Firefox or Chrome?

Madrax

I've been using firefox for a long time and now I just switched to google chrome and its....well its ok.

What's your thoughts on which is better?

Yue

Benchmarks (factual) show Chrome to have a faster, more efficient rendering engine on modern hardware.

My personal preference is for Chrome's sleeker, minimalist interface. I used (and developed for) Firefox for a long time. It got to the point where page-loads were too long, crashes, etc. prevented me from using it.

Now, most add-ons available to Firefox users have been ported (and improved) for Chrome. It is safe, secure, reliable, and fast. There really is no reason not to use it over Firefox, and absolutely NO reason you should be using Internet Explorer.

Good luck!

P.S. I would install Adblock (or Adblock Plus) in the Add-ons.

Eld

I prefer Firefox, personally, but probably largely for fairly idiosyncratic reasons. I have a tendency to leave pretty large numbers of tabs open, which Chrome doesn't deal as well with (in my experience) in terms of memory management. The one add-on that most effects how I interact with my browser (vimperator) has an equivalent for Chrome, but it doesn't work nearly as well. The one thing I use Chrome for is as an SSB for my gmail, now that Mozilla prism is gone.

Maybe I'd warm up to Chrome if I gave it a bit more of a chance, but on the occasions where I've gotten fed up with certain things about Firefox and decided to try other things, I've found myself even more frustrated by Chrome (and everything else I've tried).

I don't know if my 6 year old laptop counts as modern for the purpose of @Yue's benchmarks, but my Firefox interface is as sleek and minimalist as I could ask for, and I haven't had any more problems with slow page-loads or crashes than I have with any other browser.

Sena

I've barely used Chrome, but really the only reasons I'm still using Firefox are familiarity and being too lazy to get used to something new. The latest versions of Firefox are extremely slow, and it seems like it's getting worse with every new version (HTML5 support was basically the only reason I even "upgraded" from version 5 recently, and the latest version (20) still isn't usable until certain addons are updated to work with it).

I would recommend trying Chrome first, and only using Firefox instead if you find too many problems with Chrome.

Jonathin

I only use Chrome.

It's like my mudlet. Simple and not junked up with shit I don't need.

Iocun

I use Safari, Chrome, Camino, and Firefox. Sometimes several at once. Why use one when you can use all!

Yue

@Eld: No, your 6 year old laptop does not count as modern :P "more problems" != "no problems"... on modern hardware, I have 0 crashes with chrome, and fantastic performance compared to partial freezes/slow loading on Firefox, same hardware... I have experienced the problems you mentioned with memory management, but that will vary greatly with hardware. "Modern hardware" implies multiple core, multi-processor, 64-bit, etc. type setups where the chrome memory manager can employ some nifty tricks to optimize performance.

Sena

Eld said:

I have a tendency to leave pretty large numbers of tabs open, which Chrome doesn't deal as well with (in my experience) in terms of memory management.

Handling multiple tabs is one of the biggest problems I have with the latest versions of Firefox. In Firefox 5 I could comfortably open 20 tabs at once, while Firefox 19 would sometimes hang indefinitely trying to open just 5-10. The "load tabs progressively" addon partially alleviates that (it's still very slow, but at least Firefox won't freeze up trying to load all of them at once), but it doesn't work in Firefox 20, which got even worse with multiple tabs. And I can't leave 20+ tabs open indefinitely without Firefox using huge amounts of memory and being very slow (and it's pretty slow to begin with).

Jonathin

Why does anyone need more than 5 tabs open at any time? That's what bookmarks were invented for.

Edit: Not being aggressive. More than 5 tabs does not compute.

Eld

Yue said:

@Eld: No, your 6 year old laptop does not count as modern :P "more problems" != "no problems"... on modern hardware, I have 0 crashes with chrome, and fantastic performance compared to partial freezes/slow loading on Firefox, same hardware... I have experienced the problems you mentioned with memory management, but that will vary greatly with hardware. "Modern hardware" implies multiple core, multi-processor, 64-bit, etc. type setups where the chrome memory manager can employ some nifty tricks to optimize performance.

Well, my 6-year old laptop is a 64-bit dual core setup, so...any other criteria? I don't remember the last time I saw either firefox or chrome crash or partially freeze (except for some issues with flash, but that's a separate beast and happens in both). Having just idly opened a couple tabs in Chrome, it does look like I might get somewhat faster page loads. Anyway, I'm not trying to argue for one or the other in any case but my own. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Chrome's average performance were better, and I agree that the interface is nicer than the default firefox setup. But for my case, it would take a larger performance difference than I've ever seen to get me to switch.

Sena

Jonathin said:

Why does anyone need more than 5 tabs open at any time? That's what bookmarks were invented for.

Edit: Not being aggressive. More than 5 tabs does not compute.

When I have a list of 70-ish pages I need to check frequently (every few days, at least), it's very tedious to open them one (or five) at a time. It's very convenient to just be able to right-click on the bookmark folder and choose "open all in tabs". And when reading the forums (and lots of similar situations, like browsing a list of images, game mods, links, etc.), I just middle-click each unread topic on the recent discussions page to open them all in tabs, since it's much faster and easier than opening and reading them one at a time.

In both of those cases though I don't need to keep them all open, I close each tab as I finish with it. So I usually have no need to keep more than 5 tabs open for very long (unless I need to do something else before I get through all those tabs).

Edit: Then there are things like tvtropes and Cracked, where the number of tabs you have open just explodes out of control, until you eventually just give up on ever getting to them all.

Eld

Jonathin said:

Why does anyone need more than 5 tabs open at any time? That's what bookmarks were invented for.

Edit: Not being aggressive. More than 5 tabs does not compute.

Who needs bookmarks when you can just leave a tab open until you're done with it? :P

That's not really a serious argument, but for some reason, I just never got into the habit of using bookmarks. Perhaps more relevant, often if I'm researching things, I'll google something and open a bunch of results in new tabs to look at one at a time, and then open links from those tabs in new tabs to be read when I'm done with the page I'm on, and so on. I'm getting better about keeping to the low double digits, but it's rare that I get down to 5.

Berenene

From my understanding, the reason why chrome doesn't handle large amounts of tabs very well is because each tab runs as it's own resource.  Apparently it was done so that the overall browser is more secure, so what is happening in one tab doesn't affect what happens in another, but this came at the expense of slowing down considerably when lots of tabs are opened.

As for why you would need more then 5 tabs opened at once, I'll echo what @Sena said. Especially when it comes to pages like TVTropes, and now that I have the app on my phone, I can take my troping anywhere as it includes read later pages, goddamn that site ruined/enhanced my life.

I've been using chrome for quite some time now and do like how quick it is to use.  The only times I go back to IE is for some pieces of software at work only function properly on IE, but otherwise I use chrome everywhere.

Yue

I'm not sure if you still can, but you used to be able to change the way chrome treats tabs. let me check real quick...

add  "-single-process" or "-process-per-site" to the end of the target box on your chrome shortcut. you can force chrome into a single-process model instead of its default one-process-per-tab model.. this could alleviate that problem that some of you have when browsing with 80+ tabs open at a time... try it, let us know?

Skye

I've been using Firefox for years. I attempted to switch to Chrome at one point, but I disliked the layout and their search functions and how I came home one day to find that my pc was rendered unable to shut down because for some reason, Chrome was still running in the background despite me clicking the little red X and refused to stop.

Also for some reason the browsers seem to conflict with one another. When I had both installed, I would be unable to load any page properly. My mother experienced the same problem. Although that may also have been a Vista problem, seeing as we're both still using Vista on pc.

Xli

I mainly use Chrome because of the tab sycing thing (same tabs on Vista desktop - yeah, baby, Vista for life!- , Windows 8 laptop and Android tablet). It does chomp RAM if you have too many tabs open but hey, Achaea forums, Mudlet AP Reference and SoundCloud should be enough for anyone!

Sherazad

Google Chrome because synced with Google account, minimalist look. 

Erasariel

Both are fine. Firefox with its addons can make for a really powerful browser with lots of utility, while Chrome's streamlined client and fast feel make it great for daily browsing.

I personally use Chrome more because I don't have a need for Firefox's addons. They have their own strengths, and they're comparably as good as the other.

Synbios

Let's all agree to disagree and agree that Internet Explorer is good...for downloading Chrome and Firefox.

Oceana

I love the Firefox IRE toolbar. Someone please make that for Chrome? The Chrome addon just isn't doing it for me. I am in Iocun's corner, I use IE, Chrome and Firefox.

Berenene

Yeah, I have to admit, that's one thing that always annoyed me, the IRE toolbar.  It seems that the firefox version has some really nice features that were left out for the chrome one. @Sarapis can we have this fixed?

Peak

I'm still on Netscape

Vadimuses

Berenene said:

Yeah, I have to admit, that's one thing that always annoyed me, the IRE toolbar.  It seems that the firefox version has some really nice features that were left out for the chrome one. @Sarapis can we have this fixed?

I think that's partly due to Chromes limitations actually. Not as extensible as Firefox.

Nim

elinks is pretty cool, it has tabbed browsing. links is cool too, though, and lynx is a solid browser if the other two aren't available.

(but aside from them, I usually use opera, firefox, and chrome)

Tarkanian

Chrome definitely, but when I'm on IRE-mode, I use FF coz of it's live feed.

Anyone know if Chrome will have the same so I can uninstall FF already?