Over these past few months, I have tried hard to make Chrome my main browser, but I just can’t seem to be able to get rid of Firefox, and I have now decided that I need to embrace my ambivalence fully.
At this point, I have decided to make Firefox my main browser again but to keep using Chrome exclusively for Javascript heavy pages such as Gmail. Here are some of the things that I really find lacking in Chrome:
- Open tab in foreground. Firefox doesn’t do that by default but a handy extension enables it, and while I tend to open most of my tabs in the background, there are times where I really want to jump to that new page right away.
- Reload all tabs. Another handy feature provided by the Tabs extension. Am I the only one finding this extremely useful?
- Tree Style Tabs extension. I’m still trying to get more familiar with this extension and I wish I could activate it on a per-window basis, but there are definitely times when representing my tab path as a tree instead of a horizontal bar is useful.
- AdBlock. I know there are similar extensions for Chrome, but so far, they just don’t work as well as Firefox’s AdBlock Plus, and navigating the Internet without an ad blocker is just too painful.
- Smarter multi box. For example, if I have a Google Doc called “Important items”, I can type “docs work” in the address bar and the first URL is the correct one. Chrome’s multibox doesn’t seem to be as good so far.
- Dragging and dropping bookmarklets works (Chrome “seems” to work but when I drop the bookmarklet, nothing happens and I end up having to create it by hand in the bookmark manager).
- Plug-ins… lots and lots of plug-ins. From a developer standpoint, the Chrome plug-in API is much simpler but from a user perspective, Firefox’s is still very, very much ahead (for example, menu customization was just recently added to the nightly Chromium build).
- Getting the title bar back. I really don’t understand why the Chrome team decided that saving twelve pixels was worth losing all the precious information that the title bar provides. I only realized how often I used it when I switched to Chrome. Since then, I’ve been trying to tell myself that I can live without it, but I just can’t. Whether it’s for telling apart a similar site with different titles or tracking internal builds with different dates, I just need my title bar. And I just couldn’t find a Chrome extension that restores it.
- Getting the standard menu bar back. Again, I really dislike this trend that Microsoft initiated with the Windows Media Player that puts the main menus in all unexpected places. Not only do I keep looking for the menus in the upper part of the window (or screen, for Mac OS) but even when I remember that they are in a different place in Chrome, I still can’t remember which icon is which. And all this for what? Saving twelve pixels of vertical screen estate? It’s just not worth it. Please, give me back my File, Edit and View menus in the upper left corner.
- One of the main advantages that Chrome has over Firefox is that task manager, but it just never delivered for me. While it’s neat to be able to single out a single process run amok (very often, the Flash plug-in), kill that process ends up killing Flash for the entire browser, thereby forcing you to reload all the tabs that are open (not even only the tabs that had a Flash object in them). Admittedly, this is better than having to restart the entire browser, but really not by much.
Overall, it seems to me that the Chrome team has focused exclusively on improving the internals but has neglected the user experience quite a bit. I’m hoping this will change in the next few months.
[Related Buzz and more comments here]
#1 by Sebastiano Pilla on May 31, 2010 - 5:03 am
+1 for the getting the title bar back and +1 for getting the menu bar back, not having them makes Chrome unusable for me. At least an option to turn them on would be a great improvement.
#2 by katox on May 31, 2010 - 6:21 am
I mostly agree, though I’m still in “trying hard” phase. I don’t understand your complains about title bar. It is there – Options/Personall Stuff/Appearance/Use system title bar and borders. Am I missing something?
#3 by Gerald Nunn on May 31, 2010 - 7:08 am
Chrome under Linux has an option to show the System title bar and borders but I never use it, on a small laptop screen (1440×900) every pixel does count. I’ll agree though there should be an option for this on all versions and I’ll also agree with you though on the menu bar and following Microsoft’s lead on placing menus in weird ways. I’m not sure when UI consistency became unimportant, I intensely dislike the ribbon interface in MS Office.
#4 by tcmaster on May 31, 2010 - 7:24 am
I’m using Chrome as main browser and I’m quite happy (winxp)
1. I don’t miss menu bar and title bar. I’m browsing web, not menus, the little menus are good enough.
2. The drag&drop bookmark works perfect(on winxp). Some time even too perfect: if I have bookmarked it before, the new dragdrop won’t create a copy, but move it to the new dest folder. BTW, take a look at the star before the url box, u’ll know if the link has been book-marked.
3. a lot of “extensions” are available in the std sites, the problem might be there are too many and you need spend/waste time on it
4. I seldom use the task manager
5. it seems to me that chrome will always jump to a new tab (if a site indicates a new window for the link) and I don’t like it. It took me a while to discover pressing ctrl then click will make the new tab background. And I just discovered while pressing ctrl+shift+click, you can make the new tab foreground.
The thing I don’t like:
1. chrome ates too much memory, even a so simple plugin will take 10-40M memory.
2. ad block is not as good. It allows the page to be fully downloaded and then just hide those items. This slowed down the page. It’s better just disable the links
3. reload all tabs some times might be useful.
#5 by tcmaster on May 31, 2010 - 7:26 am
Forgot to mention, I like the bookmark sync with email account idea. it helped a lot.
#6 by albemuth on May 31, 2010 - 10:44 am
“Open tab in foreground. Firefox doesnt do that by default but a handy extension enables it, and while I tend to open most of my tabs in the background, there are times where I really want to jump to that new page right away.
”
What I do: left click to open the link, middle click on the back button to open previous page in a new tab.
#7 by Slobodan on May 31, 2010 - 5:23 pm
I like Chrome, i use it for surfing the web but when it comes to web development i use Firefox.
#8 by aalan on May 31, 2010 - 5:24 pm
Hello everyone there thanx for sharing such a nice views here about firefox i really appreciate……..even for last 2 years i was using firefox web browser but i dnt hav any complaint yet with this so its awsome everyone like to use it thanx
#9 by Michael on May 31, 2010 - 6:24 pm
No one is forcing you to use chrome and while that seems like a useles comment I’m still posting it on the bases that the ‘flaws’ you mention are mostly the reason I chose chrome over firefox. I like my screen estate, I like not having the clutter, I had hardly any plugin’s under firefox, I pretty much never use the menu – once to set up sync one or two times to get the developer tools, but then I was actually tinkering with a website for normal stuff it’s simply mean and lean, if that isn’t what your looking for then there is firefox which isn’t bad at all we’re simply spoiled. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t need a fire-ome chro-fox, I rather have two browsers that serve two distinct user groups.
#10 by Mohamed Mansour on May 31, 2010 - 7:10 pm
Well the “Reload all tabs” feature, I did an extension that does that. https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/midkcinmplflbiflboepnahkboeonkam
“Open tab in foreground”, well, before, we experimented opening the tab as foreground but users were quite annoyed by it, that is why there is an extension that does that:
https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/hjaooagfdhdhmbfchnkhggjmacjlacla
I am an external committer to Chromium (Open Source in my free time), and one of the things we lack is features, but the team is working really hard to try to allow extensions to modify the way Chrome looks and functions. Give it a while and you will see a lot of nice beautiful stuff extensions can do, many new API’s are going to land such as notifications, context menu, privacy, etc that will enable developers to create more and better extensions. For the rest of the list you mentioned, most are perfect examples of extensions. The extension gallery is new, and in time, as people create them, more will be present.
#11 by RogerV on May 31, 2010 - 9:39 pm
I’ve been using Chrome for many months now. I now have it on Win Vista, WinXp, and Ubuntu Linux. Because I have a gmail account I’m able to use the feature that synchronizes my Chrome bookmarks. I absolutely love this feature – no matter which computer I sit down at, home or work, I’ve got the same bookmarks at my beck and call.
We do a lot with Flex development – I like the fact that not only does Chrome do fast web pages but that it offers Flash to me on all platforms. And from now on will be integrated and managed by Chrome itself.
#12 by ChromeUser on June 1, 2010 - 1:49 am
“Open tab in foreground. Firefox doesnt do that by default but a handy extension enables it, and while I tend to open most of my tabs in the background, there are times where I really want to jump to that new page right away. ”
Middle click: new Tab in background
shift + middle click: new Tab in foreground
#13 by Seth on June 1, 2010 - 3:20 am
Have you looked in Chromeplus
http://www.chromeplus.org/
#14 by John Rellis on June 1, 2010 - 4:17 am
I agree with the multi box… i think it is just that google are trying to stuff too much functionality in it… search and history… rather than the awesome history support in firefox… I am giving chrome an honest chance now though… shall be interesting! Remember to use xmarks to sync your bookmarks in case you decide to switch back…. what an awesome add on… eh…. extension…. eh whatever!!!
#15 by Garden me on June 1, 2010 - 7:48 am
I hope none of my users have Chrome cos textarea’s collapse when shown in Chrome. Users wont know where the enter the text they are asked for.
#16 by Rachel Orrell on June 1, 2010 - 9:24 am
I just can’t help myself; I love Chrome. First off, I agree with Michael on the screen real estate. Also, I still feel that Chrome is much faster than Firefox. Maybe there aren’t as many plugins for it, but that’s because it hasn’t been around nearly as long. Regardless, I prefer the choice of plugins for Chrome; they seem to fit my needs better.
I definitely understand being a stickler for something, though. I, for instance, refuse to like Mac because Windows is what I know and am comfortable with.
I’m glad you at least gave Chrome a shot.
#17 by BoD on June 7, 2010 - 9:27 am
About the title bar. I don’t understand.
On firefox, the title of the current page is displayed in the title bar (top of the window).
On Chrome it is displayed inside the currently selected tab (which is, also at the top of the window). So the only difference is that is has a smaller width… Is that what is bothering you?
#18 by Kymair on July 10, 2010 - 10:56 pm
I’ve just tried Firefox 4 beta1. It’s been really interesting to see that Firefox is borrowing UI design from Chrome.
I do agree that at current stage Firefox is more suitable for Web developers. But for the UI design concepts, I believe Chrome is doing better. Maybe Cédric should switch the mind a little? 🙂
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