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Why Firefox Has Jumped the Shark

pcworld.com

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Re: Why Firefox Has Jumped the Shark

#41

Post by quoderat »

hack_edu wrote: post #34
quoderat wrote: post #16

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

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.

It feels 100% right after I am done customizing it. Chrome can never feel right because it's not customizable at all, really. One size does not fit all, and you don't get to tell me what feels right.

Everyone has different needs. Mine are not the same as yours. I used Chrome for several weeks, and it didn't meet my needs at all. With no extensions, I was unable to do 1/10th the things I do in Firefox.

It's not a bad browser, but it's extremely limited. I hope this will change, as I'd like more competition, but Chrome simply doesn't do the things that my extensions in Firefox enable it to do.

Also, some reading up on why FF has the extension model, and that not everyone uses a browser the same way, might be instructive here.

Re: Why Firefox Has Jumped the Shark

#42

Post by TetOn »

mynameishere wrote: post #32
andyking wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (…

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.

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.

Re: Why Firefox Has Jumped the Shark

#43

Post by andyking »

mynameishere wrote: post #32
andyking wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (…

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.

Fair point, but if I type "n" I could well end up with news.bbc.co.uk, nytimes.com or any number of other sites I've been looking at. There aren't many sites with the "yc" combination of letters.

Re: Why Firefox Has Jumped the Shark

#44

Post by 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.

Re: Why Firefox Has Jumped the Shark

#45

Post by 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.

Re: Why Firefox Has Jumped the Shark

#46

Post by mdonahoe »

alexk wrote: post #2

"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")

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?

Re: Why Firefox Has Jumped the Shark

#47

Post by listic »

cninja wrote: post #36
listic wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still can't get used to the "stupid" URL bar (I'd call it too smart for my liking). It's a pity it is a pervasive trend amongst modern browsers. I have a copy of Opera 9.27 that doesn't yet have it, it's a pity it cannot render more and more sites properly. Can I switch to the classic URL bar?

Actually the Opera 9.5 beta and Firefox 3 betas both started using a "Awesome Bar" type feature around the same time. Opera 9.27 was released over a year ago.

That's what I mean. I didn't like "Awesome Bar". I use the latest version of Opera that doesn't use it (and reluctantly use Firefox 3)

Re: Why Firefox Has Jumped the Shark

#48

Post by MoeDrippins »

j_baker wrote: post #20
MoeDrippins wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

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. =)

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