Does no one else think the impressive statistic here is that for every 2.5 new Firefox users there's a new Chrome user; considering how young Chrome is (and how old Firefox is)?
It's more established and widespread, thus easier to get converts. But at the same time, it could be argued that it's been around so long that most of the people who would have switched already have. So I think it's still an impressive statistic. But, yeah, in isolation it could be spun several different ways.
firefox has seen adoption on a wide scale that a lot of people were skeptical was even possible, at the best a lot of people thought it platued long ago. Chrome came along after firefox proved that market for them, and with major major backing, I see adverts for chrome everywhere online.
I think chrome is probably the better browser for the average web surfer, but I think its sad how out of favour firefox has become considering 1. their contributions 2. the awesome stuff they have in labs and 3. how great their browser still actually is, their competition have stepped up, but firefox arent out of the game by a long way.
In the comments to the post before this one, the blog author points out that at the same "age" Firefox had nearly double the marketshare (7% compared with 12%). And that was against an entrenched monopoly and without spending millions on billboard advertising. So while the Chrome project is cool technology, it's not particularly impressive in terms of uptake.
In fact, if Google wanted Chrome to be all about marketshare, then they could have saved a lot of time and effort and just put out a much more traditional browser. Instead they ripped all the infrastructure down and built it back up again from scratch over time, while thinking about speed, stability and security in order to direct the future of the web. That's mighty impressive to me, I just don't know if it translates to success with the average man in the street.
This is still great news. Chrome, Firefox - I don't care what my user uses as long as it isn't IE6. IE8 is not so bad to deal with, less the loss of many HTML5/CSS3 features but that's the benefit the Firefox/Chrome users get ;-)
Yeah I wondered this too. I use to use FF as my main browser but switched to Chrome. I still have/use FF for testing and to use certain plug-ins but Chrome is my main ride now. Would be nice I it came out for ipad/iPhone sometime.
The only problem I find with chrome is that it doesn't work with every website. Particularly complicated ones that require a lot of steps such as payment, which you don't want to repeat if the site breaks on chrome. I recently got a 3.2Ghz cpu so I can put up with firefox for now.
Also chrome has been getting slightly slower than its initial releases. I hope it won't slow down further.
I use chrome because it's fast, and the multi-process browsing is a game changer. I would much rather have to restart a tab than restart a browser. Graceful crash handling is important.
I use Firefox because of six reasons: Firebug, Grease Monkey, NoScript, Flashblock, Sage, and Chatzilla.
Other reasons include; Colorzilla, BugMeNot, YSlow and Pencil.
Nothing comes close to the Firefox Add-On market. I can do everything within Firefox. I think FF is the #1 reason I no longer download shareware or bother with building open source software. If there is a firefox plugin for it, I don't bother with the standalone app.
In my opinion, Chrome's developer tools are much better than firebug. Grease Monkey functionality is built in and GM scripts are usable. No-script functionality is built in. Flashblock exists for chrome, too. No idea what Sage and Chatzilla are, but perhaps equivalents exist?
Then again, it seems like your mind is already made up...
Chrome's developer tools are still lacking in some areas.
I'm a backend dev responsible for maintaining an API used primarily by a flash client. When something goes wrong, Firebug's net tab let's me quickly see what calls were made, what was sent and what whas received, which tells me if the problem is in the client or on the server, and gives clues as to what might be wrong. Chrome's dev tools (last I looked) are incapable of monitoring net activity from plugins, rendering it msotly useless for me.
I would definitely agree with both posts leading up to this one. If you're looking for a very fast, stable browser, Chrome is great (and so is Opera). If you're looking for something full-featured and with an amazing number of add-ons, Firefox is a good choice. I use all three on the average day.
The existence of different browsers competing by excelling in different areas is, IMO, a very good thing.
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[ 3093 ms ] story [ 2507 ms ] threadI think chrome is probably the better browser for the average web surfer, but I think its sad how out of favour firefox has become considering 1. their contributions 2. the awesome stuff they have in labs and 3. how great their browser still actually is, their competition have stepped up, but firefox arent out of the game by a long way.
In fact, if Google wanted Chrome to be all about marketshare, then they could have saved a lot of time and effort and just put out a much more traditional browser. Instead they ripped all the infrastructure down and built it back up again from scratch over time, while thinking about speed, stability and security in order to direct the future of the web. That's mighty impressive to me, I just don't know if it translates to success with the average man in the street.
Also chrome has been getting slightly slower than its initial releases. I hope it won't slow down further.
Other reasons include; Colorzilla, BugMeNot, YSlow and Pencil.
Nothing comes close to the Firefox Add-On market. I can do everything within Firefox. I think FF is the #1 reason I no longer download shareware or bother with building open source software. If there is a firefox plugin for it, I don't bother with the standalone app.
Then again, it seems like your mind is already made up...
I'm a backend dev responsible for maintaining an API used primarily by a flash client. When something goes wrong, Firebug's net tab let's me quickly see what calls were made, what was sent and what whas received, which tells me if the problem is in the client or on the server, and gives clues as to what might be wrong. Chrome's dev tools (last I looked) are incapable of monitoring net activity from plugins, rendering it msotly useless for me.
The existence of different browsers competing by excelling in different areas is, IMO, a very good thing.