Future for Firefox browser looks grim....

[cinchez]

As long as Firefox exists in the present, no wonder it will continue to exist in the future^^

The developers are just thinking few nasty ideas^^ nasty good ideas!

If it comes to worst, I would resort to Chrome or Opera..depending on the situation..

-AnimeLover^^

[Chris Thomas]

@ Omid Farhang

You should try Minefield not the normal Firefox

Firefox 3.6 is nothing compared with Minefield....

Anyway,

I use Google Chrome as a default in my current PC

[bob3160]

The only reason I still have Firefox and IE 8 handy are for the few instances that Chrome may not be able to handle
a website.
Outside of those few instances,



Chrome is all I really need.   

[carbonize]

Chrome cons:
1 - No black/white listing of cookies
2 - No option to open a file instead of just downloading it
3 - Extensions use a lot of memory and each gets treated as a separate tab. Yes I know that's for stability but it soon fills up your task manager.
4 - Extension settings are stored in the cache so if you clear your private data you also lose your extension settings
5 - Uses more memory than Firefox if you just have default installation and the same tabs/pages open
6 - It actually gets installed in your profile directory and not in the program files directory.
7 - No option to set the maximum cache size

Some of the above may exist and I just missed them.

Anyway Firefox is showing a lot of promise for version 4 and we also have Opera working on 10.5 which comes complete with both a new version of their Presto rendering engine with HTML 5/CSS 3 support and a totally new JavaScript engine. I also notice both are moving towards having tabs at the top like Chromium/Chromium use and Safari used in a beta of 4.

[Hermite15]

Extension settings are stored in the cache so if you clear your private data you also lose your extension settings

yeah I saw that, and that's really bad   losing all my ad-blocking settings for instance every time I clear the cache...also getting welcome messages as if I just installed an extension, when it's been there for a while...this is completely nuts.

No option to open a file instead of just downloading it

no big deal...and Firefox doesn't always offer this, this depends on the site you get the file from. You can still, like in FF, run it once it's downloaded from Chrome's interface or open the folder where it's located, always from the Chrome interface.

[carbonize]

Yes but with both Firefox and IE if you tell them to open the file a copy is downloaded to the browsers cache and ran/opened from there. As I have both browsers set up to empty their cache's on closing (something else Chrome does not offer) the file gets removed rather than me having to go and manually delete it.

Mozilla is working on a new way of doing extensions they have called JetPack. I don't know much about it but I am hoping it fixes some of my niggles with the current method. Would be nice if when I uninstalled an extension it also removed all database entries the browser had created.

I have seen people complain about how often Firefox is updated despite the fact the only time a minor update is released is to patch a security or stability issue. This is nothing compared to how often Google releases a Chrome beta. At one point they had betas out for both Chrome 3 and Chrome 4. In fact the whole Chrome versioning system makes little sense. To me it should still be on version 1 with possibly the new version 4's being Chrome 2 since they offer extension and skinning which is a major change.

I'm personally waiting to see what Opera 10.5 and Firefox 4 have to offer.

[Hermite15]

Yes but with both Firefox and IE if you tell them to open the file a copy is downloaded to the browsers cache and ran/opened from there.

I know, but as I said you don't always have this option, even in Firefox.

I have seen people complain about how often Firefox is updated despite the fact the only time a minor update is released is to patch a security or stability issue. This is nothing compared to how often Google releases a Chrome beta. At one point they had betas out for both Chrome 3 and Chrome 4. In fact the whole Chrome versioning system makes little sense. To me it should still be on version 1 with possibly the new version 4's being Chrome 2 since they offer extension and skinning which is a major change.

I heard about this change with extensions in FF, just didn't know what sort of change exactly...as to the Chrome versioning...lol I agree, be on V4 already is completely ridiculous. It is a 1.0... version definitely. I guess they do that with the high number versions to differentiate between the regular version, stable, the beta and and the dev versions. Also to promote the software 

[carbonize]

If the file is meant to be downloaded then yes I always have the option to open it.

Hmm Firefox 4 is pencilled in for a late 2010 release but rumour mill reckons it's more likely to be 2011.

[Hermite15]

If the file is meant to be downloaded then yes I always have the option to open it.

Hmm Firefox 4 is pencilled in for a late 2010 release but rumour mill reckons it's more likely to be 2011.

well I don't always have this option, nevermind... anyway I don't know about Firefox future. Even if Chrome has all the issues that we mentioned it still has the speed parameter...that's the biggest source of danger for Firefox.

[carbonize]

The current trend for switching to Chrome reminds me a lot of how people jump on Apple products. Apple products are very well presented, look good, have pretty graphics and a good user interface but it's all smoke and mirrors to cover, what I feel, to be inferior products. The same applies to Chrome. It looks good and has lots of eye candy like how new tabs slide in to existence (the actual tab that is) and how the thumbnails slide to the text version in the new tab screen. It also had all the wonderful sales pitch about having a faster JavaScript engine, everything being run separate so a crash will not crash the whole browser. But all this is also smoke and mirrors. Another way that Chrome reminds me of the first iPhone was that whilst it had all this power it didn't have the basic features that products of that nature should have. With the iPhone it lacked sending MMS messages, sending SMS to multiple contacts and other basics most phones have. With Chrome it is missing basic browser features such as black/white listing cookie domains, setting a cache size and so on.

I'm not sure but does Chrome silently update it's self like other Google products? That has always been something that put me off Google products. I want to be informed there is a new version and given the option of updating and not just have the program quietly update it's self with no notification at all.

Anyway I say try all browsers for about a week each then pick the one you feel most comfortable with. You have so many to chose from now it's mad. Firefox, Chrome, Opera, IE, SeaMonkey, Safari, Flock, Chromium, Iron, K-Meleon, QT-Web Avant, Maxthon, and more.

[Hermite15]

it's not all smoke... speed is there, last time I'll mention that in this thread  

[carbonize]

When it comes to actually displaying the page I have requested I can't say I see much difference between the browsers. Possibly the joys of being on a 20 meg connection.

[spg SCOTT]

There is also speed in loading, which (I think) is part of what Logos meant...

I think Chrome will either come close to or surpass the others...it seems that with every new update there is something new...

Another (slightly OT) thing is the users of the portable browsers. Currently there is Fx and Chrome (that I remember), and with Fx being slower on a flash drive it can be quite bad, but Chrome would be better.

[Hermite15]

There is also speed in loading, which (I think) is part of what Logos meant...

yes exactly I meant both, application loading and web pages loading, it's just amazing.

[Chris Thomas]

Another point worth remembering is this

Google has a lots of dollars and other resources both direct and indirect for the development of Chrome compared with Firefox

They can get anything they want to