

Firefox, I Just Can't Quit You - kevin_morrill
http://refer.ly/firefox-i-just-can-t-quit-you/c/0486aa3c848511e2bfbf22000a1db8fa

======
jlongster
The most bizarre part of this is coworkers ridiculing someone for using a
completely modern browser that's just as up-to-date as Chrome, and possibly
with better privacy. Completely bizarre to me. I'm glad I don't work there.

~~~
drivebyacct2
>possibly with better privacy

Can you elaborate?

~~~
mediumdeviation
In theory, Chrome sends your entire browsing history over to Google, since its
unified omnibar doesn't distinguish between searching and typing in location.
Firefox (and any browser that separates the location and search bar) doesn't
have this problem.

To be frank I'm not sure how Google uses this information, but it does make me
laugh when the whole Ubuntu Dash searches Amazon thing blew up. It's the same
thing, really, yet nobody talks about Chrome at all.

~~~
jmillikin
The chrome settings page links to
[https://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...](https://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=180655&p=settings_instant_policy)
, which links to [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/update-to-google-
sugg...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/update-to-google-suggest.html)
. If I remember correctly, the default configuration of Chrome is to have
prediction enabled and Chrome Instant disabled, so the relevant section of the
policy is:

    
    
      """Whenever you pause while typing in the address bar,
      the text you've typed is sent to Google so predictions
      can be retrieved. Google logs a random two percent of
      these requests in order to help improve the service.
      This information is anonymized within 24 hours.
      """

------
chris_wot
Why would you ridicule someone for using _Firefox_? It's a great app, high
quality, innovative and extremely well maintained.

Chrome is as well, of course - but there's no need to be ashamed of using
Firefox!

------
clumsysmurf
I've been using Chrome for a few years and just moved back to FireFox because
Chrome's insane memory usage (on desktop).

There are some rough spots in the UX still: (1) I miss my omnibar from Chrome
(2) seems like scrolling can be jankier

But I prefer to use a Browser from a non-profit like Mozilla, which I feel
safer with.

I do hope the Firefox team focuses on UX, speed, standards compliance, and
security while keeping their browser slim and fast. Less features often means
better UX since the UI is less cluttered.

~~~
mikeratcliffe
Here are some power user tips for the awesomebar: ^ xxx - search xxx in your
browsing history. * xxx - search xxx in your bookmarks. \+ xxx - search xxx in
pages you've tagged. % xxx - search xxx in your currently open tabs. ~ xxx -
search xxx in pages you've typed. # xxx - search xxx in page titles. @ xxx -
search xxx in web addresses (URLs).

I can't think what more you would need ;o)

------
clarkdave
I use Chrome and often have ~100 tabs open. I spread them across multiple
windows and try to keep related tabs together in their own window.

I use the excellent Session Buddy[0] extension to make this easier. With that,
I can save windows ('tab groups') and restore them easily, and it also has a
nice list view showing all windows I have open and the tabs in each (which is
usually the best way to find a single tab).

[0] <http://www.sessionbuddy.com>

------
fishtoaster
I'm in the same boat: I love chrome (actually, it's my primary browser), but I
can never quite leave Firefox because of the plugins: \- Multifox ( N
different browser sessions, rather than just one for incognito mode and one
for normal browsing) \- DNS Flusher (Chrome staunchly refuses to accept when I
change my hosts file, which I do daily to switch between live, staging, and
production servers). \- Tamper Data (a great tool for monitoring and messing
with http requests from your browser).

~~~
robbles
Actually, Chrome has multi-session support built in. Try clicking on the head
icon in the top right corner (on OS X) and click "New User". You'll get a new
context with it's own cookies, cache, window etc. that you can switch to
anytime.

------
linuxhansl
I'm still using Firefox.

As I posted in another thread I periodically test Firefox against Chrome (well
Chromium actually, as I refuse to use closed source Chrome) on the pages I
frequent.

Firefox typically is faster and consumes less memory at least for the sites I
frequent.

------
wvenable
I'm in the same boat but my plugin of choice is Tab Mix Plus. I can't function
without multi-row tabs; my style of browsing is to open lots of tabs. Chrome
becomes useless to me in 15-20 minutes of heavy work-related browsing due to
too many tiny indistinguishable tabs.

~~~
bodegajed
Same here, I need Tab Mix Plus for the switching of last tab behavior. The one
when press CTRL+Tab it switches back to the previous tab and not the next tab.

------
TwoBit
What's wrong with Firefox? It's as fast as Chrome, with less memory usage and
more features while having a decent design.

~~~
snogglethorpe
Absolutely nothing's wrong with FF, but there are sometimes reasons to use
chrome. Different browsers, different bugs, after all... :]

I normally use FF, but there are situations where I use chrome instead (both
very up-to-date versions, so more or less as good as they get).

chrome uses more memory on average because of the multi-process architecture,
but that architecture also makes user-control of memory usage much more
convenient, because closing a tab with a memory-hog page in it immediately
releases a hefty chunk of memory (whereas this usually isn't the case with
FF). So sometimes when my memory is running low, I'll use chrome, despite the
higher average memory usage, to get the increased controllability.

There are also cases of bleeding edge html5 stuff where the chrome
implementation works better. E.g., both seem to support webgl in general, but
some webgl-using pages only work properly in chrome for me.

It's really nice to have available two completely independent implementations
of a modern, featureful, robust web-browser... Before chrome, there was [on
linux] basically FF and a bunch of toy browsers, and the latter were often not
very usable for many pages.

------
msprague
As far as tabs go, if I need organization I have multiple windows of Chrome
open with different tabs across different work spaces on my Macbook, and I can
just three finger swipe between them.

Usually, I have one window open with a bunch of relevant iOS dev tabs (Apple
Docs / stack overflow threads) in the space with XCode and Simulator, and
another window open with my email / work-related tabs open just a three-finger
swipe away.

Also, does anyone else find that giant banner "A new kind of magazine for
thoughtful shoppers." a bit intrusive?

~~~
mathrawka
How do you enable the three finger swipe to change tabs on Chrome?

~~~
davezatch
Actually there is an option, if you go to chrome://flags on Mac you can turn
on "Tab Overview", which lets you hold down option and swipe down with 3
fingers to see an expose type overview of all open tabs. Pretty nice.

------
wololo_
I'm a browser extension/addon developer and I can tell you that firefox lets
you do extra functionalities that the chrome API won't let you, at the cost of
making it hard to code an extension (e.g: extra markup language like XUL).

I love my FF with Roomy Bookmarks, Alexa, Status-4Eva, and LastTab

------
ninetax
Firefox user here. There are so many great plugins I would love to use chrome
for, but one singular thing keeps me using Firefox: side tabs.

Not even tree style, just a plain and simple side tab list. I'm a tab addict
and I can't live without opening a dozen every session. Then i keep them open
for weeks like a todo list.

Does anyone know if it's possible to write a chrome plugin that can integrate
right into the side of the chrome window?

~~~
dredmorbius
I need my trees. But yes, side over top is such a vast improvement.

Hell, I remember when tabbed browsing was all new and stuff. Thanks, Opera
(though I never actually used you).

~~~
RenierZA
Did Opera really bring us tabs first?

I remember using NetCaptor (an IE shell browser) long before Opera had tabs.

Maybe Opera popularized it first?

~~~
dredmorbius
I encountered them on a 'Nix browser, Skipstone (gtk toolkit browser, probably
using Gecko) back in 2000. What I heard was that Opera had pioneered the
feature. At the time, browsers were one window per page, which ... pretty much
completely sucked.

------
Yhippa
One of my favorite Firefox extensions is RESTClient
([https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/restclient/?s...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/restclient/?src=search)). Haven't found a tool as nice in
Chrome yet.

That said the only reason I have Firefox around is for that tool and browser
testing. I keep subconsciously coming back to Chrome for most of my daily
tasks and the lovable Omnibar.

~~~
jlogsdon
> One of my favorite Firefox extensions is RESTClient
> (<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/restclient/?s...>). Haven't
> found a tool as nice in Chrome yet.

Here you go: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/postman-rest-
clien...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/postman-rest-
client/fdmmgilgnpjigdojojpjoooidkmcomcm?hl=en)

Postman has some amazing features like Environments and Collections so you can
save some common headers/requests.

~~~
Yhippa
Thanks for the heads up. This looks a lot better than RESTClient so far.

------
davesims
I got addicted to left-pane treeview bookmarks waaay back in my Opera days,
imported into FF, still waiting on Chrome (sheesh). But at this point I doubt
it would make a difference since the performance advantage has been pretty
much erased. FF is fine -- what _is_ Chrome's real advantage these days?
Honest question...

And there's _still_ not even a decent extension that does it, which seems
really odd to me. Anyone know of one (left pane bookmarks that is)?

~~~
starky
The problem (at least when I last looked) was that Chrome's extension
framework just plain makes it impossible to create an extension that supports
side tabs properly.

I find Firefox uses less RAM on my machine and the extensions work far better,
I don't any advantage to using Chrome.

------
kps
Two things keep me on Firefox, or did, last time I checked.

One is Vimperator or Pentadactyl — whichever better survives the extension-
breaking release of the week.

The other is that Chrome on Linux cannot be told to use the GUI key for
shortcuts rather overloading Control in MS Windows fashion.

------
tn13
I too use Firefox as my primary browser. My co-workers do raise their eyebrows
often but I dont think they are trying to ridicule me.

The thing that truly keeps me with Firefox is Firebug. Chrome developer tools
don't even come close.

~~~
adamors
> Chrome developer tools don't even come close.

Now that is just silly.

~~~
tn13
Let me know when chrome lets you simple resend a network request. Also when I
can write lengthy JS programs on the console and check their effect on the
page.

~~~
adamors
You can't resend network requests that's true, however I'm pretty sure
Chrome's JS console beats FF/FB's <http://smotko.si/using-chrome-as-a-
javascript-editor/>

------
aeth
I'm pretty minimalist when it comes to add-on usage, but until Chrome's font
rendering stops being dogshit compared to other browsers on Windows --
particularly with East Asian fonts -- I'm sticking with Firefox.

------
aghull
Agree with both points from the author. The other 2 big ones that I can't get
Chrome to do as well as Firefox are Type-Ahead Find, and the default behaviour
of the location bar to match on any URL in your history. The Chrome version
tries to be too clever. I just want straight text-to-URL matching.

------
surrealize
For me, it's history sync that brought be back to firefox. If you use
HN/reddit/etc. from multiple computers, history sync is really helpful. Last I
checked, chrome didn't sync history.

------
galvanist
I read "two critical plugins keep me stuck" and mis-completed the sentence in
my head with "NoScript and GreaseMonkey."

------
copyninja
even though I did try chromium I never changed from Firefox from the time I
got my first computer! and never will. I <3 stability of Firefox

