I think this guy is right, because unlike the IE -> Firefox switch that is slow, Firefox -> Chrome switch can be really fast. And this is just the start. From the user point of view Firefox is almost unchanged since 1.0, I wonder what they really did in all this time: stability, new parts of the standard implemented, better page rendering, and so on, but this is not a DNS server or an SMTP server, it's a browser. You need to go forward in a way that the user can touch, and improve the user life. Just what Chrome is doing.
Firefox May Already Be Dead
11–20 of 67 posts
Re: Firefox May Already Be Dead
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article links to another article comparing Chrome to Firefox 3.1b2, with Chrome still coming out ahead on performance. The JS engine is only one part of the equation. Chrome is faster than Firefox in a host of other things, like DOM manipulation and startup time, as well as the process-per-tab design makes it scale to multiple cores far more effectively. Mozilla's lagging pretty hard on the innovation front. Ever…
It'd be more interesting to see an article comparing Chrome to Firefox 3.1b3, which recently came out. See https://developer.mozilla.org/devnews/index.php/2009/03/12/f... . You'll notice that one of the improvements in b3 is performance increase in the javascript engine. You're right, though, when you say that it isn't just about the javascript engine's speed. So maybe we should wait until Chrome becomes a full-featu…
The b3 improvements are incremental, I doubt you'll see that big a difference in benchmarks.
There wasn't a whole lot of change from Firefox 1.5->2.0, Firefox 3.0 was the big refresh. I don't actually remember that much complaining about poor performance in Firefox 2.0 relative to 1.x.
What do you feel are missing features in Chrome that actually matter to people that you feel with materially impact performance significantly?
Re: Firefox May Already Be Dead
#13I would love to use Chrome as my primary browser, but until it supports an addon equivalent to and as feature-rich as Firebug, and is available for OSX, I don't have much choice but to stick with Firefox.
Re: Firefox May Already Be Dead
#14Mozilla makes over $100,000,000 a year from affiliate Google searches.
What happens when Google doesn't need that?
Re: Firefox May Already Be Dead
#15Mozilla makes over $100,000,000 a year from affiliate Google searches. What happens when Google doesn't need that?
100 Million? Really? Got a source for that? If it was something more like 10 Million, I would find it much more believable.
Re: Firefox May Already Be Dead
#16I would love to use Chrome as my primary browser, but until it supports an addon equivalent to and as feature-rich as Firebug, and is available for OSX, I don't have much choice but to stick with Firefox.
Have you ever seen WebKit's Web Inspector? Its very comparable to Firebug. Check it out in Safari 4 on Mac/Windows (Enable Develop menu in the preferences) or Chrome on Windows.
Re: Firefox May Already Be Dead
#17Ad Block Plus. Once Chrome has it, I'm switching full time. I realize there's other ways to block ads with chrome, but they don't seem as efficient as ABP
.. that and NoScript.
There are plenty of FireFox plugins I use (primarily FireBug, but Chrome has good debugging tools and it's only a matter of time before someone builds an equivalent of FireBug for Chrome).
AdBlock Plus and NoScript give me not only less junk but block an awful lot of attack vectors. I feel kinda vulnerable without NoScript.
Oh, and a full linux-build, please. I've tested Chrome on Windows and am impressed, but as long as there's not linux build I can't use it. OSX people probably feel the same way.
Re: Firefox May Already Be Dead
#18Ad Block Plus. Once Chrome has it, I'm switching full time. I realize there's other ways to block ads with chrome, but they don't seem as efficient as ABP
You're in the small minority. Even amongst Firefox users last time I measured only 6% or so used ad block plus.
Re: Firefox May Already Be Dead
#19It's not just about the browser by itself. Don't forget all the great extensions built on top of Firefox. Until Chrome has attracted developers to build great extensions on it, Firefox is going to stay as my main browser.
Yes, firefox is a platform. The total value is higher than the thing itself, and that makes it hard to displace. Like DOS and Windows. Adblock is very popular, and although I use Greasemonkey (and scripts accumulated for that platform) and others, I doubt that many of the userbase do. And so for them, this isn't a factor.
It's worth remembering that Google doesn't care to win this war - they just want faster browsers to drive web and webapp usage.
Re: Firefox May Already Be Dead
#20Mozilla makes over $100,000,000 a year from affiliate Google searches. What happens when Google doesn't need that?
100 Million? Really? Got a source for that? If it was something more like 10 Million, I would find it much more believable.
Not quite 100mil, but fairly close:
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2007/10/the-future-i...