Tag Archives: Firefox vs Chrome
Mozilla Challenges Google: Open Source Chrome Isn’t Good Enough
Posted on 27. Jul, 2011 by Wolfgang Gruener. 
1 Comments
Editor’s note: this article originally appeared on our partnership site ConceivablyTech.
There are people who claim that Mozilla does not have the guts to openly challenge Google in the same way the company attacked Microsoft in the mid-2000s. Mozilla’s official competitive strategy can be described as almost being mushy in a time when the company needs to be more aggressive than ever to make its case. But the company gets more confident and its chairman has just told us that, while Google is the lesser of two evils, Firefox will have to evolve to sustain its role as the Robin Hood of the open web.
Mozilla’s direction for Firefox has been quite confusing lately. Firefox 4 was a catch-up play that ended up to be, more or less, damage control in a market environment that is problematic for Firefox: It is caught in the middle of a cut-throat competition for market shares between Microsoft and Google.
The role of a future Firefox has not been clear as its consumer and business roles were questioned, as its capability to handle web applications are still blurry and some of Mozilla’s employees engaged in self-destructive measures in which Mozilla products are openly criticized by its own staff. Thankfully, a recent blog post by Mozilla’s chairman, Mitchell Baker provided a bit more clarity on the Firefox of the future: Firefox will be more than a browser down the road (this is, by the way, the most significant update on her vision for Firefox since her strategy that included a mobile browser for 2010.)
The blog post itself is little more than the fluff you would expect from vision statements. Baker argues that Firefox needs to expand:
“For one thing, even if I use Firefox, I use it today to create information about myself that lives in multiple data silos (or “websites” or “apps” or “services”). These are often inter-operable, subject to different rules, and usually difficult or impossible to combine. Access to information I’ve created about myself is fragmented. The set of values that we have built into Firefox is not yet present in this information / data layer.
thechromesource Daily: Links for 4/28/11
Posted on 28. Apr, 2011 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
Want to know why Chrome OS devices might first arrive with Intel processors? Google’s a big customer.
The Beta and Stable Channels of Chrome have been updated to fix a Windows painting issue.
The Dev Channel of Chrome has been updated with UI and performance fixes.
Multiple profile support has arrived to Chrome’s Canary builds.
Mozilla is working on an overhaul of its graphics and Javascript engine to try and combat Chrome gaining share.
Firefox 4 vs Chrome: What’s the Difference?
Posted on 24. Mar, 2011 by Daniel Cawrey. 6 Comments
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.
Firefox Going the Way of Chrome Could be a Troubling Sign for Mozilla
Posted on 07. Feb, 2011 by Daniel Cawrey. 7 Comments
When I first saw that Firefox was expecting to release multiple versions this year I of course thought of Chrome. It should come to no surprise that Mozilla is trying to keep up with Google’s browser, but is starting to fall behind. I mean, whatever happened to Firefox 4? I remember trying the Beta, not being impressed with it, and then forgetting about it.
Well, it turns out that Firefox 4 is behind schedule. Instead of Mozilla waiting for all of the new features/fixes for the browser, they are going to a faster release cycle.
Video: Chrome 7 vs Firefox 4 with Hardware Acceleration
Posted on 11. Sep, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
The newest version of Firefox 4, Beta 5, has hardware acceleration. So I decided to see which browser ran the Asteroid Belt test better: Chrome 7 with the “-enable-accelerated-compositing” switch, or the integrated acceleration within Firefox.
Web Developers Still Using Firefox; Will People Have Two Browsers?
Posted on 18. Aug, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 3 Comments
While a good amount of people are switching over to using Chrome’s browser for their basic web needs, it still lacks the developer tools that many people who create for the web need. Indeed, Mozilla’s Chris Blizzard has said such in a recent interview with derstandard.at’s Von Andreas Proschofsky, and Blizzard sees a future where people use more than one browser.
“Actually I think a lot of people are using both now, but it’s interesting to see for sure. From a web developer standpoint I still think Firefox’ tools are far superior than anybody else’s”, Blizzard said.
He’s right. If you are going to spend time doing development work and/or web support, you need tools like Firebug. Interestingly enough, Google’s own Page Speed that I found in Webmaster Tools only comes as a add-in for Firefox to check page loading statistics, which has been identified as a factor in search rankings.
Of course, the idea is to endear users to downloading and sticking with Chrome so pushing far geeker tools that offer the same capabilities as Firebug are probably further down the road. Continuing on the path of creating a powerful browser that can serve as the basis for an operating system appears to be the key priorty for Google in 2010.
There is a lingering question to this: are people really going to use two browsers in the future?
Firefox 4 Going the Auto-Update Method
Posted on 08. Aug, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 4 Comments
It was a big deal when Google released Chrome and decide that the browser needed to be updated automatically without user prompting. While somewhat controversial, the method works and keeps Chrome as current as possible, thwarting it from malicious attacks. Indeed, a recent study has shown that 97% of Chrome users are running the most recent version because of the auto-update method.
Now the new version of Firefox, the fourth installment, will go down this route and Mozilla will quietly update their browser automatically. Not only does this keep the browser safer, it allows Mozilla to better compete directly with Chrome by being able to stream updates to users.
Take a look at these graphs on update cycles for both Chrome and Firefox.
You can see that Chrome users in the past have been recipients of browser updates that allow previous versions to simply die off. Consider that if Microsoft had been doing this method some time ago, they wouldn’t be confronted with the Internet Explorer 6 scrutiny they’ve been under; instead they have opted to promote Windows 7 instead which does version 8 of IE.
Does Chrome Only Have “Perceived” Speed Superiority?
Posted on 18. Jun, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
It was brought to my attention today that another intrepid blogger has taken a highly technical view on the Firefox versus Chrome debate. Since we’ve put up articles and videos directly related to this topic, it seems that we should give these thoughts a fair view here. The contention here is whether Chrome is really that fast, or if it is simply a perception from its user interface.
Here are some graphs and videos, check out the link to get more information on the terminology. I learned a lot from this post, and here’s hoping that you do too.
