The Teen Geek

This is the fourth blog in what is looking like becoming a full-blown debate comparing Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

Original Post: Why Firefox IS better by Ziaix

My original rebuttal, purely to show why he is wrong, no points of my own: Why Firefox in NOT better than Chrome

Ziaix’s Counterattack

Responding to Ziaix’s last post

Adblocking: Yes, Chrome doesn’t block in-page ads, that’s absolutely correct, but to be honest, I wouldn’t want it to. Ads are how websites make their money, and besides, they aren’t that annoying. As for pop-ups, I’ve had the exact opposite experience to you, I had very few in Firefox, but I did see a couple. I have never seen a single pop-up that I didn’t want to see. I have, however, had a few cases where it blocked a pop-up that I wanted, however I find Chrome does the best job of allowing you to easily view blocked pop-ups.

Virus checks: I’m going to trust you on this one, once again. I thought Chrome did do virus scans, but I’ll trust your word that it doesn’t.

Sync: No, I didn’t miss the point. You can SYNC your bookmarks across multiple computers with ease, it’s built in to Chrome.

Search Engines: No, you can set it up so that typing in the omnibox and hitting enter will search something other than Google, I just personally prefer Google, so I leave it as that. In fact, I just set Wikipedia to be my default search engine, and I typed “Random”, and it took me to the page on “Randomness”. I will, however, be changing it back, because I prefer Google.

Customize menus etc.: Sorry, but I still don’t fully understand what that is.

Usage tracking: I wasn’t wrong on this point, we were just talking about different things
The fact is you can opt out of most of these, although I do see your point about the one that you can’t. I actually opt in to these things whenever possible, to help make the product better.

Open Source: I had a hunch you would point this out. Chrome is based on Chromium, so while I do appreciate that Chrome itself is not Open Source, for the purposes of any comparison, it’s worth saying that it is.

Popularity: I’m sorry, but I just can’t trust those statistics. By that source, Firefox beets not just any one IE, but all versions of it from 6 and above combined. I accept that Firefox is hundreds of times better than IE, but the majority of users don’t, and I’m going to need another source before I believe this. However, I still say that ‘popularity’ does not give any reflection on which is better. By that argument, Linux is total cr**, and Mac OS isn’t much better. This is something that I KNOW not to be true.

Right click to open links: I don’t know about all laptops, but on mine, just click both mouse buttons and it has the same effect.

Bittorrent: I still don’t get how ANY browser can support bittorrent downloads. Do you mean it Opera has an in-built bittorrent client, like Vuse or µTorrent?
In your defence, I think you may be a bit confused here. I’ve found that Firefox works fine with IRC without an add-on. I just tested it then.
And hey! Don’t knock Wikipedia.

Easter eggs: If you’re interested in seeing those funny things, you can always keep both browsers installed. I would recommend you do this anyway, just to be on the safe side. I don’t think those sort of features a really worth mentioning in a comparison.

Themes: I bet there aren’t any themes that can get back as much screen space as Chrome’s default skin. Removing the menu bar and the title bar was, in my opinion, a genius move by Google, and the two menu buttons make it very easy to get to the tools you want.

And now on to some points of my own

Speed

Just to reiterate points I’ve already made very clear. Chrome is well known to be the fastest of the most popular browsers, with great scores in benchmark tests of all sorts. This includes both plain HTML, and more difficult tests like JavaScript performance.

This is a very old graph, and Chrome is actually a lot better now then it was when this was made, but it shows that with a warm start, Chrome is unbeatable, and that it beats Firefox from a cold start.

PC Games Hardware did a very thorough test of the major browsers, with Google Chrome far beating Firefox, but coming in second to Safari.

I strongly recommend you click on this image to see a more detailed break-down of their results, it’s a very thorough test. Looking at the break-down, I’m not sure how Safari came in second, it seems as though Chrome should have one it by fare, and I think Firefox should be higher up as well, but these guys are professional, and I for one am going to take their results.

Another great comparison was done by PC World. Their summery came with Chrome on top again, with Firefox catching up compared to past versions (this was released not long after a major Firefox update), but still behind. Again, the webpage is very useful for finding out how they conducted their tests, and also for a detailed break-down of the results.

It’s worth mentioning testing done by Microsoft places Chrome in front of Firefox too, but obviously Internet Explorer is placed at the top. This test was done based on load times for the top 25 visited sites on the internet.

Screen Real-Estate

This is a very short point. Comparing a default installation of Google Chrome to a default installation of Firefox, Chrome has far more screen space. This is due to Chrome’s unique positioning of tabs above the URL bar, and removing the title bar. Chrome also removes the menu bar (File, Edit, and all those other hundreds of confusing options), and instead gives two simple buttons. One button is for options relating to the page you are on, such as Save, Find, and Print, as well as more advanced tools like View Source. The other button relates to Google Chrome, this is for things like accessing options, new tabs, or going into ‘incognito’ mode (more on that later).

Chrome also by default does not show the status bar when it is not needed. This means an extra half a centimetre or so of space at the bottom of the screen.

It can, like any browser, be put into full-screen mode, and this renders all browsers equal, so there is no point giving this any more mention then necessary.

Stability and Security

This is one point that I am finding very difficult to write about. Basically, Google Chrome has a completely unique way of handling tabs and extensions, and this improves both the stability and the security of the browser. In most browsers, the whole thing is just one system process. Chrome took the unique idea of putting each tab in its own process, and then giving each extension its own process too. What this means is that if one extension or tab crashes for any reason, you can simply end that process (using Chrome’s inbuilt task manager), leaving everything else in-tact.

It also improves security, because it allows the majority of the web processes to run with limited permissions, but still allows extra permissions where they are needed.

Google made a series of comics about this, which I found really interesting, and it’s what got me to make the switch. I realise that I haven’t been very convincing about this point, but just trust me, it is a truly revolutionary idea.

Sync Bookmarks

This can be done in Firefox, according to Ziaix, but it requires a plugin to work. Google Chrome has this feature built in. I can’t vouch for how well this works, because it’s a feature I’ve not yet needed, however I certainly know that when it is needed, it would be an absolutely invaluable tool to have. I have not heard any negative reports about this tool, and seeing as it’s from Google, I imagine it does work exactly as it’s supposed to.

Application Shortcuts

This provides a very useful and easy way to access some of your favourite web applications very quickly and simply. All you have to do is click on the page button, and then “Create Application Shortcut”, and it’s done.

Application Shortcuts also work very well with Google Gears (also available in Firefox), to allow you to use your applications off-line. I make use of just three applications: Gmail, Google Reader, and Google Wave. Because the majority of my subscriptions are pictures (LOLCats, FailBlog etc.), I don’t have offline enabled for Reader, but I do with Gmail. Using Gmail in this way is amazing. I can open it from my desktop with ease, and I can even write and read emails when I don’t have a connection for whatever reason, and then have them sent when I do get a connection.

Google Wave, I find is better to use as an application then in a normal browser window. Because of how unlike traditional web pages it is, it feels more natural to remove the address bar.

I’m sure there are plenty of other things I could talk about, like the advanced New Tab page, but this post is already over 1,500 words. That’s more then one word for every metre I raced in the first race at sports day, last Thursday. I’m going to cut it here, and I hope you can see how Firefox isn’t really better then Chrome at all.

In this writer’s opinion, the differences between Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox are quite large, however they are both equally good. Chrome has the extra speed and screen space, while Firefox has more customisability. It’s really just down to the opinion of the user.

Popularity: 7%