"Firefox or Chrome" – this is what I’ve been typing into Google search bar for the last few days. And I still haven’t got a clear answer.

firefox_logo

I love FireFox and I’ve been using it since I got a broadband connection. It had awesome features, speed and it served me well.

But then Chrome came up and it had/has everyone’s attention because of new minimal looks, speed and because it’s made by Google. Many people switched to Chrome even though it lacked many features that FireFox had. I also used Chrome for a few days but then dismissed it as FireFox was better and had more features than Chrome.

Currently, things aren’t so good with FireFox, Google is developing Chrome at an unbelievable speed and Chrome is is getting many features that Firefox has. Chrome is beating all the browsers, including FireFox in terms of performance. And yesterday, every browser except Chrome was hacked. The extensions or add-ons which is a FireFox thing is now available for Chrome also.

google-chrome

After reading the performance test results and a lot of people asking me to try it once more, I installed Google Chrome and added a few extensions to it. I was surprised at how comfortable I was using Chrome. It is blazing fast and it worked the way I wanted it to.

 

As of now I’ve switched back to FireFox because I’ve grown used to it (just like I’ve grown used to Google Search)
Some things I like in FireFox are –

  • The small arrow besides the back/forward button. It’s very useful when I’ve to go 4 or 5 pages back.

 back drop

  • Awesome Bar – Mozilla took a very wise decision when they decided to integrate "I’m Feeling Lucky" into address bar. I like to type the name of the website and be taken directly to the website, it’s faster than looking at a bunch of search results. If I wanted search results, I’d type into the search bar.
  • I like the fact that I can add multiple search engines to the search bar. I’ve got Wikipedia, bing, Google, beemp3 etc. It makes searching faster.

 search

  • Bookmarks management – FireFox bookmarks management is light-years ahead of Chrome.

bookmarks

  • Downloads- A neat little window with lots of features like search, pause, resume download, go to download page, copy download link etc.

downloads

  • Add-ons – There are millions of add-ons available for FireFox and there are some add-ons which I cannot live without.

customize

But to me (and lota other people) performance is very important, and Chrome is hell bent at delivering performance.
So I’m back to square one, I’m still not sure which browser to use. I’m using FireFox mostly out of habit. Chrome is sitting besides Firefox in my taskbar mocking me.

mock

 

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  • http://mickyfin.vox.com/ Micky

    Great post, and one I can relate to completely, having been a diehard firefox fan, and user for many years, I have to say, in recent months, Firefox has become somewhat bloated, and lacking in performance, not to mention insecure, crashing and closing unexpectedly.

    It's hese latter observations, and my recent Migration from the Windows Environment to the Mac platform which helped me decide on moving to Chrome, which I have to say is the best thing I have done second to leaving Windows.

    There are plenty of extensions available for Chrome now, and these extensions, to me have more functionality, with lovely transitions, and notifications options.

    Performance wise, Chrome is so much quicker than firefox too, and this is really more notable when you have many bookmarks, full toolbar shortcuts, and lots of plugin's. Chrome loads up, ready to use in a matter of seconds, whereas firefox was taking up to half a minute, which in todays standards is really not cutting it for me.

    As already said, I used Firefox for years, and at one point, firefox was THE browser of choice, but times change, and its slowly being left for dead imo.

    Yes, this is a shame, I used to use Thunderbird too from Mozilla for my emails, but that too was starting to look outdated, and lacked in performance. I now use either iMail in Mac OS X, or the web browser Gmail page for my emails, which offer far more in functionality.

    So there you have it, thats my view on which browser of choice I choose. Chrome all the way.