Putting aside the layman for the moment, has anyone else found Chrome particularly annoying to use as a power user? There are so many issues, such as the uncustomizable download bar (can't even have it autohide!), the inability to fine-tune history/cache/etc. deletion, inabilility to set filetype-specific download settings, and so on.
And Firefox isn't that slow in its latest incarnations.
Yes, I switched back to Firefox for Pentadactyl, a complete vim-like environment in the browser. I tried all of the vim extensions for Chrome, but Chrome just doesn't expose enough (any) internal APIs to implement Pentadactyl.
Chrome extensions are limited to modifying the current page and displaying an extension icon. They can't modify the browser itself. (Although no extension system will ever compete with Emacs for fully modifying the host application, Firefox does a decent job.)
Unfortunately for me, I have thousands of bookmarks and for some reason that makes Pentadactyl awfully slow. I don't know what to do, as I start Firefox simply opening a website will take twenty seconds before Pentadactyl lets me type. Chrome is always very smooth experience. Pentadactyl is not. I'd use Pentadactyl if it actually worked right. I'm not happy with its performance.
OK. Can I ask what you use for bookmarking and what type of urls you bookmark?
I have a few thousand bookmarks in Delicious, but I've nearly stopped bookmarking altogether. I noticed that I almost never look up bookmarks later, so I've started keeping really important urls in org-mode and discarding everything else. Google is good enough for most recall. For everything else, org-mode reminds me that the bookmarks exist which I tended to forget with Delicious.
I for one, just use Firefox's built in bookmarks.
And I bookmark everything, photos/videos I like, posts that have a nice quote, pages I'll read in after I'm done with dinner, random corners of the internet, threads I know will get pushed back a dozen pages by the morning, whatever.
Google is fine for most recall, as long as what you're looking for isn't in the darkweb (like my dozens of achive.org bookmarks), but why bother with Google, extra steps, extra friction.
Side effect of the awesome bar and compulsive bookmarking though: I rarely have more than a dozen tabs open because picking up where I left off has so little burden.
And yeah I do end up with thousands of bookmarks I probably won't even use again, but it doesn't interfere with anything.
I feel like half my bookmarks are the articles of HN submissions while I then get to march guilt-free into the comments page because I'll just read the actually article when I get a chance, darn it! I'm a busy guy!
> I rarely have more than a dozen tabs open because picking up where I left off has so little burden.
Me too. I will never understand people who complain about Firefox (or any other browser) getting slow when they have 50 tabs open. If you had 50 physical documents on your desk, wouldn't you put away at least 40 of them in a neat stack elsewhere? Just having them all spread out in front of me would give me a headache.
And yes, I also end up with thousands of bookmarks in a very complicated hierarchy. Sometimes this makes the Bookmark manager crawl to a halt.
One can also forget the bookmarks if they're local to you, as in Firefox. Plus they're backed up through Sync. This just in case when you can no longer rely on Delicious, or Google for that matter.
This article inspired me to try Opera again. But now 10 seconds spent in the Pentadactyl quick-start guide have made it clear that I'll be back on Firefox after being a dedicated Chrome user for at least four years.
The sole reason I stick to Firefox as my primary browser (despite Chrome appearing to hog less memory) is because of the TabMixPlus extension (which allows multiple layers of tabs). I frequently have >10 tabs - and at times, 25+ tabs - open, and Chrome is terrible when it comes to tab management.
Are you kidding? Chrome is awesome when it comes to tab management. I love that they allow little slivers of tabs, rather than degrading to a clunky arrow button setup when you have too many open.
Plus after closing a tab, the "tabs don't resize until you move the mouse away" thing. And tabs living in the titlebar, so they get Fitts' Law infinite width targets in full screen. So good.
Not to pick on this item in particular, but this seems to be another instance of difference between "functionality" versus "aesthetic".
One set of users finds that Chrome "looks better". (Although, personally, I not infrequently differ from these opinions.)
Another set of users find that Firefox "behaves better" and/or is "more customizable".
I find myself more in the latter camp. While I greatly appreciate some of Chrome/Chromium's technical points, I find that both with its UI and with Google web properties, the designers are running amok. Unituitive and minimally discoverable widgets and behaviors. Common "power user" functionality disabled (anyone juggling several items/contexts should, in my opinion, rather value most recently used (MRU) ordering in tab cycling).
(As a comparative example, the "breaking" of Alt-Tab in Ubuntu Unity is somewhat analogous; I want a one keystroke (or key-pair-stroke) step to get back to my last context, whatever fricking program was running it.)
To the specific point in the parent, minimal tab size can be adjusted in Firefox (Google up the relevant setting accessible via about:config .)
More generally, Firefox lets me control how I used web resources. Chrome, less so, and Google seems to be moving in the direction of further and further slotting the user into their desired experience. (Sound familiar?)
As for extensions, the Firefox extension ecosphere I still find navigable (although it does appear to be suffering; making and maintaining an extension does not appear to be a particularly rewarding experience). The Google ecosphere I've mostly given up on, but when I take the occasional glimpse it still appears to be, viewed in the large, opaque and poorly organized and/or presented.
So... I keep my Chrome installation clean and use it for "secure browsing" to a limited set of properties.
I use an extended Firefox for tackling the larger, hairy web.
(And Opera to further segregate a few other items.)
I'm with bvi -- I can't live without tabmixplus and multirow tabs. I'm not sure what's awesome about Chrome tab management over what you've said. Firefox has tabs in the titlebar and they do that "tabs don't resize until you move the mouse away" thing -- so what's left?
Side tabs have been abandoned by chrome at the moment with no sign of coming back. The lack of vertical sidebars is enough reason to use Firefox over Chrome. Even when side tabs were working you couldn't modify its behaviour.
I don't know what you mean with power user? I am a web developer and satisfied with the developer tools.
I also surf a lot more than the average user and i use the default Chrome settings. Middle click and Tabs are everything i need.
What you are talking about, doesn't sound like a lot.
I don't download much and everything get's straight to my download folder. But you are right about this one, not very customizable. Is there no api for an extension?
Yeah, I used Chrome for a while and have switched back to Firefox. The latest versions of Firefox are much faster, Chrome seems to have lost the speed advantage it had for a bit. Chrome didn't seem to have any better memory usage either. Given that Firefox is much more customizable and has more extensions it's clearly the best browsing experience for me now.
Of course. Chrome isn't really good for power users due to the less-powerful extension setups (can't even do true ad blocking). And it's of much less interest to companies due to the per-user installation setup and not being self-contained (it relies on the host OS for encryption, proxy handling, etc).
I'm also not sure what you mean by "not being self-contained." Chrome relies on OS subsystems where appropriate because it simplifies management and provides a consistent user experience--that's why we use the OS certificate store and proxy configuration settings. We've also seen quite a bit of enterprise uptake because Chrome is the only browser that provides full centralized management on all supported platforms (via Windows group policy, Puppet, etc.).
> OS certificate store and proxy configuration settings
these things are awesome! firefox just doesn't work with most sites on my company's intranet (particularly with authentication), but when i use chrome, everything just works.
Just guessing here, but it's pretty common for enterprises to set up a lot of configuration via some sort of centralized policy mechanism. So, you'll have custom certs and a proxy PAC pushed at the system level via GPO or Puppet. If a browser (or any application) re-implements these features entirely, it won't pick up any of that context.
> And it's of much less interest to companies due to the per-user installation setup and not being self-contained (it relies on the host OS for encryption, proxy handling, etc).
I don't run an IT department, but the self-updating browser seems like a pretty good win. Doubly so when it's very secure.
> Putting aside the layman for the moment, has anyone else found Chrome particularly annoying to use as a power user?
As a power user I don't know (I don't even consider it), but as a developer I see my colleagues struggling with Chrome's over-aggressive cache every day, and it truly boggle's my mind that Google's developers, with their roots in the web, still provide no way for chrome to be sane cache-wise. The bloody thing caches more aggressively than Internet Explorer, getting it to release cached files is an exercise in frustration and you can not trust that it's done so without checking the actual code it's downloaded in the devtools.
Reminds me of my frustration some months back with its caching of favicons -- amongst other things. Wasted a bit of time troubleshooting my configuration before figuring out that Chrome was simply refusing to flush the favicon from its cache.
As a power user, I really appreciate Chromium's command line arguments. --user-agent is vastly simpler than anything else. I don't use Chromium myself, but it does get pulled out whenever someone needs a "legacy" browser.
It's true that Firefox is much more extensible and has way better extensions. Like you, I also hate the download manager in Chrome. However, the single feature that makes me try to use Chrome above anything is it's sync features. They are just too good. Sync happens instantly (in my eyes at least) no matter how many computer I'm using Chrome on, and that's just perfect for my workflow. Also, incognito is much more easy to use than Firefox's version..
Firefox's Sync synchronizes more frequently now than it did a few releases ago. If it doesn't synchronize fast enough for you, power users can always open about:config and fuddle with the services.sync preferences. services.sync.syncInterval is the one controlling the default interval (in milliseconds).
While I'm writing this, I should also point out that browser sync is a great example of how Mozilla and Google take a different approach to solving the same problem. Firefox's sync encrypts all data locally using a cryptographically secure randomly-generated key then uploads it to Mozilla's servers. Chrome's sync, by contrast, only encrypts passwords locally by default, leaving bits like your browsing history unencrypted on Google's servers. Chrome does have an option to encrypt everything, but you have to enable it in the preferences. (Firefox has no option to disable client-side encryption.) Even when you enable client-side encryption in Chrome, your data is encrypted with your Google password. This is less secure than Mozilla's approach because 1) your password likely isn't sufficiently complex or random 2) Google sees your password periodically (e.g. when you log in to Google services), meaning they possess the key to unlock your data. With Firefox Sync, Mozilla never sees your private key, so there is no way for them to see your data. Ever.
Google's business model means they have an inherent interest in your synced/private data. Mozilla has no such interest in it. Therefore, Mozilla locks the door and throws away the key.
And Firefox isn't that slow in its latest incarnations.