
Why Firefox Has Jumped the Shark - dragonquest
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/161966/why_firefox_has_jumped_the_shark.html
======
Tichy
"the stupid URL bar that explodes into a list of sites whenever I type even a
single letter there"

Um, that feature is brilliant, it's the only way I can still handle my
bookmarks. Haven't tried Google Chrome, so I don't know if they have come up
with a better solution. Have they?

~~~
andyking
I love that bar, I don't even need to bookmark pages I visit a lot any more.
All I need to do is type, say, "yc" and up pops this site. "tv" will show me
tonight's TV listings. "gu" brings up the Guardian.

If I wanted to come back to this story, "yc firefox" would most likely bring
me here and to any other HN stories I'd read with Firefox in the title. And so
on. I didn't really like it when it was first brought in (change? no!) but
it's grown on me.

~~~
mynameishere
_All I need to do is type, say, "yc"_

Why is this good? I type the letter "n" and news.ycombinator comes up. (I'm on
ff 2.0). If I type "yc" I get this:

<http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html>

It's deterministic, being alphabetic, and superior in every way. I don't want
the fricken address bar throwing dice on my input.

~~~
TetOn
The key distinction being the ability to find the URLs that you _don't_ know
by fishing for the one piece you _do_ remember, that may (inconveniently) not
be until the end of the URL.

An example: <http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/> which I inevitably reach by
typing "big"; this was un-possible with the previous iterations.

------
quoderat
I use (actually use) about 35 plug-ins, around 50 user styles, and a few
Greasemonkey scripts. Until Chrome gets all those, no way I can use Chrome.

I've customized my Firefox experience so much, most people can't even
recognize it. No way I can do that on Chrome.

And in Linux, I run Firefox totally in a ramdisk, so it's ridiculously fast:

<http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1120475>

~~~
hack_edu
Your need for plugins, styles, and scripts are the exact reason why the author
claims Firefox has jumped the shark. It definitely can't feel 'right' if you
need to customize it so much.

~~~
asimone
Agreed. I used to have a similar bloated Firefox setup and then switched to
Chrome. I just couldn't go back to the Fox, even missing a few features like
delicious integration, the feel of the url/search bar is too good.

~~~
jbm
Same here. I even went to the trouble of building a bookmarklet to handle the
only Firefox plugin that I missed (rikaichan -
[http://www.tokyomuslim.com/2009/04/japanese-english-
bookmark...](http://www.tokyomuslim.com/2009/04/japanese-english-bookmarklet-
for-google-chrome/))

------
alexk
"It just doesn't feel right any more" - this point makes no sense at all, and
the worst part is that the whole article is based on this saying.

(I suspect the real meaning is "It is not that brand new shiny toy any more,
and Chrome is")

~~~
mdonahoe
There is a lot to be said of aesthetics, and I must say that Chrome looks and
feels much sexier than the default Firefox theme.

But whatever, none of them are much different from each other anyway. Where is
the real innovation?

------
tspiteri
The expression "jumped the shark" has jumped the shark.

------
barrkel
Little more than linkbait, and less well argued than a Dvorak piece.

------
CodeMage
Lots of handwaving, some ad hominem and plenty of condescension. I like
Chrome's speed and stability. I really like the idea that if one tab crashes
(beyond recovery), the rest will survive. But I still use Firefox and will go
on doing so until Chrome gives me two things I need:

1) a set of plugins (add-ons, extensions, whatever) equivalent to the ones I
use

2) a way to decide that yes, I want to have a title bar

The feature #2 might seem laughable to most, but it's important to me. What
Chrome devs did there, I can only describe as "arrogance". It's okay to decide
that the title bar, in your opinion, is a waste of "screen real-estate". It's
perfectly natural to ship Chrome with the title bar removed by default. But
it's arrogant not to offer an option to turn it back on. Some of us are
actually using that "screen real-estate".

------
tvon
Firefox has become the thing it was created to replace, a beast of a browser
that seemingly sucks up resources from nearby computers just to open a new
window.

Also, the term "jumped the shark" has jumped the shark.

[edit: that said, as much as I like Safari 4 and Chrome, I find it very hard
to live without Firebug and the Web Developer extension when it comes to
building websites (though the webkit inspector is getting closer with each
release)]

------
jasonkester
This guy sums up my sentiments on the issue quite nicely. Firefox just can't
hang anymore in the presence of Chrome, and Safari (and arguably even IE). I
dig plugins as much as the next guy, but it's not enough to make me open
Firefox for anything more than testing these days.

~~~
MoeDrippins
> I dig plugins as much as the next guy, but it's not enough to make me open
> Firefox...

Then you don't, in fact, dig the plugins as much as THIS next guy. Mind you,
it's the only thing that brings me back to FF, but if Chrome supported even
just adblock, I'd jump in a second. But the plugins are its killer feature,
^2.

~~~
j_baker
You can kinda get adblock with Privoxy (<http://www.privoxy.org/>). Notice
that I said "kinda." :-)

~~~
MoeDrippins
Actually, I'm using that right now. I've used priv in the past so it's not
quite so foreign. I'm finding chrome+priv actually usable.

Still waiting for something a bit more "on the fly right click" configurable,
for my ADHD moments. =)

------
dean
I use Firefox at work and Chrome at home. There's no way I could use Chrome
for my job, it just doesn't have anywhere near the developer capabilities I
need.

But Chrome really is beautiful. And lightning fast. Unfortunately, I regularly
bump into things I can't do, like block those god-forsaken flash ads, email a
link to the page I'm viewing or Ctrl-Tab to switch back and forth between tabs
(as opposed to cycling through all of them), just to name a few. And these
things make Chrome not quite "feel right" to me.

Chrome has some things to learn from Firefox, and Firefox has some things to
learn from Chrome. And competition is healthy. So I'm sure interesting things
are coming.

------
j_baker
I like Chrome much better. The only thing that I use Firefox for is Firebug.
Other than that, I try to avoid most of the plugins Firefox is famous for
anyway. I find that they just make it slower. Maybe 3.5 will change that
though.

~~~
whopa
> Maybe 3.5 will change that though.

Doubtful. The new JS JIT is only turned on for web content, so extensions
don't benefit at all.

------
sachmanb
On the technical side, there's no reason that FireFox should lose out to
Chrome, but I think the argument that he is making is that Chrome has a better
design, and user experience - an idea he sums into FF not feeling right.

If Chrome add-ons in the future cover the needs for most people, and both are
rendering things well, then it may just come down to a design choice for most
people.

Personally, I don't care much for google on my personal computer and hope that
it doesn't come to be the case. One of the biggest holes in my current set up,
is that all of my e-mail goes to Google. I don't trust Google so I consider
this a security threat.

------
miguelpais
I just know I never used Firefox again after Safari 4 Beta...

~~~
j_baker
+1 - At first I was kinda angry because Safari 4 is essentially Google Chrome
by apple (at least in terms of user interface). But then I was happy because
there isn't a Google Chrome for the Mac.

~~~
callahad
"Safari 4 is essentially Google Chrome by Apple."

Google Chrome is essentially Webkit by Google.

Webkit is essentially KHTML by Apple.

Why be angry when it's all so circular?

------
thalur
I must admit that I've stopped using firefox completely since I got hooked on
Chrome, but I was never a big plugin user. I wouldn't go so far as to say
firefox was dead as a result though. The oddest thing is that I don't miss
having an ad blocker in chrome, and I have no idea why! Maybe I've just gotten
used to seeing ads again, or maybe Chrome blocks popups better than firefox
did back before I got the adblock plugin.

~~~
ruddzw
I stopped using Firefox as my main browser when I got a mac a little under 4
years ago, and started using Safari. I was using adblock prior to that switch,
and while I don't have any ad blocking now, except for the fact that pop-ups
are blocked, I am barely ever bothered by an ad. I'm fairly convinced that ad
obtrusiveness has gone down in general over the past few years. There are some
exceptions (I'm looking at you, weather.com), but in general people seem to
have realized that they had to tone down the ads if they wanted people to see
them at all.

------
badger7
The use of the word 'why' in that title is entirely disingenuous - his whole
point is "just because".

