Switch from Firefox to Chrome?

I've been a longtime Firefox user and have always been a big fan but lately I've had thoughts of switching to Chrome as my default browser.
Firefox's memory leaks and slowness at times makes Chrome a temping switch.
Are the majority of NBR members still using Firefox or now with Chrome?

Anyways, I was just wondering for some opinions as to whether or not I should make the transition. And also, I have a question about Chrome:

On Firefox, I have the Google Toolbar which allows me to AutoFill my name, address, etc on forms. But also in FF, I have autocomplete disabled. Autocomplete in this case is the dropdown selection you see on text fields such as the Search on the top right of this page. I tried to find a way to have this same setup on Chrome, but couldn't find it. Am I missing something?

Thanks

 

I sometimes use chrome, but mainly Firefox, since i like how it can be completely customized to my likings, unlike chrome which is quite limited.

 

I used FF for years, but I'm in the same boat as you. That and the flash performance on the mini 10V was like a slideshow. Chrome for me.

 

I'd love to switch to Chrome, but I can't until it has a fully functional AdBlock (as opposed to an AdHide, which is all Chrome allows at the moment). I'm not holding my breath on that considering Google live for ad revenue.

 

its a trade off, firefox provides the best add-ons
chrome has the best performance (probably due to more efficient programming thanks to the geniuses at google) and probably design/ergonomics

so, if you just get a separate ad block program .. then chrome is the better of the two (at least once more developers start making add-ons of comparable diversity and quality)

for now, it's ff all the way

 

There is already a fully functional adblock in chrome.

 

I found pretty much all of the addons that I needed in Chrome that I currently have in FF, including Adblock. It's just this one issue that's bothering me:

 

Chrome already has most of the add-ons available for Firefox.

 

Google Chrome is a branch off of the open source Chromium web browser.
How much do Google staff work on Chromium?

 

Once No-Script becomes available for Chrome, I might consider the switch.

 

There isn't. Chome's adblocks just hide the ads after the've loaded. Firefox's and Opera's actually prevent them from loading in the first place.

 

This. That's the only thing that's bothering me. I've reached 1.2-1.4 million K of memory usage before.

I use chrome instead. I will use firefox occasionally.

 

Chrome eats memory like no other program can. I've got roughly 12 tabs open, and I'm up to roughly 900 megs of RAM according to about:memory. Firefox may eat more memory with one tab, but Chrome is terrible with multiple tabs open and extensions running. With fully buffered flash videos, I've gone clear over the 1gb mark just for Chrome easily.

 

^Which from your user experience seems to slow down more? Firefox or Chrome?

 

I would definitely use chrome, but I can't just Ctrl + L into the address bar, tab through the search results, ENTER to open the page. It can't seem to tab through the search results at all.

 

Use both, use one at a time that is best called for the page your visiting and at some point if you decide one is better than the other and the other has no reason to be there anymore delete it or stop using it.

I use FF, I like its interface, its speed, and the addons.

Chrome feels out of place to me and I have no performance qualms with FF on any of my machines.

 

Chrome is snappier than Firefox regardless of the amount of memory it takes up. Chromium is faster but less stable (it's basically the bleeding edge of Chrome development).

Firefox itself doesn't usually crash, but if an extension goes down, the whole browser stutters. Chrome hasn't done that yet so far, but then again the extensions available don't do what I want (true AdBlock, tab customizations, image/video grabbers/downloaders, etc). My biggest problem has been packet loss combined with poorly written extensions. The whole browser will stop responding. So far Chrome hasn't done that, but my connection has been fixed since then.

Some Chrome-specific issues and annoyances:
-maximized Chrome windows can cover up the Windows 7 taskbar if it's set to autohide on the bottom so you can't mouse over to bring it up. You need to restore the firefox windows or press the windows key / ctrl-esc to bring up the start menu to show the taskbar again.
-You can't select multiple download or history items to delete at once. You can only manipulate one line item at a time.
-The search bar suggestions get mixed in with your history. It's not a cleanly split list. Everything gets intermixed. Firefox's search bar is much better for autocomplete purposes (odd, since Chrome is Google's project)
-Everything opens in a new tab - downloads, history, bookmarks, addons. I'd prefer separate windows so I can just alt-tab or move the popup onto my other monitor, but it's not an option.
-The right click menu is less featured.
-tabs can sometimes "run into" each other, especially with flash content running in the background and various popups like the download bar.
-why can't I bring back a standard menu or status bar? alt-f brings up the "file" menu, but i'd like to be able to have the toolbar stay there if I want to. Same with the status bar.
-Can't save security certificates for sites Chrome doesn't like.

Things I like about chrome:
-the frequently visited pages view when you bring up a new tab is really convenient.
-the search and address bar are integrated (if only they could improve the suggested search results)
-more developer/analytic tools that are easier to access without extensions (right click and inspect element)
-integrated sync capability
-the ability to easily reopen recent tabs


*edit*
oh yea, and stop crossing out the "https" for sites that don't have a verified security certificate (which the browser makes hard (maybe impossible?) to add)

 

it's these small things that make firefox all the more convenient

 

Ctrl+L highlights the text in the address bar in the newest version of chrome
You can tab through search result and enter to open the page as well.

 

But despite the 'convenience', I still use Chromium.
Granted, it's ablock only hides the ads and doesn't prevent them from actually loading, but they end up removed and I have a cleaner web-page as a result.
Furthermore, the memory leaks in FF are really annoying and the browser frequently stops for a second or two before it resumes (annoying if you are watching a video where it just stops every 30 seconds or so for 2 seconds, or even during writing).

Until FF fixes these issues, I really have no use for it.
Besides, Chromium works for me just fine (though I'd REALLY prefer actual prevention of loading ads instead of just hiding them).

 

hmm, after reading through the posts, i guess it's almost time to switch over to chromium.. maybe by version 6 and definitely by 7

i wonder what IE is doing, .. it's like they want to lose market share

 

That's one of the biggest annoyances for me. Once I have a lot of tabs open for a while, it starts having freeze ups every 30 seconds or so.

 

IE is still there with the most market share.

 

So I came across a solution to this process, and it's hardly intuitive, heh. Basically you have to go to: Wrench icon>Options>Under the Hood>Change Proxy Settings>Content>AutoComplete Settings>Check/Uncheck things to your liking>"Ok" out of everything.

Apparently this works, though why on earth it's in such an obscure place I will never know.

 

That's only for the proxy settings. That is the Internet Options and they only apply for IE. If you go to the General tab, you will see that the homepage is not the same as Chrome...

still trying to figure out a way to disable AutoComplete and keep AutoFill like in firefox...

 

SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)

 

Ert. Stupid me. Was all-but-asleep when I posted that. Better/hopefully real solution (2 parts):
- Wrench>Options>Personal Stuff>Check "Disable Autofill"
- Wrench>Options>Under the Hood>Un-check "Use a suggestion service..."

Then clear out your Cache with Chrome or CCleaner. Assuming that the settings are working like they should, I believe that will prevent Chrome from saving any new Autofill data.

 

I use chrome nightly build for daily browsing. Minefield[Firefox nightly build] is used when i'm developing applications. Both browsers get 100% on acid3 [which is what you should care about]... They both win at some points of javascript speed and lose at others.

I use chrome because it feels cleaner to me, because updates don't take forever to install, and because I write all my web applications targeting it...

It should be noted that Chrome is a memory hog too, since a process is forked off when you create a new tab, but you won't be launching a new process when a website opens a new window...

Last time I checked, chrome supports webworkers while firefox supports JS 1.8...

 

I actually find in-terms of actual page load times, Firefox loads at the same speed, and sometimes even faster than Chrome, I think it's because Chrome has to load all those image and flash based ads in the background - even with its ad"blocker" / adhider. However, I really do like Chrome's snappy open and close times and clean interface.

 

Chrome just feels that bit too basic for my liking. I particularly like Firefox with ad block plus although I would actually use Opera if the blackboard and my universities website in general supported it better.

 

I tried that too but it disables the ability for me to fill in forms. I only want it to fill in forms not every text field. For example, if I need to fill out a survey (name, address, etc.), then I'd like to have it automatically fill it in. But what I don't want is the drop down list of previously typed in queries that show up on all text fields and search boxes. Is this possible?

 

Another annoyance that recent popped up - Chrome doesn't do java very well, popups (like a calendar month) span the full range of the window (per day) instead of sizing appropriately.

 

Some rare displays in webpages when Chromium is concerned is a bit of an issue because it ends up showing only half (or less) of the webpage with no scroll bars to see the rest.

Granted in only happens on rare websites, but it's an issue which I hope will be solved soon.

Other than that, I'm enjoying Chromium.
I update to a newest version once per month.
I also found that it's much better to uninstall the previous version entirely (and save your bookmarks) before putting a new one.
Just installing over the old one didn't produce nice results for me.

Oh and AdBlock in Chromium/Chrome now actually blocks ads instead of simply hiding them.

 

Well, this is a bit of a sideways approach to your problem, but have you heard of LastPass? It's an extension for all the major browsers that functions as a password/form filler. The nice bit about it is that you only need to remember one password rather than a whole bunch. It'll auto-detect password fields and offer to fill them in, or fill them in automatically. This behavior extends to forms as well.
For example, I have two main forms that I use. One for my personal account info and one for a Spam e-mail account that I have set up. Whenever I visit a site that has a form on it, a bar will appear along the top of the screen asking which form I want to use. In other words, it does everything you'd expect a full-featured form filler to do. And the database your passwords/saved forms are in is encrypted.

Would that be closer to what you had in mind?

 

do you have a link to this?

 

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom

 

AdBlock 2.0.9 still isn't blocking, just hiding. Check out the videos on wimp.com - some still load (a whitebox flickers up and the videos are off center), others get blocked (video centered, no flicker)

 

Just a little tip: In Firefox, Chome, and even Internet Explorer, pressing F6 offers the same functionality as Ctrl + L.

 

thanks, interesting to see that safari has full blocking functionality like firefox now.

 

This is more along the lines of what I was looking for because it would allow me to disable AutoFill but still have a form filler. I just wish I could do it all without downloading a 3rd party extension but I'll keep that in mind if I decide to switch to Chrome.
I'm hoping that FF4 will be a good improvement.

Thanks

 

ditto here.

 

I have no use for no-script myself.
Half the web-pages I go to end up being broken if I try to use it because they depend on scripts to run.

Adblock is perfectly adequate for my needs.

 

I actually switched from chrome to Firefox. At first I was an internet explorer person that switched to chrome. I always wanted to switch to Firefox and try it out but I kept hearing people say negative comments on Firefox, one of them being its too slow. Now that I tried it, I think that Firefox and Chrome are about the same.

 

I went from IE to Chrome (instead of FF) a while back, because at the time my touchpad wouldn't scroll with FF. Haven't tried recently, though.

 

I am 16. I went from Internet Explorer since Windows 95 to about 2003 when I switched to Firefox till 2009 then I switched to Chrome for a couple months but was unsatisfied so I switched to Opera and am loving it.

The only thing that Firefox has over all other browsers is the huge selection of extensions. Besides that, it's about average or below average in the other categories of speed, security, stability, and system resource usage.

Chrome was fast, but that's about it. The shortcuts are terribly thought out, the extensions were good but there weren't many of them, and it crashed for me a couple of times. It's flash performance and UI is great, however.

Opera is simply the best in my opinion. The UI is simple and very well thought out, the shortcuts are so easy to use and work with, it has features that other browsers don't (I can automatically log in with my saved passwords into forums and stuff by just pressing Alt + Enter), and it's stable and doesn't consume that much resources. It also has a built in torrent and irc client, however I have those disabled to save memory because I never use them. The only thing that I really don't like about Opera is it's flash performance.

Opera as my main browser, Chrome as my backup browser.

 

Yeah, that thing is just more annoying than anything else, I found.

I'm personally on Firefox. I've been on Firefox since 2004, and don't really have any intention of moving to something else. I have Chrome installed as well, just to see what all the fuss was about, and it's nice enough but it's wayyyy too fancy I think. Firefox "just works". I don't really have too many memory leak issues with it and it just works the way I want it to work. I had a really hard time (even with a few extensions I use) getting along with Chrome, it just didn't feel right. Maybe I'm a stick-in-the-mud, but after sticking with Firefox since the initial release it's not enough to make me switch.

I also have Opera installed on one of my other PC's and set to the default browser, I'd sooner switch to it before Chrome. The latest version of Opera is really, really nice....

 

I have chrome as my third browser replacing Opera which became just too unstable in the latest version. Main Flaw for me is no Yahoo toolbar. ie8 and FF are one and two. Latest FF 3.6.4 is improved. Previous version was a bit unstable. ie7 was a disaster for me so I switched to FF two years ago. ie8 came installed and worked fine with my new unit purchased in December, cyber monday.

 

Try the latest Chromium. http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/continuous/LATEST/mini_installer.exe
nb: it is not the same as Chrome.

 

I use Iron , just don't trust google . Iron does what Chrome does , without google sniffing everything I do . SRWare Iron - The Browser of the Future

 

Chroimum is what I personally use.

Chrome is based on Chromium anyway, but without google's sniffing around (although for the most part, Google supposedly eliminated that bid).