I used Google Chrome this week while I waited for Firefox 3.5.1 to come out. I like both browsers but still prefer Firefox by a slight margin. But Chrome is nice to have for those times when Firefox has unpatched vulnerabilities.Popups: Chrome wins hands down. Firefox doesn’t block all popups, but in a week of using Chrome, I had zero popups. None. That was nice.
Searching: Firefox wins. Most people don’t mind hitting ctrl-f to search, but I’ve grown used to Firefox letting me search by hitting the / key. It’s faster and easier and now that I have the feature I hate not having it.
Blinky crap: Firefox wins. I can disable animated GIFs in Firefox and I can use Flashblock. Maybe I can get Chrome to disable animation too, but I know where to look in Firefox. Firefox will stay near and dear to me as long as it lets me block all that blinky crap.
Speed: Chrome runs Google Maps and the new Yahoo mail faster and on a marginal PC it scrolls text a bit better. But I think Firefox finds sites faster. Both are much faster than IE though, and after suffering through 8 hours of IE at work every day, either one is heavenly.
Search bar: If all you do is search Google, Chrome is better. I routinely search Amazon and eBay, a lot. Chrome’s way of doing it is clumsier than Firefox even though it uses less screen space.
Frankly I like both browsers but I’m glad to have Firefox back. I may find myself alternating between the two based on whatever I happen to be doing.
For searching in Firefox, there’s also the "no-slash" option. Under Tools | Options | Advanced | General, in the top box labeled "Accessibility" is an option for "Search for text when I start typing".
It’s just one keystroke, but it’s still one keystroke.
Out of curiosity, did you run “unchrome”
(http://www.abelssoft.net/unchrome.php) on your
Chrome install to remove Google’s unique tracking ID
that gets installed with the browser?
Another link about the tracking ID:
http://lifehacker.com/5111556/unchrome-anonymizes-
your-google-chrome-installation
I should have also stated, that I haven’t had a pop up
window occur in Firefox since I installed the NoScript (
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722 )
add on a year or so ago. This along with Flash Block
and AdBlockPlus makes for one smooth surfing
experience in Firefox.
Gernam company SRWare has produced a version of Chrome without all the privacy-invading parts. They call it Iron. http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php