Google Chrome vs Mozilla Firefox
Finally, Google Chrome is out of the box and into the sunlight for us to play. So, I did install it and started playing around. Since there are many sources which describe the features of the browser, I thought I would do an initial comparison with my current browser instead. Here we go.
First of all I should mention the setup. When I installed Chrome, I chose to import all my settings from Firefox to Chrome (bookmarks and history included).
Start up Time
On my computer, Firefox takes 8-9 seconds to start and be ready for use. Chrome on the other hand took about a split second to be up and running. And that’s not all of course, it also shows me the most visited site in its default view when it opens.
Chrome is faster by orders of magnitude in starting up as compared to Firefox.
Memory Consumption
After starting both, they end up taking similar amounts of memory to begin with (around 50 MB). However, Chrome is running one extra process (when I view it in my Task Manager). It turns out that chrome fires up one process for every tab that is open (plus one to manage all of these tabs).
Next, I opened up 10 different web pages in 10 different tabs on each browser (the same set on both). Here, Firefox shot up to 132 MB, and chrome opened up multiple processes (one per tab), the total memory for all of these added up to about 230 MB.
Chrome is more memory hungry as compared to FireFox.
However, when I closed all the tabs (except one), Chrome quickly went down to 20 MB, but FireFox went down only to 96 MB.
Firefox takes much longer to release memory resources.
I have to say that there is some smarts behind creating each tab as a separate process:
- Stability – I think this would make the browser more stable. In Firefox, sometimes if one site is misbehaving, then I need to kill the browser (and along with it all the other tabs which are open).
- Security – initial thought suggests, that it will make each tab a bit more isolated from the rest, so may end up making the browser more secure.
Update: In fact, having multiple processes for multiple tabs does help in stability a lot. There is a develop menu in Chrome which lets you access its inbuilt Task Manager. Here I can select and close individual tabs. Eat your heart out Firefox.
Usability Observations
There are some other things that I checked which were important to me from a usability perspective:
- Chrome has more real estate as compared to Firefox – another thing I liked about Chrome is the increased real estate. Chrome puts the tabs on the Title bar of the window. This adds even more real estate for the part which displays the content. Also consider the fact that there is no status bar. Another point for adding real estate. The status shows up within the page.
- Zooming is better in Firefox – I love the way Firefox zooms the entire page instead of just increasing the text size. It’s very handy on my resolution (1920×1200). Instead, Chrome only increases the size of the text, without expanding the layout, which makes the page pretty unreadable after a point.
- Offline Page Caching is better in Firefox – this is another feature in Firefox which I love. Even if I am offline, Firefox will serve a page from the disk (as it was viewed last) for most of my pages.
- Address Bar Readability is better in Chrome – Chrome highlights the domain name of part of the website you are visiting (or fades the rest) so that it is very easy to tell which site you are visiting when there are long URL’s that can distract you.
- Resizable Text Area in Chrome – all text areas in the various web pages have a size handle on them which allows you to change the size. Not extremely useful, but it may come in handy at times. Take a look at the picture below to see what I am saying:
Notice the resize handle on the lower right of the text box. This is the comment box on TechCrunch.com. I can make the box bigger.
Try out Google Spreadsheets, and every cell is extensible like this.
Not very useful, at this stage. But I can imagine this coming in handy on certain web pages.
Application Shortcuts
This deserves a mention on its own. While I can always do this with the other browsers, I will have to put in a lot of effort. And earlier on, it won’t be worth the hassle. However through Chrome, I have the following on my Quick Launch bar:
Notice the Icon with the tool tip. When I click that icon, my gmail account opens in its own nice Chrome Window (and once I have sized it, it remembers the size per such application shortcut). So, now I don’t need to open a browser to visit my most used applications (notice the icon next to Gmail launches my analytics account). When I click on the icon, it launches the following Window:
Pretty neat, I think. I have now a bunch of these ‘web applications’ that I use regularly with their own icons on my quick launch bar (and mapped to my SlickRun). Like I said, the fact that this is so easy to do makes it a worthwhile activity (it takes three clicks).
I am sure there are many more things that I will find which are different between the two browsers, and I will update this post as I find them. So keep checking back.
Update: I have to mention (as so many readers have pointed out in comments) that in practice there is absolutely no comparison between the two browsers because the extensibility of FireFox by way of its add-ons make it infinitely better than Chrome. Having said this, remember that Chrome is still a baby when it comes to browser lifetimes.
Further Update: Based on feedback and further reading, I made another post on Chrome: Google Chrome – Pros and Cons.
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September 3rd, 2008 at 1:28 pm
hey neat comparision…i am also looking forward to a stable release from both firefox and google…
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:38 pm
@IWEBIE - thanks… I will keep adding to this over time…
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:53 pm
FF and Chrome drastically differ in the way they handle memory. As you noted Chrome immediately returns the memory to the OS. However, on the other hand, FF does not immediately returns the memory to the OS. When a new tab is opened in FF, it tried to re-use the previously allocated but unused memory (which was earlier associated with a tab and now is not because the tab was closed?). This reduces the alloc/free overheads and provide considerable speedups.
As for security in Chrome it is designed to be secure. Every chrome process is “Jailed” limiting the attack surface.
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Nice comparison, Vaibhav! But I still prefer Mozilla Firefox 3 as Google Chrome still don’t supports many tool bars.
Visit my tech blog @ http://www.KidTechGuru.blogspot.com
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:21 pm
@N, I understand what you are saying, however, Chrome is so fast in opening new tabs, that any overheads for reallocating memory don’t matter.
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:43 pm
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September 3rd, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Nice comparison.
I started using Chrome 2 minutes after it came out and it’s pretty cool. I’ve noticed that loading a page in a new tab takes longer in Chrome.
I think it’s unfair to compare startup performance at this point because the amount of cache has a huge impact on that.
Chrome definitely has a few advantages and a few disadvantages over Firefox, but one thing is for sure:
Even if I go back to Firefox as my default browser, I’ll never stop using those application shortcuts. It gives web-apps a desktop-app feeling. It let’s them use the entire screen (who needs an address bar and bookmarks when reading mail or using a calendar?), and makes them load much faster.
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Nice piece to read….. very interesting…
But yeah - I got the problem that it was not able to get my bookmarks of the Firefox…
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:59 pm
@Noam - I agree cache issues may slow things down. But I don’t ever remember Firefox kicking up as fast as Chrome does. It’s instantaneous.
Also, the App Shortcuts are awesome. I have a number of them configured already. It automatically creates App Shortcuts if you configure a Gears site (such as Google Docs).
@Sjeltur - Importing bookmarks worked without a hitch, but it took a long time to import browsing history.
September 3rd, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Great post! Very different than all the usual reviews going around at the minute.
September 3rd, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Thanks for running the comparison between Firefox and Google Chrome — I’ve also noticed that Chrome is lightning fast.
I haven’t seen anything about plug ins for Chrome yet. It’s early, but I wonder if there will be ad blocking and other useful plug ins developed for Chrome?
September 3rd, 2008 at 5:17 pm
// I opened up 10 different web pages in 10 different tabs on each browser (the same set on both). Here, Firefox shot up to 132 MB, and chrome opened up multiple processes (one per tab), the total memory for all of these added up to about 230 MB.//
they had mentioned this in that comic book, and said, on the long run, this will use less memory, I dint understand the logic though
September 3rd, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Your comparison is really informative. I’m using it today and thinking some side. Before my decision you invite me in your blog. Thanks for visiting my blog and inform me the comparison between firefox and chrome.
September 3rd, 2008 at 5:21 pm
@Chris - i think the plugins will come. Its an open source browser, and that will allow people to innovate. However, I don’t see anything in the UI that suggests something like a plugin manager exists.
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Vaibhav,
Good comparison.
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:48 pm
I don’t like benchmarks, so I did a little real life testing with our to-be-released ECMS software. It has an AJAX based GUI, and is optimized for IE7, Firefox 2 and Safari. Chrome did pretty well. I also compared it to IE8 and FF3.1.
Here is the blog post: http://blog.sensenet.hu/post/2008/09/The-Triwizard-Tournament-of-Browsers.aspx
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:25 pm
You can also find out more on the memory usage by entering “about:memory” in a chrome tab…
This will show you the memory usage of each tab, the plugins being executed, and even show you the memory usage of other browsers if you have them open at the same time.
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:50 pm
@Dan, yup. the same page is also accessible by clicking on the “Stats for Nerds” link on the Chrome Task Manager.
September 4th, 2008 at 1:01 am
Nice Comparison. I guess it is a little bit too early to say which browser we will prefer in the long run… Firefox is old and for sure bloated with more code, and it is definitely slower in its start up. However, the productivity I get with Firefox add-ons is something very unreachable for Chrome. Chrome, I guess, is more like Maxthon Browser… People talk a lot about it, but who does actually use it after all?!
September 4th, 2008 at 1:44 am
@ham Well, I have been using it in App mode (I am using my Gmail, Docs, Analytics, etc. in it through the app shortcuts).
September 4th, 2008 at 1:51 am
Nice review, I understand how some people feel about FF but I am indifferent if I use IE or any other web browser. In our office we have a SLOW computer with very LITTLE memory and it is connected to the internet solely for that purpose, surfing the web. And it has every web browser you can think of and out of all of them, chrome was the fastest. It made our web browsing experience allot better for us. Co-incidentally IE was slightly, just slightly quicker the FF.
September 4th, 2008 at 3:07 am
nice comparision vaibhav
September 4th, 2008 at 3:23 am
What the world is saying about Google Chrome
If you’re new here - welcome to Bloggle. Bloggle is an unofficial Google news blog providing a humourous slant on the day’s most important, interesting and quirky Google news. You may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
September 4th, 2008 at 4:43 am
I love Google Chrome but it has been hard to adjust from Firefox 3 with adblock blocking the ads and noscript keeping me safe.I’m not sure which browser I will choose in the long run, perhaps I will switch day to day, but I will always be using Chrome’s application links when I am using Gmail and other web apps. It would be great if Chrome could add support for extensions like FF but that might defeat the purpose of Chrome by adding clutter to the wonderfully streamlined UI.
September 4th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
If you ask me for the fastest browser, I recommend Internet Explorer 64 bit on vista 64bit… Nothing, including chrome/Opera can ever reach its browsing speed ( I mean their 32 bit versions on vista 64 bit).
September 4th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Chrome is slower than Firefox in browsing speed… why??
September 4th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
@ham - no such luck here.. i am 32 bits away from testing that out.
@john - it’s strange that its not fast for you.
September 5th, 2008 at 6:46 am
i think you like more chrome, and cause of that you didn’t say anything about security. and you know very well firefox is much better
September 5th, 2008 at 10:06 am
@juannsa I do like Chrome… and I did mention a little bit about security. The fact that each tab runs in its own isolated process suggests to me that the browser would be more secure than Firefox. But, that is a guess at this moment.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Look at this page guys:
http://celtickane.com/webdesign/jsspeed2007.php
Chrome falls behind Opera in these speed tests!
September 5th, 2008 at 10:37 am
Google Chrome at risk from ‘carpet bomb’ bug:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9114078&intsrc=news_ts_head
September 5th, 2008 at 11:52 am
@ham - Yes, I read about the Carpet Bomb bug, and I suspect Google will be fixing it soon.
Regarding your link for the Javascript tests, Chrome doesn’t feature on the test (I didn’t see it there).
September 5th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Another good news for Firefox users. Chrome falls behind again!
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/archives/2008/09/tracemonkey_update.html
September 5th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
@ham - yes, I read the article about tracemonkey… but you have to wait for the next version of Firefox before you can use that.
It’s browser wars all over again.
September 5th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
The speech recognition application built into Vista cannot dictate into text fields in either Firefox or Chrome. The Firefox developers are working on the problem so presumably when it is fixed in Firefox it will be possible to use the same code in Chrome.
David
September 5th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
@David - Chrome I suppose has a lot of catching up to do, but I am surprised that it doesn’t work on Firefox which is very much a mainstream browser…
September 5th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Vaibhav,
This is part of the discussion of the problem between the Mozilla developers - I hope it means more to you than it does to me!
David
==============================================
If the industry can come together than we might be able to merge IAccessibleEx
with IAccessible2 somewhat, which would make this much easier. That’s dependent
on how things go at http://www.accessinteropalliance.org/
——- Comment #13 From Aaron Leventhal 2008-08-20 04:17:57 PDT (-) [reply] ——-
BTW, like IAccessible2, IAccessibleEx is also built on top of MSAA. That means
we support part of IAccessibleEx. I would have though it’s enough for basic
control, because for simple things like buttons, links, menus, that’s all you
really need.
We probably need to ask Microsoft why the basics aren’t working.
===============================
September 5th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
@David… looks like what they are saying is that even though firefox has compliance on accessibility standards (I suppose speech recognition falls under that), on Vista it doesn’t work. So perhaps Vista is implementing on some other accessibility standard.
September 6th, 2008 at 11:08 am
I have downloaded Chrome and the look and feel is very good. Yesterday I was trying to open the PVR Cinemas site and it doesn’t open in this browser. I was quite surprised because it was opening fine in Mozilla and Explorer.
September 6th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
@amit - well, it is a beta. And the PVR site is one of the worst implementations I have seen in any case. I would suggest that you stick to your regular browser for activities such as online shopping, banking, etc.
I am using Chrome for everything other than online commerce.
September 6th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Using chrome for a while and leaving it on its own, I notices some heavy hard disk activity by Chrome on my system (Windows XP SP2)
I closed and restarted Chrome, but this started again even when no page was open in Chrome…. I guess this is a bug or an endless loop bug in chrome….
September 7th, 2008 at 12:02 am
@James I am going to keep a watch on that. I haven’t really noticed that problem so far (but I haven’t been looking). I am on XP SP2 myself.
September 9th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
I was wondering how chrome will perform against opera? Do you have any insights on that?
September 9th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
@Anirudh - as it turns out, I have never used Opera. I have IE, Firefox, Safari, and now Chrome.
September 9th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
“Zooming is better in Firefox – I love the way Firefox zooms the entire page instead of just increasing the text size. It’s very handy on my resolution (1920×1200). Instead, Chrome only increases the size of the text, without expanding the layout, which makes the page pretty unreadable after a point.”
This is crucial for me, so I stick with Firefox.
September 10th, 2008 at 12:08 am
@mako - yes, the smart zoom is a big positive for Firefox.
September 12th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Chrome is 10 times faster than firefox but has a hundredth
of the functionality…
FF is extensible, Chrome as of yet is not.
It looks like something I could code in swing in a weekend.
Google has impressed me many times, but not this time.
You cant top the wealth of firefox plugins…
Hell firebug alone has changed the face of web development
and yes i saw their developer console and its a step in the
right direction.
Im not a firefox fanboy, but I spent an hour with Chrome
and uninstalled…maybe they will do something interesting
in the future, but for now it just looks like a very
spartan browser.
September 13th, 2008 at 12:59 am
@NotTooImpressed - of course Chrome is nothing in comparison to FireFox. But it shows a lot of potential. Currently, I use both.
September 13th, 2008 at 1:22 am
of course? then why is this thread titled FF vs Chrome?
I dont want to just flame your thread here. But its apples
and oranges. Granted what there is of Chrome looks and
functions well from what i saw. And why use both? So
that you can say “I use Chrome”? or is there a point -i.e does Chrome do something that FF doesn’t?
Kind of like carrying two hammers to drive the same size nails if you ask me.
Take care.
September 13th, 2008 at 1:27 am
@NotTooImpressed - Well the reason it is titled this way is because it still is a comparison between two browsers. The reason I use both is because there are certain things I like in Chrome, and there are features in FireFox (mostly addons) which I can’t do without.
For example, I have a number of Application Shortcuts that I now use as if they were Windows Applications, and Incognito Mode has its merits.
September 13th, 2008 at 8:06 am
Not sure if it’s been said, but as of yet Chrome is lacking a bit in the plugin department. Its Flash plugin is horrid compared to Firefox, at least, from what I’ve experienced. Chrome jumps about and freezes where Firefox plays fairly well. Also, Chrome doesn’t have many of the plugins that Firefox does have, but that’s a problem I’m sure will be fixed in due time. Chrome is a great browser in many aspects, but I’m sticking with Firefox until some changes arise.
Also, Opera is a very nice browser, I recommend trying it ;D
September 13th, 2008 at 8:53 am
My biggest issue with Firefox 3 right now is that it gets hung up HORRIBLY on memory often to the point of freezing at least twice a day. I’m hoping that chrome will help with that, even though I think it’s also an issue with the lack of ram I have -_- I use chrome on my school laptop and LOVE IT (well, it’s infinitly better than the IE I’ve been using there before). I can’t wait until the mac version is released so I can have it at home!!
September 13th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
@Eclipse - yes, I have noticed issues with Flash in Chrome as well. Chrome is still in beta, and how fast it becomes a mainstream browser will decide how quickly its adopted.
@Ilsa - yes, Firefox does have its problem with Memory (it always has had). I suggest that you close and reopen it every hour or so.
September 13th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Very informative - Thank you all. Was considering swapping from Opera but may just dabble with Chrome for the time being. Thanks
September 13th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
@Russell - do leave a comment about your impressions later on.
September 13th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I’m wondering if chrome users have actually read google’s TOS agreement they’ve agreed to. Some serious issues that will keep me with firefox reguardless of any advantage chrome may have.
Google doesn’t own my works.
September 13th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
@loadedtoad - Actually, Gmail has a worse set of TOS. And Chrome has revised their TOS since the release so that it is not so bad anymore.
September 13th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Thanks for the informative article. So far, I’m liking Chrome, but I’ve had a couple of small problems. For one, it took a few tries to get my bookmarks imported. Another thing is that sometimes when I’m switching between tabs (even just two), it’ll hang for a second or two before switching over. A third problem (one I just noticed when I started typing this comment) is that sometimes when I type, it lags–I’m hitting the keys, but nothing is on the screen for a few seconds, until it finally catches up. Not sure if that last one is a Chrome issue or not, but it doesn’t happen when I use other browsers. All in all, a pretty cool browser, though. I like the simplicity.
September 14th, 2008 at 12:13 am
Chrome is neat but I’ve had it crash on many pages. One time froze everything. Mainly video bogs it down. Other times it pauses, more than Firefox.
Maybe it will be good one day but not yet. Especially with so many Firefox plug-ins.
September 14th, 2008 at 1:44 am
@Ray - I have had a few issues where it hangs, but not very much. I am using it some.
@mike - well, yes. I am hoping that this becomes as functional as Firefox one of these days.
September 14th, 2008 at 2:04 am
Hey, This comment has nothing to do with the article!
Just wanted to congratulate you for the work you are doing on Stackoverflow!
Kudos.. and keep up the good work!
Cheers - Prakash
September 14th, 2008 at 3:29 am
Chrome is ok. Regarding the Applications Shortcuts though, it can be done in Firefox as well with an add-on called Prism.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6665
September 15th, 2008 at 12:06 am
I have the same disk i/o problem. I’m using XP SP3….
I searched the internet and found this:
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=1315963
Where they mention it is due to a phishing filter. If it doesn’t disappear after i’ve turned off the filter i’ll uninstall chrome.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:10 am
Only thing that’s crucial to me is AdBlock Plus.
Oh and Chrome actually running on Ubuntu natively (and beating ff and all other browsers in speed)
September 15th, 2008 at 3:00 am
Ok I have read all comments but nobody seems to be worried about google’s policies of keeping track with your surfing habits.I do not like this as a European citizin.Mind you your privicy is not in good hands with google !
September 15th, 2008 at 3:22 am
I will always love Firefox.
I will have to try chrome out just for fun but I read around and firefox is the world hehe.
September 15th, 2008 at 3:26 am
I had Chrome for a week, and I’m here to tell you, the EULA for it is the least of your worries if you use it. I go to some sites that have a lot of questionable activity on them, but I do so in full safety with Ad Block, No Script, etc. running in FF. When I would go to these same sites with Chrome, there were no problems with Chrome running all of the scripts I had no want or need to run on my computer. Security is a joke with Chrome as far as I can see.
I recently went over to a 64bit version of Ubuntu, and no Chrome, and don’t miss it a bit… be aware of the lack of security of Chrome, guys…
Also, I think it’s completely BS that Google of all people release a new browser and don’t offer it in a Linux variant. For the foreseeable future, I’ll stick to 64bit FF on 64bit Ubuntu, thank you very much…
September 15th, 2008 at 5:49 am
Having downloaded Chrome when it came out I was appalled by the complete lack of control and features on it. A browser is there to work for me and not how the company who designed it wants you to work. It is very fast to start up but that is the only thing going for it. Firefox is so far superior to this I wonder why they bothered releasing it. I think the answer may be in their comic and the emphasise on advertising. This is probably going to be Google’s new advertising tool. Add on the dubious license and the company’s dubious reputation and you have a good reason to uninstall it now. I already have.
September 15th, 2008 at 5:57 am
The correct title for this article is “What chrome has that firefox don’t or is worse”. How can you do a comparison without mentioning extensions?
September 15th, 2008 at 9:17 am
@Kriggs - Post updated mentioning this crucial difference.
@Foxxie - Personally, since I have the Google Toolbar, and since I use Google History, and Gmail, etc., I am not more worried about Google capturing more privacy information. But I can see how that may be a problem for a lot of people.
@Stone - well, it IS a beta. But since its opensource, and non Google branded versions are already available, hopefully these problems will be resolved.
September 15th, 2008 at 9:59 am
Does not compute, if both are sucking about 50 megs of ram, how can chrome get it processed and into memory and displayed in a split second. What elements of chrome are already running in the background unknown to the user.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Glad to see you making it a competition between Firefox and Chrome. Leave IE out of it. I realize its hard to compare the features in IE to another browser since it doesn’t have any.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
[...] Google Chrome vs Mozilla Firefox - Habitually Good Firefox wins, For now. Once Chrome’s Plug-ins are up and running strong I think it will be FTW. What do you think? (tags: Google internet software Browser Chrome) [...]
September 15th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
@Godless - well yes, IE7 at least isn’t even in the race. The only reason I have it is because we need it for development purposes.
@Robert - the amount of RAM a program uses is not the only thing that determines how fast it loads up. Having said that, I haven’t investigated if Chrome is running any background processes to help it, but I didn’t see any at a glance.
September 15th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
[...] Finally, Google Chrome is out of the box and into the sunlight for us to play. So, a blogger did install it and started playing around. Since there are many sources which describe the features of the browser, he thought he would do an initial comparison with my current browser instead. Here we go. [...]
September 15th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
8-9 seconds for firefox to open? my crappy work computer takes about 2…whats the deal with that?
September 15th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
@ssdsdsds (Of course, you could have typed your name)… not sure why yours is so fast, but mine is pretty slow…
September 16th, 2008 at 8:17 am
Compare Firefox & Chrome displaying animated gifs (like on Myspace). Chrome doesn’t display them in a uniform timing, i.e. the beginning of the gif’s animation may go at a frame per second (or whatever the frame rate was set at in the gif) but other parts may slow down, whereas in Firefox they display uniformly.
September 16th, 2008 at 9:23 am
Nice comparison…one thing many people overlook about Chrome’s lack of bookmarking customization is the same thing many overlook with Gmail. Google products are all about the search. I too, like categorizing my bookmarks and love the tagging feature in FF3, but I use the search tool far more often in FF3 and Chrome as well.
September 16th, 2008 at 9:54 am
@Pete - thanks for pointing this out, I am going to check it.
@Rick - yes, there are things which are good about Chrome.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:53 am
“Chrome has more real estate as compared to Firefox”
So… this is taking up more screen real estate?
http://i33.tinypic.com/202w6s.png
September 16th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
@Jack - well, that’s a pretty nifty setup for FireFox that you have. And yes, that is not taking any space at all. Having said that, Chrome doesn’t have a Status Bar either (of course I realize that now I am splitting hairs with that comment
). I realize that I can turn off the status bar in firefox, but then I won’t get any status messages.
September 16th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
[...] wrote a post comparing Google Chrome with FireFox right after the release of Chrome. It has become one of the most read post on my blog (mostly [...]
September 16th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
I would love for either one of them to use all 4 cores of a processor when using some flash applications which use up the whole processor. As for general web surfing I use firefox - and use chrome for gmail and a few other things.
Chrome doens’t have the extensions which make firefox more attractive for somethings.
The way chrome does the tabs as separate processors is great because then if one crashes the others don’t.
September 16th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Thanks, I now know which browser to use when Chrome is more stable and when I can scroll up with it.
Did you run FF without extensions when looking at the memory and time data?
September 16th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
@Natovr - I didn’t uninstall the extensions, however I did disable them.
September 16th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Tried out Google Chrome on Ubuntu via this: http://www.codeweavers.com/services/ports/chromium/
Frankly, the only thing that keeps me on FF is AdBlock. All browsers are decent at rendering now, download speeds don’t change much from browser to browser on my computer either.
September 16th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
@Vadim - LifeHacker posted a solution for the lack of AdBlock: http://lifehacker.com/5046529/how-to-block-ads-in-google-chrome
September 16th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
It’s half a solution for me. I also like how I can block annoying images (avatars, signatures, etc) with AdBlock, and that doesn’t seem to offer that.
September 16th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
@Vadim - well yes, its a workaround of course. I am pretty sure that you will see more on that front, as Ad Block is the number one add on that everyone is missing on Chrome.
September 16th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
I really love the fact that i can have my favorites bar and plenty of screen space. firefox always seems too cramped to me. Chrome is simple and clean.
September 17th, 2008 at 2:13 am
I can’t wait till the linux version comes out!
September 17th, 2008 at 10:55 am
So, there’s no mention of Google Chrome random crashes? And individual processes my ass, it took all of the tabs with it?!
September 17th, 2008 at 11:02 am
@Jeangrete - funnily enough, my FireFox just crashed randomly (but of course in FireFox when I opened it again, all my tabs were restored). So Chrome is not perfect of course.
September 17th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
I’ve had Chrome lockup and kill all my tabs, so the process thing is BS and useless until they can make it actually work.
September 20th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Chrome tried to send my MSN live contacts and who knows what other information to somewhere after installation (sygate personal firewall blocked it and there were some of my contacts visible in packet dump).
After uninstalling, chrome did not remove scheduled task that it was also scheduled during installation. I think it was googleupdater.exe or smthg. bugger. Im not going to use it anymore but Good luck with it.
September 20th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
@RHB - wow, that is certainly a big problem. And yes, I hate that Google Updater - I have two of those running on my computer. Well, I guess pretty soon I will be using Chromium instead of Chrome.
September 21st, 2008 at 10:15 am
My problem is that with Chrome the wheel action of my mouse is reversed.
I have a cordless Logitech which has always worked flawlessly over a wide variety of programs.
With chrome when I rotate the wheel towards me the screen moves UP…this is opposite to what I am used to and very disconcerting.
I also have the ability to scroll left or right…but again when I push the wheel to the Right the screen scrolls to the Left.
September 22nd, 2008 at 1:40 am
@symimggy - I use a Logitech mouse as well, and the scroll wheel works just as expected. Though if you mouse works in other programs as expected, there is no reason why it shouldn’t work in Chrome. I guess, that is a stupid bug in Chrome then…
September 22nd, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Chrome is cool though it has some setbacks which is expected in any software releases initially. I have put a similar post and thought might be useful for you.
http://www.bloggertalkz.com/2008/09/04/google-chrome-is-insanely-fast/
Cheers
Krish
September 22nd, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Hey Vaibhav,
That’s one neat comparison. Thanks for writing such an objective comparison.
Keep up the good work, mate!
Umang
September 24th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
On my mom’s P3 on XP (512MB RAM), Firefox is slightly faster than loading than Chrome. K-Meleon is faster than both by far though.
September 24th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
I like Chrome, but the funny fact I realized was that gmail worked better with firefox than with chrome!
Although my favourite browser is still kmeleon.
September 24th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
I think Gmail is so much better as a Chrome App Shortcut. At least for me it is. In fact its so much faster, that I sometimes think that Google has been sneaky and made it specifically slower for Firefox somehow.
September 27th, 2008 at 6:21 am
Nice work.
I also have done a detailed memory test between Google Chrome and Firefox, their processes behavior while opening new tabs and windows etc. Read my article for more details.
http://reviewgooglechrome.com/google-chrome-vs-firefox/google-chrome-vs-firefox-memory-test/84/
September 27th, 2008 at 6:24 am
[...] Google Chrome vs. Mozilla Firefox: مقارنة عملية و رائعة بين متصفح فايرفوكس من موزيلا و [...]
September 30th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
[...] Google Chrome vs Mozilla Firefox Author: Vaibhav [...]
October 2nd, 2008 at 6:15 am
its a early comparision i think.we must wait for extensions support of chrome and finishing of beta.cause every way chrome faster than ff,but functionally ff more powerfull than chrome
October 2nd, 2008 at 12:13 pm
@Furkan - yes, without the extensions it is not a fair comparison. Agreed.
October 3rd, 2008 at 6:31 pm
[...] I briefly tried Google new Chrome browser last week, it didn’t thrill me and considering I’ve got Firefox all set up the way I like it and am always finding good new plugins, Google has a tough sell. Here’s one vs the other. [...]
October 22nd, 2008 at 8:40 am