chrome looks like they're not trying to imitate anything nor caught up in a legacy of old code. It looks like they took a good look at the features that go into making up a great browser, and found ways to include them. Everybody else it seems are either trying to imitate something and/or appear to be laboring at least to some degree under a legacy of old code that it would be so much trouble to completely abandon.

[djr33]

Good post, John.

I don't know if this is truly the case or not, but Chrome looks like they're not trying to imitate anything nor caught up in a legacy of old code. It looks like they took a good look at the features that go into making up a great browser, and found ways to include them. Everybody else it seems are either trying to imitate something and/or appear to be laboring at least to some degree under a legacy of old code that it would be so much trouble to completely abandon.

Well, to be fair we'll have to see how that works with the next couple versions-- I doubt any program doesn't rely on old code, at least for many of the versions.

[bernie1227]

I have used firefox exclusively for the last 4 years.I use very few add ons and have had rare issues with it( that will probaly change now that I said that -lol).

I wonder how much different chrome would be.

I might try chrome this week.

Lets vote on it.

Should I try Chrome out?

yes or no?

I'd say yes, take a look at the addons and them's while you are using.

[james438]

I love Opera. I can relate to jscheuer1's comment about customizing Opera as much as he does. No other browser comes anywhere close to giving me the amount of control over how my browser operates. It is also a very advanced browser as far as web standards go and interactivity between the user and the browser. Chrome seems to be faster though, but it is also my least favorite of the browsers. It feels too dumbed down. It feels like an Apple product.

As far as browser popularity goes I like w3school's page on browser popularity. I don't really know of any site that can accurately keep track of actual browser usage (for example the site only tracks the browser usage of those who visit their site), but that one seems fairly accurate.

[jscheuer1]

I like W3Counter:

http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php

Especially their trends graphs:

http://www.w3counter.com/trends

I guess they're not 100% accurate, it's like any poll. But they do try to gather stats from as many sites as possible.