I have been a hardcore supporter of Firefox since it was officially release about 5 years ago. I have been using Firefox since 1.0 and every iteration even occasionally stepping off into the beta versions of the product. It used to be a super speedy beast and loaded everything quickly and beautifully. However, version after version Firefox has gained new great features with plugins, faster javascript, etc. I think it’s finally hit its wall. For a while I used Firefox 3.5 with a few occasional crashes on OS X. Finally Firefox 3.6 came out, I welcomed it with open arms with the idea that since its a small point release it must be mainly bug fixes; no more crashes! Oh, how wrong I was.. I experienced at least 5 crashes, reporting each to Mozilla like a good user. That was it, I had finally had enough and it was time to find a new browser.
Google had released Chrome not too much earlier. I saw there was a beta version for OS X so I decided to give it a shot. Anything would be better than crashing 4 times in an hour. At first I was skeptical, with its different layout it was a little intimidating at first. Where was the google search frame that I had become to accustomed to in Firefox? Where were all the plugins? Truth be told, I didn’t really ever use any plugins for Firefox, and I quickly became used to searching within the address bar. Not only does it boot up much faster, but it also has individual processes for each tab. I’ve had Chrome crash on me a couple times throughout the month or so that I have used it, but I was easily able to close out just the tab, re-open it, and continue my internet browsing experience with ease. My favorite thing on Chrome that I know Safari has had for a while was the landing page when you open a new tab. It shows my eight most visited websites and has a list of the most recently closed tabs in case I closed one by accident and want to reopen it.
Now Google has implemented plugins into Chrome and it is still running as a beta on OS X, but I’ve found it to be leaps and bounds better than Firefox in most aspects. Sometimes the address bar in Chrome still isn’t as great as Firefox’s Awesome Bar, but generally it gets the job done. I’m sorry Firefox; we had a great affair, but all good things must come to an end. Maybe if you slim down and put on a new prettier face we can see each other again. Every once in a while when Chrome won’t do the things I want in bed, (NBC Olympics Streaming Video Coverage) I’ll come back to you in a brief moment of need. Until then Chrome is my new default browser.
