Firefox 4 vs Chrome: What’s the Difference?
Posted on 24. Mar, 2011 by Daniel Cawrey in Reviews
Some time ago, Mozilla put out a release candidate for Firefox 4, and my first reaction was how close the new interface looked to that of Chrome. Since that time, Firefox 4 has officially launched, and I decided to take a closer look at the rival browser. What is it that makes Chrome and Firefox 4 different now that the latter looks so much like Google’s own browser?
Well, they aren’t completely the same. Firefox has different menus that are spread out across the browser. For example, it still has all of its old menus but they are now tucked in to a menu on the right that is called “Firefox”. The browser also still has one menu for URLs and one for a search box. When I installed the browser the default search engine was Bing. Compared to older versions of Firefox, this area certainly feels much more compact. Indeed, the size in height of these text boxes are smaller than Chrome’s Omnibox.
One thing you’ll find within Firefox 4 is an integrated solution for managing your tabs. It’s called Panorama, and it gives you a visual representation of your tabs since once you have so many open it’s really quite hard to tell what’s going on. I like the idea of Panorama, but I have to remind myself that there are extensions for Chrome that can do this as well with different types of graphical solutions that are available.
Yet there are different ways you can use Panorama – for example, you can group you tabs into categories, and even do a search which is something that should definitely be a feature in Chrome! There’s also a Switch to Tab feature that has been implemented in limited fashion the same way in Chromium; you type in something, and if the tab is already open it switches to it automatically.
Sync is another new feature that has been added, and certainly something that is welcomed in modern browsers. Now you never have to worry about moving from computer to computer with the ability to save user information whether it is on Windows, Firefox or Mac. It will, however, require that you set up an separate Firefox Sync account in order for this to work.
One of the major overhauls in Firefox 4 is increased support for HTML5. Mozilla has been touting for some time now its open web app marketplace, and in order for them to advance this cause they need to be at the forefront of this technology. You can see through their HTML5 demo page some examples that showcase the addition of CSS 3, WebGL and APIs that include geolocation and dragging and dropping of files.
While we’re on the subject, let’s take a look at some other performance benchmarks as tested by Lifehacker.
JavaScript (Dev version below is Chrome 11)
Memory
Cold Start
Nine Tab Loading
Bottom Line
It’s crystal clear how much of an influence Chrome is having on the development of Firefox by Mozilla. There’s nothing wrong with a little competition, since it fosters innovation. Let’s also not forget that Firefox is still way ahead of Chrome in the latest market share measurements that are available.
I’m starting to question what direction Firefox is going, however. Their open app initiative is a good-hearted attempt to offer something to compete with the Chrome Web Store, but I wonder how many developers are going to work with it. But having an alternative is not a bad idea. This is still very early stages for web applications.
via Lifehacker, Computerworld
5 Responses to “Firefox 4 vs Chrome: What’s the Difference?”
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Firefox 4 – The Open Source Web Browser – GhazaliRidzwan.com
25. Mar, 2011
[...] Firefox 4 vs Chrome: What’s the Difference? [...]
kaprikawn
25. Mar, 2011
The browser still has one box for the URL and one for search? Interesting how you phrased that, implying that it’s a bad thing. I use Chrome now, but the separate boxes single-handedly kept me on Firefox for a long time. I for one prefer the separation. The Firefox search box is better at predicting searches when I’m not so sure what I’m exactly sure what I’m searching for or how to spell something. Chrome has similar functionality but you have to type in more because the predictive searches are mixed in with URLs so you get fewer results of the type you want until you narrow things down.
Add Grouping to Tab Context Menu Appears in "about:flags" | thechromesource - Google Chrome and Chrome OS News and Forum
25. Mar, 2011
[...] tabs when there are so many of them open that you cannot see what each individual one has in it? Firefox’s Panorama tries to confront this problem by offering an integrated visual interface as well as a way to group [...]
Daniel Cawrey
25. Mar, 2011
You’re right. I never thought about that. I think the context that I was putting that argument in was based on the UI, but functionality should be just as important.
3 Reasons Why I Prefer Google Chrome | DIY Web Server Blog
01. Apr, 2011
[...] Firefox has the same sort of facility in its extensions etc, and I know its cross platform, and the new version 4 also supports syncing, but I don’t really use it that much anymore, so leave a comment if you have some good [...]