Firefox, I Just Can't Quit You

http://refer.ly/firefox-i-just-can-t-quit-you/c/0486aa3c848511e2bfbf22000a1db8fa

by kevin_morrill • 13 years ago

34 56 13 years ago

wvenable• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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.

jlongster2• 13 years ago

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.

dubcanada• 13 years ago

People used to ridiculing someone for not using IE6.

If you don't use the "norm" you are an outsider :) and frankly Chrome is the "norm" atm.

blt• 13 years ago

Yeah. Good grief. What kind of person ridicules a co-worker repeatedly for their browser choice? Even IE, maybe joke about it once and then move to something important like text editors.

chris_wot2• 13 years ago

Text editors are so passé - the real elites compare BitTorrent clients.

kevin_morrill• 13 years ago

I may have overstated this. It's not like they're giving me that much grief. We just all joke about it.

jlongster2• 13 years ago

Ok, fair enough. It's easy to imagine something different from an article than how it is in real life. I'm personally invested in Firefox too so it's easy to react against Chrome fanboys and the FUD they can spread.

SparksZilla• 13 years ago

Except your technology editor. He uses Firefox more than Chrome after you showed him tree style tabs.

mmahemoff• 13 years ago

They're not ridiculing him. It's natural and desirable for developers to be curious about other developers' setup.

I agree Chrome has never made lots of tabs easy. Since I'm usually signing into multiple accounts, I have several windows open anyway, so don't feel the pain as much as I used to.

I find this point and the XHR annoyance not enough to sway me though. Devtools keeps getting insanely more powerful to the point where front-ends will probably be using it as a proper IDE in a couple of years.

dfc• 13 years ago

I think ridicule may have been a little bit of hyperbole. If he genuinely felt ridiculed and uncomfortable I doubt he would be writing about it on his blog.

I think it would be bizarre to work in an environment where people did not joke about each other's "questionable" technology choices. The vim guy catches flak in the emacs shop. The debian guy (me) catches flak from his OSX friends asking if I recompiled my kernel for the 10th time in order to get my "flaky" free video driver to work. When I do habitat for humanity work I hear guys teasing someone for still using a miter box or for using the kickback guard on a table saw. I think a certain amount of teasing is healthy and natural among friendly coworkers.

Sidenote: I've been a FF user since it was firebird and I don't expect that to change.

drivebyacct2• 13 years ago

>possibly with better privacy

Can you elaborate?

firefoxman1• 13 years ago

This could be what he's referring to https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/01/28/privacy-day-2013/

It could also just be overall common sense: a nonprofit vs a company built on data. Who would you expect to care more about keeping your data yours?

jmillikin2• 13 years ago

Chrome comes bundled with Flash and a proprietary PDF renderer; proprietary plugins, especially Flash, have historically been a rich source of privacy and security problems.

The fully open-source build of Chrome (called Chromium) avoids that problem but is more difficult to install on some platforms.

mediumdeviation• 13 years ago

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.

ibotty• 13 years ago

there is conceptionally no support for functionality akin to noscript (as in the firefox addon, not the chromium plugin with less functionality), request policy, etc. even adblock works better in firefox.

allowing these plugins is a decision that also has drawbacks. the browser will need to support synchronous callbacks (i.e. to possibly block http requests). these can block the browser, something chromium plugins cannot do (at least so easily).

sghill• 13 years ago

I would have described my work the same way, even if that's taking a bit of poetic license. I started developing in Aurora about six months ago to try out some of the new dev tools. The question of why is a surprisingly regular conversation with anyone who notices, starting anywhere from "Why don't you use Chrome" to "What the hell are you using this for?"

wololo_• 13 years ago

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

tn132• 13 years ago

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.

adamors2• 13 years ago

> Chrome developer tools don't even come close.

Now that is just silly.

tn132• 13 years ago

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.

smsm422• 13 years ago

I found it pretty easy to switch from Firebug to chrome devtools. They were behind for some time but now I hardly can imagine a case where Chrome devtools did not work for me the same way as Firebug.

msprague• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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

jlogsdon2• 13 years ago

I think he might be using the swipe to change workspaces, not tabs.

davezatch• 13 years ago

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.

chris_wot2• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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.

peterjmag• 13 years ago

It's a bit ironic: I moved away from Firefox about four years ago because of its memory usage, and now I'm considering switching back from Chrome for pretty much the same reason.

chr1• 13 years ago

For 1 there are many extensions like InstantFox or Omnibar

mikeratcliffe• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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

linuxhansl• 13 years ago

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.

kps• 13 years ago

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.

ninetax• 13 years ago

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?

MetaCosm• 13 years ago

I researched it briefly, at that time it was not possible.

There are lots of attempts to be "good enough" at tab management to make surviving without tree tabs possible. Some of them come close, most don't. At the end of the day, I changed my workflow to work with Chrome, rather than vice-versa because I found Chrome's responsiveness more valuable than Firefox's plugins.

smsm422• 13 years ago

Yes, firefox tabs are definitely way better. I am a tab addict too - right now I have open 20 of them, and that's only because it's night and I'm not working and done most of my daily reading and closed the extra ones. Usually it'd easily be 30+ of them. Firefox allows to manage them much better. I still use Chrome though because FF memory management is still - even with recent improvements gets out of hand pretty quickly (matter of days with my - admittedly heavy - usage). But their tab system is one thing which always tempts me to switch. It is way ahead of what Chrome can do.

dredmorbius2• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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?

Yhippa2• 13 years ago

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.

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.

jlogsdon2• 13 years ago

> 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...

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

Yhippa2• 13 years ago

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

TwoBit• 13 years ago

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

snogglethorpe• 13 years ago

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.

fishtoaster• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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.

aeth• 13 years ago

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.

copyninja• 13 years ago

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

davesims• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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.

surrealize• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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

aghull• 13 years ago

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.

Firefox, I Just Can't Quit You

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