

How and Why Chrome Is Overtaking Firefox Among Power Users - EGreg
http://lifehacker.com/5645038/how-and-why-chrome-is-overtaking-firefox-among-power-users

======
statictype
I've been using Chrome as my browser for almost a couple of years now. I
switched from firefox for basically one reason.

The browser is fast. Blazing _fast_. Starts-faster-than-notepad-while-my-
system-is-still-settling-down fast.

I don't like how tabs get obscured if you have too many open. And there are
some crashing bugs (I'm running the developer channel) but I still prefer it
to any other browser.

There are some other nice features it has:

1) Silent updates that don't ask you questions. One day I'll click on the
bookmark organizer and find that its been revamped completely since the last
time I saw it. One day the tools menu has new items in it. I keep getting
improvements pushed down as and when they are released and I've never had to
notice it or take any action on it.

2) Automatically registers search engines whenever you search with it.

3) Syncs across multiple machines. Re-arranging the bookmarks on my Mac show
up on my Windows system the next time I open Chrome on it.

That said, I still keep Firefox around as a container for Firebug. The chrome
developer tools are nice but not on the same level as Firebug.

~~~
mxavier
The search engine registration feature is fantastic. I do a ton of searching
all day on various sites and when I ever have to use firefox, I find myself
start typing en.wiki-- hitting tab and remembering that firefox still has
quite a bit of friction in the search interface.

------
aerique
I recently switched back to Firefox from a two week test drive of Chrome,
reasons:

* I don't like how the display of a lot of tabs are handled (dozens of really small unreadable tabs)

* No NoScript (found one extension that didn't work very well)

* It doesn't feel that much faster with dozens of open tabs

* I prefer FF's interface

* Uncertainty about what data is shared with Google

Integration with Google's other services is not a selling point for me.

I now have an "Open in Chrome" item in my context menu for opening Planet Wars
replays.

~~~
metra
Completely agree, specifically with these items:

* I don't like how the display of a lot of tabs are handled (dozens of really small unreadable tabs)

 __I wish Chrome had something like Tree Style Tabs (vertical tab panel on the
left).

* It doesn't feel that much faster with dozens of open tabs

 __For me, it feels much, much slower when you have 30 tabs open - which are
all visible because of Tree Style Tabs.

If I need to look at one website quickly and FF isn't open, I'll use Chrome.
Otherwise, it's all Firefox.

~~~
pdaddyo
If you run the dev channel version of Chrome, you can enable vertical tabs by
browsing to about:labs and switching it on.

------
bradgessler
One thing I find absolutely annoying in FireFox is that its always bugging me
about updating either the browser or its extensions. Chrome does this all in
the background and just works.

~~~
Perceval
Mozilla is moving toward this by working on silent background updates (just
for Windows users at the moment:
[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9180272/Mozilla_plans...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9180272/Mozilla_plans_to_silently_update_Firefox))
and by eliminating startup dialogs of all kinds:
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Projects/Eradicate_Startup_...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Projects/Eradicate_Startup_Dialogs)

They know about the problem and are working to fix it.

~~~
njharman
> They know about the problem

I consider silent, automatic updates to be a HUGE problem.

~~~
SkyMarshal
I imagine they'll provide a configuration option for users to choose which
they prefer, either in the Prefs menu or about:config.

I agree though, I prefer seeing update notifications popup at startup or
anytime for that matter, than have it run silently in the background.

------
bdotdub
I started off being uncomfortable that I was using Chrome more and more. But
it is a lot of little things that make it better. I'm on the dev channel, and
some things might break, but having quick patches and updates is awesome.

Three things are holding me back to fully switching over:

\- Awesome bar - its awesome

\- Web Inspector <<<<< Firebug

\- '/' to start searching (unless its there and i just dont know about it)

edit: formatting

~~~
njharman
I use Chrome at work and FF everywhere else. Chrome is bloody fast.

But, FF keywords and awesome bar are so much better than what Chrome does.
Totally miss '/', and ctrl-u to view source. An extension to bring those back
would make me 37% happier!

Next version of FF claims big speed improvements. And since they've delivered
on speed and memory improvements in the past I'm hopeful. I'll probably be
switching back to FF only when that's out.

~~~
cryptoz
FWIW, Ctrl+u works as View Source in Chrome! Sadly, / doesn't do anything.

------
bobf
For me, Chrome wins purely on speed. Like the article says, "it [Chrome] feels
faster, and that's all that matters." Once in a while I need to use Firefox to
test something, and it just feels painfully slow in comparison.

~~~
bluesnowmonkey
Ironically, for me Chrome loses on speed. I intentionally use somewhat
underpowered tools for development. The danger is accidentally building
something that runs fine on my system but that drags for users, i.e. the
Crysis effect. Until the whole world uses Chrome, I can't target that level of
performance.

~~~
bobf
That's a good point. I was simply speaking from a usage standpoint, not for
development. Also, I suspect you're talking about javascript speed -- I was
mainly addressing non-javascript rendering. Chrome feels basically instant,
while Firefox's rendering takes an extra 300-500ms.. just enough to feel
really sluggish.

------
adriand
I switched to Chrome relatively recently and I love it however there are two
things I really don't like:

* Inconsistent pinned tabs behaviour. A month ago, when I closed a pinned tab, it's favicon would remain, and I could click the favicon to reopen it. I loved this. Also, it would retain pinned tabs when I reopened the browser. Now, however, the "close but retain favicon" behaviour has disappeared, and it only sometimes remembers my pinned tabs between browser restarts, but I don't know why it's inconsistent.

* I detest the search bar's automatic handling of certain terms. For example, if I want information about a Google API, I may start typing "google maps api" but as soon as I finish typing "google" it turns my entry into an automatic search of Google, followed by the terms. But searching for Google for "google maps api" is not the same thing as searching Google for "maps api". It does this for all sorts of stuff.

~~~
manicbovine
Have you tried a question mark at the start of your query? (i.e. ?google maps
api)

~~~
adriand
Thanks for the tip, works great!

------
jrockway
I don't really get why Chrome is so exciting. OK, it uses the GPU to render
pages. That's fine, but that's never the bottleneck for me; my CPU is done
rendering pages long before it gets the next byte from the painfully-slow web
app that I'm connected to.

What we really need is GPU acceleration for Arc...

~~~
sid0
> OK, it uses the GPU to render pages

? It actually doesn't -- not release versions at any rate. Are you confusing
Chrome with IE9 or Firefox 4?

~~~
cobbal
Latest development releases of chromium support this (see
[http://blog.chromium.org/2010/09/unleashing-gpu-
acceleration...](http://blog.chromium.org/2010/09/unleashing-gpu-acceleration-
on-web.html))

------
msluyter
For me it's mostly just the combined search & url field. Once you get used to
that, anything else feels awkward.

~~~
Xurinos
In Firefox,

(1) View >> Toolbars >> Customize

(2) Drag your search box out of the bar

(3) Okay

(4) Go to any search engine. For example, go to google.

(5) Right-click in the search box, and choose "Add Keyword for this search"

(6) Give it a friendly name. For a google search keyword, I might suggest "g".

Now, when you want to search in Firefox's single URL bar, you can type "g cute
cat pictures". Add the "cpan" search keyword for the search.cpan.org box, and
in the same bar, you can type "cpan Moose". Want to define a word? Set up a
keyword for the box at dictionary.com (Would "d" work for you?).

Also, Firefox has NoScript and supports the latest version of JavaScript
(Chrome is years behind).

~~~
CountHackulus
The search keywords is the main reason I can't get used to Chrome. After years
of typing g <search> or wiki <search>, I'm having a lot of trouble
readjusting.

~~~
skymt
You can use keywords in Chrome: go to Options > Basics > Default search >
Manage, pick a search engine, click Edit, and enter your keyword. It's a few
more steps than in Firefox, but at least it doesn't clutter your bookmarks.

~~~
Groxx
I think Chrome one-ups them, actually. It keeps track of search engines you
visit, so you can go there _now_ and fill out ones you've already used without
browsing anywhere.

------
spacemanaki
Chrome is definitely awesome, but I've been using FF a lot more recently
because Vimperator is better than Vimium.

------
scornforsega
Chrome still can't seem to get mouse gestures right. I don't care if a page is
"protected". I don't care what platform limitations are in place. I just want
the same experience, regardless of where I am or what OS I'm on. Right now
siphon+xmarks+firefox comes a lot closer to that than chrome.

Past that I think it's a great browser. But until the day comes that I never
have to click the back or close buttons, it won't be my browser of choice.

------
Fluxx
I think it's a fools errand to try to make one browser for every single type
of web browsing user on the planet. I use the browser a lot differently - web
development, checking HTTP headers, etc - than my girlfriend does - browsing
facebook and looking up clothes on the Anthropologie website.

Firefox + Firebug, Web Developers Toolbar + all my other extensions make it a
wonderful browser for doing we development, but makes it _terrible_ (and
slower) for doing casual browsing...which is why I'm not writing this comment
in Firefox :)

The iPad does this exceptionally well. It did a great job of showing that
while the laptop platform is a superset of all iPad functionality, it was the
actual _platform_ (bigger hardware, short(er) battery life, needing
mouse/trackpad, etc) that got in the way from the best user experience of
consuming content.

------
CoryMathews
There are a lot of things I really love about chrome, and it is very tempting
to make the switch. I would bet in a few years it is as large as or larger
then IE.

Im not switching from firefox, but from Opera. I haven't been able to use
Firefox as my default browser without being annoyed to hell for some time.

However I still feel chrome is not as polished as Opera but I still enjoy
using chrome and there are so many things that are better then Opera. However
there are still 2 game breakers that are keeping me from switching to chrome.

Built in RSS reader - I don't want another program to handle RSS for me. This
is a key thing keeping me on opera and I really hope they don't try to force
you to go to Google Reader.

Mouse Gestures - Every plugin for this sucks. They are awful, slow, inaccurate
and annoying. Big time game breaker for me.

------
seltzered
They missed the main reason I switched to chrome. I constantly had issues
where firefox had a (memory leak?) that slowed my whole computer down, usually
causing me to kill the task couple days.

I love the extensibility of FF, and aza's usability contributions, but I can't
live repeatedly restarting a browser in a world of webapps.

(Disclaimer: I haven't tried FF 4 yet, but experienced the same issues last
spring when I tried to switch back to FF for treeview tabs)

(Disclaimer 2: I suppose there's ways to workaround it - searching led me to
this: [http://blog.skdev.net/2009/02/12/how-to-fix-firefox-
memory-l...](http://blog.skdev.net/2009/02/12/how-to-fix-firefox-memory-leak-
problem/) )

------
VladRussian
Sounds like history repeats itself. New Microsoft - Google - takes on Netscape
browser (Netscape 5 -> Mozilla -> FireFox).

"Integration with Google Services .... When Chrome OS comes out with a stable
release, you'll be able to sync your full computing experience by just logging
in with your Google account. It's not there yet, but it's all part of where
Chrome is going. " sounds strangely familiar to the strategy of close
integration of IE into Windows successfully played many years ago.

Competition and greed is good. And current state of browsers only confirms it.
In result we'll have even better and faster browsers :)

------
viae
Chrome, so far, is the only browser I can keep open with a bazillion tabs for
days, weeks, MONTHS without seeing my system take a slow, deadly, performance
hit. I'm sorry I didn't start using it sooner.

~~~
silvajoao
Very true. Indeed, I switched from Firefox to Chrome after Firefox hanged yet
again with N tabs open, and I just couldn't figure which one it was and simply
close that one. On chrome this never happened, and I never had to restart the
browser.

------
SkyMarshal
I've actually switched the other way, from Chrome and Chromium to Firefox. I
used to think FF was compartively slow and clunky too, but then something
strange happened: I discovered Vimperator a few months ago.

I don't how Vimperator does it, or whether it's just the a placebo effect of
sorts, but installing it on FF 3.6 on Linux made FF feel as or more responsive
and stable than Chrome and Chromium. It's now my primary browser & I'm lovin'
it.

------
naner
_Power users love things that sync. Synchronization means you can work from
any computer and expect the same basic environment._

I've gotten hosed by Sync before. I switched OSes not realizing I was also
switching to an older version of Chrome. In the process of syncing I lost a
few months of bookmarks (it looked like all the bookmarks I had saved with the
newer Chrome were gone).

So I'm using Xmarks now.

------
pyre
One bug that I've seen that is _not_ developer friendly is that you need to
run with --enable-ipv6 on Linux to be able to access 127.0.0.1 or localhost
when you don't have a network/internet connection. It's especially annoying
that it gives a name lookup error when trying to access 127.0.0.1... IT'S AN
IP ADDRESS!

------
drblast
I love Chrome because it uses the screen real-estate so efficiently. It's
essential on a netbook.

The only thing I miss is "/" starting search. There's an extension for it, but
it interferes with other things often enough I had to turn it off.

------
celticjames
FTA: > consolidating the search box and address bar seems so obvious

I know that Mozilla's engineers would love to do that, but the search box is
their revenue model. Google pays a lot of money for that box to be there.

------
sandipagr
AdBlock Plus is holding me to Firefox... I have disabled check updates in
firefox and do it myself once in a while. This has kept me sane otherwise it
is too annoying and load time is high.

~~~
gamache
Chrome has an AdBlock extension too. It works great for me.

[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gighmmpiobklfepj...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom)

~~~
joey_bananas
The Chrome/Safari adblock has an extremely crap UI compared to Firefox adblock
if you ever wanna add your own blocking rules.

------
jon914
As a Flash game developer, I find that Flash games run substantially faster in
Chrome because of the way that Flash is integrated. By a factor of 2x in some
cases.

------
greenlblue
Firefox has firebug and greasemonkey but I'm probably using a different
definition of power user.

~~~
cryptoz
The author of Greasemonkey works on the Chrome team now (he's also an HN user,
I believe). So pretty much all Greasemonkey scripts work in Chrome by default
(they're extensions).

Also, have you tried the Chrome Developer Tools? They rival Firebug. You might
like them even more.

~~~
pyre
A while back there were a few things that a number of GreaseMonkey scripts
used that was not available in Chrome. (GreaseMonkey 'API' things)

------
sigzero
Can you right click and copy an image? That was not working last time I tried
it on OSX.

~~~
uxp
Yes. <http://i.imgur.com/VfAoa.png>

~~~
sigzero
No. Have you actually tried it? I just did. It copies a broken image. Sweet.

~~~
uxp
It works for me on 3 different computers.

------
yanw
I'll probably always have Firefox installed on my machine, but Chrome is my
default browser. Chrome is the better piece of software, and one of the best
desktop applications overall, it obviously was well thought out and well
designed from the start: The sandboxing, the update system, the extension
system, the omnibox, using webkit, V8.

