[corford]

The latest FF builds have been rock solid for me (Win7 x64 with 4 or 5 big name extensions and that's it).

I've currently got about 130 tabs open, FF is using ~ 1.1GB of RAM and has been sitting open & running in this state for 3 or 4 weeks with no problems or slow downs whatsoever. The plugin container also finally works reliably so shitty sites with buggy flash code don't take the browser down when flash decides to blow up. FF's PDF implementation has also gotten better and it's now rare (as in I can't remember the last time) that I need to jump out to Acrobat reader to get a properly rendered view of a PDF.

FF starts faster than Chrome, font rendering is a lot better and it seems most of the "weird" HTML issues I encounter these days doing webdev stuff are with Chrome rather than FF.

I don't understand why Firefox isn't crushing Chrome.

Edit: Latest FF mobile on Android is awesome too.

[JoshMnem]

Google has advertisements for Chrome on their search page -- that's why they have a large market share. They also spread a lot of propaganda about Chrome's being faster.

In reality, Chrome is intentionally designed to slow users down by sending them to Google search results instead of directly to the destination URLs. People then click on the camouflaged AdSense.

Firefox is now faster than Chrome in independent tests, and it doesn't use up as much memory. Firefox is a much better browser in many ways.

Mozilla's big mistake is that they aren't reaching out enough to developers. It's developers who set the trends. Example: I started a Firefox developers group in the Bay Area, and no one from Mozilla replied to my messages about their helping out, even if nothing more than offering us occasional meetup space.

[kibwen]

The SF office has a street-level room set aside for use as a community space, theoretically it shouldn't be too hard to convince them to let you use it. I know this because I intend to use it for various Rust-relates purposes for the next month or so. :)

[JoshMnem]

Thanks for the info. I got too busy and stepped down from the Meetup group. I encouraged Mozilla to take over as organizer, but they didn't. I hope that someone else will start one up.

[cookiecaper]

Google has put a lot of time and money into getting Chrome mainstreamed. IE Tab was a big help for enterprise adoption and that made more normal people accept it as a "normal" browser. Most people use Gmail, Google Search, and YouTube, all of which heavily promote Chrome.

Firefox has responded well to Chrome for the most part, but when Chrome was released, Fx had some long-standing problems that Chrome obviated, and many in the tech community have been Chrome devotees since. Mozilla sometimes gets confused and makes bad choices, like manually reviewing all code that gets published in its addon store and refusing to ship patent-encumbered H.264 codecs, that further hurt adoption and reinforce the reputation that Firefox makes it "harder" than necessary to use the web.

Google made a deal with Adobe to fix up some of the stability and performance issues in Flash and they ship the improved plugin as "Pepper", part of Chrome; Mozilla still doesn't have a good solution for this, though it has a small start in Shumway.

Google built an internal PDF reader so that people didn't have to worry about Adobe Reader popping up as they clicked around. Mozilla eventually copied them, though Mozilla's reader is written in JS, and Chrome's is written in C++.

Google systematically attacked the most annoying things about internet browsing and dispatched of them effectively in Chrome, didn't make excuses about how the bad experience was Adobe's fault. Mozilla is less effective because it's usually too busy with infighting over what technically counts as "open" and what doesn't to get the real work done, or at least to get it done before Google has already shipped the change to their users.

I used Chrome for about 18 months full-time but have been back on Fx since version 4, so I'm not a Chrome apologist, but these are the reasons why Firefox isn't crushing Chrome.

[Mahn]

> Mozilla sometimes gets confused and makes bad choices, like manually reviewing all code that gets published in its addon store

To be fair, extension malware runs rampant in Google Chrome, so it wasn't necessarily a bad idea per se. Just perhaps not a great execution.

[dankohn1]

Could you please give some examples of extension malware running rampant?

[corford]

Insightful points, thanks! I guess from all of that, the optimist in me only sees "Most people use Gmail, Google Search, and YouTube, all of which heavily promote Chrome." as an on-going threat.

On every other front FF is either at parity, will be shortly or already better. Plus Mozilla has the privacy card, which at least for me, means something. So... I'm calling it! This is the bottom and FF's fight back starts now :)

[Mahn]

Chrome has just too much momentum. Firefox has to be significantly better at this point to be noticed again, and right now it's somewhere between "just as good" and "marginally better".

[lobster_johnson]

I'm a Mac user, and FF still stands out as not being very Mac-like. The big tabs look like something from Windows (not sure if third-party themes can improve this), the preferences look like something from an early version of OS X, etc.

I have considered switching since Safari has its share of problems, and extension support is lackluster/limited, but the main blocker for me is the location bar having a separate search field. Safari's single "omnibar" is just too good. It provides real-time search results from Google, bookmarks and history, and it's eerily exact. When you do a search, the search phrase stays in the location bar instead of giving me an unreadable Google search URL.

[greendestiny]

I used to use Firefox, so when I saw some hype around its tab collection stuff the other week I downloaded it and gave it another try. It was slow and paused the whole interface regularly for a second or two. I can't say I used it exactly like I use Chrome, but there wasn't much point using it if I can't use the tab collection stuff properly. Just another anecdote, this one from an outdated Macbook Air.