Counterattack!

So, in reply to Zagoraths scathing arguments against Firefox and for Chrome, it appears I will have to make an effort and build a solid, reliable argument for FF. [And this time, I'll check my facts...]

Adblocking
Using NoScript and/or AdBlock Plus, Firefox can block in-page ads. Also, I think that Firefox has a superior pop-up blocker, my evidence for this being that I never see pop-ups in Firefox, but often see them (but not many) in Chrome.

Addons

Firefox does have a lot of great addons, but really, are they necessary?

No. But! They can add a huge amount of functionality to Firefox. If these were built in features, Firefox would be several GB in size. Some of my arguments give examples of what they can do, but there are a huge number of add-ons for Firefox.

Virus checks

This is something that Chrome does as well…

Completely wrong. In a fair test, using the Eicar Anti-virus test file [http://www.eicar.org/anti_virus_test_file.htm] I downloaded all four tests in Firefox and Chrome. Results:

• Firefox: 4/4
• Chrome: 0/4

Firefox not only picked up all four ‘viruses’, but used the computers own anti-virus scanner to do so (In this case AVG (Which is only temporary )). This is very good – if Firefox used it’s own scanner, it would not be as effective as the computers scanner (in most cases), leaving a weak spot in a systems defences. Chrome, I am sorry to say, failed this miserably, not even scanning them.

Sync

Bookmarks: Google Chrome has this feature built-in now. You don’t even need an addon to use it.

Sorry, you missed the point there. C’mon, even IE can do bookmarks without anything extra. No, what I’m talking about is Weave. It syncs all your bookmarks, history, preferences (some), tabs and passwords with the Weave server, allowing your other Firefox’s to sync with that as well. For instance, keeping your stuff the same between a laptop and desktop. [I just go for syncing the entire profile in dropbox... ]

Search Engines

Your point here clearly shows your ignorance. If you think Chrome can only use Google as the default search engine, then you clearly haven’t used Chrome.

Chrome’s url bar runs on Google searches. You know the helpful little suggestions? Google. On the other hand, Firefox’s Awesomebar does this as well.

Tool-bars

All I can say to that is “yuck”. I hated all those toolbars that came with various programs before, and I’m glad to be rid of them in Chrome.

Yeah but no. While those extra toolbars cannot even infect Chrome, in Firefox they are easy to get rid of, cannot install themselves, and a few are actually useful. Such as the Text Formatting Toolbar add-on. This gives a nice simple toolbar, that can easily format BBCode, Wiki markup and HTML when editing in a textbox. Tags can be added, such as the spoiler tag for forums, which is a real help for me (thought it wasn’t easy to add to the toolbar…)

Configuration

FF has much more configuration options than Chrome, however, the average user will never see any of these options. For most people these are never needed, and for the rest, they are very rarely used.

For the average user, they aren’t seen, they aren’t needed. For the advanced user, they are easy to get to and can help make Firefox much easier for a specific user.

Cookie management
Several add-ons are available that will:

• Block tracking cookies such as Google’s,
• Destroy unwanted cookies perioicallly,
• And block cookies from certain websites (built-in to FF)

Easter eggs

Are just that, easter eggs. Sure, they’re funny, but not really useful.

Yeah, but Chrome don’t have them. Also, stuff like “Here be dragons!” on about:config make Firefox much more fun to use .

Customise menus and edit text in outside editor

I have no idea what this is, nor why one would want it.

Too very useful add-ons. The first lets the menus be edited, making them more suited to the user, and the second let the contents of a text box be edited in another program, e.g. Notepad++. The advantage being for people who type code, giving them a GUI meant for the job, with syntax highlighting etc.

JavaScript speed

This is clearly wrong. In fact, one of the biggest advantages of Chrome is that it is FASTER in not just plain HTML, but also in JavaScript.

Hmm. I’m not sure on this one. I’ve seen several tests on this, and the results are conflicting. So I’m not sure, but chrome often feels faster…

Form Fill

I’ve tried these out in the past, and they’ve never seemed to work for me. I’m happy manually entering my information. Chrome does remember usernames and passwords and can automatically log you in, like any browser.

Try Sxipper. I’ve been using it for ages, and as well as saving multiple logins for sites, forms are filled in very well. I will often have to add information I haven’t given it, but it still saves a lot of time.

Languages

I’m going to trust your statistics, and say that you win this point.

Yep, although I was wrong about the extra, that was based on page translations, not Firefox’s language.

Usage tracking

Just go into incognito mode and it saves nothing to your computer. I think it’s the same with Firefox… I don’t know how reliable this source is, but have a look anyway http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1263534.html

No. That’s wrong. That will stop it saving anything to your computer. BUT the problem is, at several pionts, Chrome will send info to their servers. From Wikipedia:

Chrome sends details about its usage to Google through both optional and non-optional user tracking mechanisms.

Tracking methods

Method	Information sent	When	Optional?
RLZ identifier	Encoded string, according to Google, contains non-identifying information such as when Chrome was installed.	Every 24 hours On Google search query When “significant events occur”	No
clientID	Unique Identifier used for statistics service	Unknown	Yes
Suggest	Text typed into the address bar	While being typed	Yes
Page not found	Text typed into the address bar	Upon receiving “Server not found” response	Yes
Bug tracker	Details about crashes and failures	Unknown	Yes

OS Support

For the moment, you win this point, however Google is working on support for Mac OS and Linux, so it won’t stay that way for long.

Sure. But Firefox has supported these for much longer, and has support for other systems (however, I haven’t been able to find evidence of this…

Open source

Chrome is open source too, again you show your ignorance.

Wrong agian: Chromium is open-source, but the actual Chrome browser is not. There isn’t a huge amount of difference between them thought.

Popularity

This shows nothing about how good it is, only how many people use it. If you go by this, IE is far greater than FF.

From http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp, a pretty reliable source. As you can see, Firefox beats any individual IE, and all the others.

2009	IE8	IE7	IE6	Firefox	Chrome	Safari	Opera
October	12.8%	14.1%	10.6%	47.5%	8.0%	3.8%	2.3%

Profiles [New!]
Firefox can have multiple profiles, and can run several at once if it needs to. Each profile has it’s own settings, history, bookmarks, add-ons. In fact, anything that can be changed in Firefox is stored in the profile. This can be useful in a huge number of ways; such as running profiles for individual users on the same windows account, or testing add-ons, or running Firefox with diffrent settings. Profiles can also be transferred between computers. This is a major feature of Firefox that Chrome doesn’t have.

Right-click to open links

Why can’t you just left click? If you mean in a new tab, just middle click…

This is really important! Think – laptop touchpads generally have only two buttons: left click and right click. I open a lot of new tabs, and right clicking and then finding “open in new tab” takes a lot of time, so this is really useful for people using laptops.

RSS Support

You mean it has an in-built RSS reader? I’m not sure what this point is about, but you can easily use Google Reader, or some other thing.

Firefox has several RSS readers, several on-line/add-on (they uses parts of both) readers, live bookmarks built in (a bookmarks folder that auto updates with items from an RSS feed inside) and can display rss index pages. Chrome can use only web-based RSS readers.

Script blocking

If you mean dangerous scripts, I believe Chrome has this built in, but I’m not sure.

Support

Bittorrent? I’m confused how you can say any browser supports it.

I was wrong. Damn wikipedians . However, Opera supports .torrent downloads.

IRC is supported by Chrome, I use at http://live.pirillo.com from time to time.

You win that one. Firefox needs an add-on.

Themes

A great advantage, but I personally prefer the look of Chrome to any theme or persona from Firefox. The idea of having tabs at the top, and doing away with the title bar is brilliant. It really works to one of Chrome’s most minor, but unbelievably useful advantages: that it has far more screen space then any other browser. Chrome also doesn’t show the status bar when it’s not needed, another simple, but brilliantily useful feature that is completely unique.

Firefox can hide its statusbar whenever it wants to, and auto hide with an add-on. But yes, Chrome has an awesome theme. I even use it’s theme for Firefox!

User styles and scripts

I don’t know what these are, so I’m not going to comment.

Video Downloaders

I personally don’t know why one would use any desktop software or browser addon, when you can do it perfectly simply, high quality, free, and no hard drive space is used by going to keepvid.com

Simple. Easy. Takes seconds (It uses the default Firefox downloader, not anything fancy).

Web design tools

Don’t know exactly what this is, but sounds like a web publishing software type thing, like a browser based version of expression web, or FrontPage.

It isn’t anything in particular, but Firefox has a huge range of tools and add-ons to help web designers, far to many to list here.

So, there’s my new argument for Firefox. Chrome has a lot going for it, but Firefox has so much more.