Why I ditched Firefox and chose Chrome!
I used to love Firefox. I loved the browser’s innovative features. I was even a member of the Spread Firefox community and promoted usage of Firefox among my friends and family. But over the last one year the browser has changed from good to bad. It has changed from one of the most loved browsers to being one of the most hated ones, next only to the universally hated IE.
Whenever I used Firefox, it didn’t take more than 15-20 minutes for the CPU usage to peak, eventually hanging the browser, making me reload the page again. Believe me, with painfully slow internet connections its an awful experience. Gradually the browser began to consume more and more memory and became slower and slower. About a year ago I didn’t have much of a choice other than venting out my feelings, because Chrome was at its infant stages and I surely didn’t want to return to IE.
After a few months, Chrome came along as a light, super-fast and powerful browser with all its extensions and features. The choice was simple. Here are some reasons why I chose Chrome-
Startup time – Chrome is much much faster wrt to the startup time. While it takes about 7-8 seconds on Firefox, its just a fraction of the time on Chrome. Its blazing fast.
Each Tab is a different Process – Some sites contain a lot of JavaScript, CSS and AJAX. In Firefox, when such sites open, it freezes all the other tabs. For a user like me who has lots of tabs open simulatneously it could be really troublesome. Chrome resolves this making making each tab run as a separate process. This ensures that one tab doesn’t hang the others. Chrome even has its own Task Manager which you can access by Shift+Esc. Also see some stats by typing about:memory on the Omnibox.
Clean and Simple with the Omnibox – The Address bar at the top often called as the Omnibox doubles up as a search box. This conserves much real estate and makes the browser look cooler and convenient.
No Status Bar – Until Chrome, I had been used to the status bar. But just by it not being present in Chrome I realized that it was just an useless addition which I never really needed. This too conserves much real estate.
Application shortcuts – Google Chrome enables me to create shortcuts for most of my frequently used web applications. This too helped me in conserving precious loading time.
I have been using Firefox for so long that I won’t hate it. My loyalties might have changed but I still have feelings and the desire to use Firefox. I would love to see some overhauls and expect the browser to bounce back. I’d be willing to shift to Firefox if they are able to attract me with powerful features.
PS : I’ve just started using Firefox 4 beta 3. I’m yet to reach my conclusion of the latest version. Hoping that it turns out to be good.
Tags: Browsers, Chrome, Firefox, Firefox 4 beta, Google, Google Chrome, Internet, Internet Browser, Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox
Internet, My Virtual Life | Alagappan | 
August 16, 2010 10:52 PM | 
Comments (4)
Though presently Chrome cannot match the number of Add-on’s which Firefox has, I guess it eventually will, since a large number of useful extensions are becoming available for Google Chrome everyday. He is my list of interesting and useful extensions.
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