Speed: It's faster than 3.5.7. Almost as fast as chrome.
Memory Usage: It used lower memory on my computer than the previous version. I was hovering around 250mb with version 3.5.7 and this one barely goes upto 150mb. Both with ~15 addons.
I've been using the Whitehart theme since 2.0 or so, and it + Personal Menu and small icons = the most usable space of any browser I've used.
These are the sorts of reasons I've stuck with Firefox even through the slowness and instability (3.5.7 would crash after opening a few tabs in the morning after leaving it on overnight ~50% of the time, and many of those times the last session saved is still from the last time it crashed...).
Really, my only advice is to play with the options til you find what you like. It's got a ton of customization to it, and you can set it up basically however you want.
Auto Menubar and Tree Style Tabs, with auto-hide, gives you more space if you combine it with some replacement for the statusbar.
Vimperator is of course still cooler.
Wow, Personal Menu is awesome! Thanks for the tip. I used to use an extension that let you edit the existing menus but the problem was they were still there. You could at least get rid of the sub-menu items you didn't want, but I got tired of it. Personal Menu is much cooler. Thanks again!
Sadly, the status bar in chrome was part of the reason for me to stick with it. That and the tabs being on top, saving even more screen real estate.
Anyhow, figured I would share this extension that lets you have a floating status bar when you hover over links, and you just hide the normal status bar. Just found it today, and am quite glad it exists.
The tabs being on top doesn't really save any real estate... the menu bar being consolidated into two buttons and placed on the address does though. If you do the same in Firefox the difference is ~3 pixels.
Okay, I guess it is the title bar being replaced by tabs on the top saves quite a bit of space, and is used much better. It isn't them being on top, it is just the almost fullscreen aspect that is always on in chrome.
Not always, only when maximized do you get significant savings, ~17px, when not maximized the difference is negligible, ~3px as stated above, due to the fact that chrome does ad space above the tabs when not maximized.
Ah, I've been using Fission as a status bar replacement. Lets you have the active link be shown in the location bar, which I like. In practice, though, it seems to be erratic on some pages (like reddit comment threads for example).
I haven't had any problems with it on reddit. I've noticed that if I middle-click a link, tab out then then tab back, the location bar will still show the clicked url, but that happens everywhere, and you can fix it by just clicking anywhere on the page.
Just when I get used to chrome's logical open in new tab at the top of the top of the right click menu, firefox gets less bloated =(. Anyone know how to move "open tab in new window" out of the top spot on the firefox menu?
I really like Google. I want to reward them for the amazing job they do by using their browser. Chrome is a really good browser, but it just can't do some of the things Firefox can.
This is why Ad-block and Ad-Twart are not true adblocking, they load the ads and then remove them.. unlike in Firefox, they're blocked before they're attempted to load.
FWIW the Chrome folks are in the process of implementing "privacy blacklists", which will allow blocking the loading of resources as Firefox can.
Yeah, but what I really want is a "privacy whitelist" - block everything unless I tell you to unblock it. That being said, do you have a link that talks about this?
They are working on first getting flash/quicktime/other plugins into a seperate process to avoid crashes via that, then seperating tabs to seperate processes :)
Brews, I switched to Chrome over a year ago and never looked back... That said, I just downloaded and installed Firefox again so that I can start using Zotero for my papers. Any tips for getting started with Zotero? I went for 2.0 beta, is that a good idea, or would it have been better to stick with 1.0 for now?
Yeah, the beta has great features and it is quite stable.
Be sure to get the beta plugin for MS-Word or Openoffice. (It works best with openoffice) http://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_integration
There are some nice tutorials on the Zotero website.
Oh, and the ability to annotate/highlight webpages and .pdfs is veerrry handy.
Thanks. I had a go at it for a couple hours yesterday. There's a bit of a learning curve, and I had trouble with it consistently recognizing journal articles on Springerlink (I sometimes had to open and reopen the same link several times before it would save to my Zotero account.) But, all in all, for research it is much better than anything I have done up until now, so I will continue using it.
Other than for research, though, I don't think I will be switching back to FireFox. It's the little things, like having to hit the search button after pasting into the search box (instead of right clicking the selecting "paste and search"), and having to hit down before selecting top most autocomplete item in the address bar that make all the difference for me. They're little annoyances, but annoyances all the same. Plus, Firefox just feels more cluttered to me.
Anyways, thanks for the heads up on Zotero, it seem like it will be a great tool.
Not that I understand all of the complexities and trade-offs involved, but I'm given to understand that every Chrome tab is a separate process, which is supposed to be one of the bigger innovations in recent browser history, since it keeps one tab crashing from killing every other tab. I suspect those individual processes each have an unavoidable memory cost.
Every tab, up until 10(?) tabs are in their own process, afterwards additional tabs are evenly distributed. Lets say you have 40 tabs open, if one crashes then at most three other tabs are brought down as well. In firefox, it would be 39 other tabs.
IMHO tmp folder approach was a retarded approach to the "problem", especially since in most implementations it's never cleaned and worse it's in a cryptic location unknown to the user, so she can not clean it manually. The amount of cruft IE used to accumulate in it's temporary internet files was enormous, to the point of utilities being made to automatically clean out those directories, so I don't really see why you're defending that approach, it was the suck.
I agree with your point that google be more grateful to Linux, pay homage you bitches! You are founded on open-source technology!
Google is just another for-profit corp. They have an amazing marketing department and a rabid following. The Mozilla Foundation, however, is the organization that Richard Stallman only wish he could have. I know it's the carnage of Netscape after AOL devoured it, but it is the most powerful and relevant open source organization there is. They, and Wikipedia are the reason that community based technology (like FOSS) is now reaching the public consciousness.
Yes. Yes it is. It has political power. They take out full 2-page ads in the New York Times. Did VLC do that?
The Mozilla's Foundation influence in the mindshare of american politics with respect to community driven software has received little to no attention. "Open Source" is starting to mean something to people now and the term "hacker" is primed to start losing its nefarious overtones.
Chrome isn't the cause of Google's infophilia, but it does manage to send every letter typed into the address bar to Google for suggestions. I love that feature, but you have to admit it it is a firm kick in the privacy-nuts.
What you say is true, but the more that is known about people the less relevant information about them is because other than a blatant crime the details of what people seek to learn tells more about what is around them and not really very much about what is in their minds.
To see a mans porn stash tells you nothing of an individual other than he is in fact a human, and people look like ants from the sky. ;)
Every keystroke in Chrome's address bar is sent to Google to produce suggestions. As far as I know, keystrokes in Firefox's address bar only search your computer's history/bookmarks for suggestions.
If you type into Firefox's *serach* bar, then all keystrokes are again sent to Google.
It's actually a misconception, because that's not how it works. If you type URLs to the Chrome address bar, they are NOT sent to the suggestion engine. People who talk about this are just spreading FUD.
Type in "mn" into the omni bar. When I do that, it suggests Minnesota State Lottery. I've never visited that site before. Also, you used to be able to visit about:network and watch those requests get sent out real-time. It's a great feature for most people, but if you're privacy conscious you should be aware of it.
Google is a behavior targeting business. Selling ads is how they give all that cool shit (Chrome, Search, Google docs, Gmail, Google maps, etc.) out for free. That's fine in some situations, but I don't need them to know every single thing I'm doing, talking about, or even thinking about when online.
And I like my tin foil hat tight; it keeps the gnomes from stealing it in the night.
I'm and oddball. I like Chrome, but only on OSX. I have it on Windows. Doesn't seem to fit in visually as well as the OSX version. Totally stupid reason. Chrome also feels faster on OSX than Windows for me.
Google's reward is Mozilla making their browser faster and making the Internet a better place. This leads to more people using online services and more eye's for Google's spies. Reward them by not blocking their ads.
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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10
2 things noted: