Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by tvon | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

tvon

Things keeping me from using Chrome:

* Lack of built-in RSS support. This one kind of blows my mind.

* Worst progress indicator I've ever seen.

* Can't open external links in new windows, have to open in "tab of whatever my last used browser window was".

* Flash crashes more than it does in Safari/Firefox, but I don't blame Chrome for that.

Not exactly constructive to the conversation I guess, but at least the first three things have been driving me nuts for a bit.

View on HN

Just like you, many things that are keeping me from switching to Chrome from FF but the biggest one for me, and perhaps lots of FF users out there, is faithfulness. We have known it's a pain (since Chrome’s appearance) but we can bear with it because at least, FF doesn't leave their users behind.

They are working on new Javascript engine which targets to a significant improvement in speed: http://ajaxian.com/archives/mozilla-jagermonkey-method-based...

They are also working on stability and I would bet it will be much better than Chrome (my friend is using Chrome and he reported lots of crashes even though it is designed for "crash free" at beginning). http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/firefox_implement_outo...

FF is playing catch up on these issues but hopefully, with all other stuffs (Weave, Contact, Account Manager...) that Mozilla is investing in, FF will be the world champion in browser competition market!

For me, it's the lack of addons that can radically change the UI. In Firefox, I run Vimperator (there's a few addons that are catching up to it in Chrome, but they cannot hide the various toolbars afaik), Hide Title Bar (minor, but nice to have), and Tree Style Tabs (essential. Chrome cannot handle large numbers of tabs, and all the addons I've seen that attempt to handle this issue aren't nearly as nice). The UI is almost unrecognizable, but I actually like the set up. Unfortunately, Chrome simply cannot do that type of modification, at least as far as I know. I'd be very happy to be proven wrong here. The speed of Chrome is fantastic, I just wish it had those few addons.

RSS reader: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/search?itemlang=&q=... (yes, not built in, but quite easy to install ;) )

You meant http://www.google.com/reader, right? (or one of several online alternatives). Why would anyone want to read their RSS feeds in a single browser on a single machine in 2010? Do people these days really spend all their online time at a single machine?

When a user clicks on a .rss URL in FF the page is rendered in a human-readable format. This aids the user in determining whether or not the feed is worth subscribing to.

Chrome displays it in plaintext. Now you've gotta import it into your reader before you decide if you really even want to subscribe.

You can preview feeds in Google Reader now, without having to add them.

Actually i meant all of the rss reading eyxtension there. I thought some of them are Google Reader integration and some of them are the standard rss-fetching kind.. never tried one of them, though ;)

Does it have Adblock+ yet? Until that's in Chrome, I'll be using Firefox.

Adblock: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gighmmpiobklfepj...

Isn't as effective in Chrome as it is in Firefox, last time I used it (couple months ago, probably).

My list of things keeping from Chrome is same as yours though I'd also add lack of google gears support. I don't understand how they have that for firefox but they don't have it from Chrome. In addition to this Chrome (on the mac) crashes quite frequently for me.

Because Google Gears is dead.

Client-side HTML5 databases have supplanted gears.

Fair enough - so how do I use google docs when I'm offline?

Alternatively, would you have suggestions on some other service that provides similar doc capability with html5 database?

Good question(s), I was just relaying the decision Google made:

http://gearsblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/hello-html5.html

Thanks...that makes total sense. I need to (sadly) give google gears the boot.

I don't understand how they are missing the Pagespeed plugin...Available for firefox, but not Chrome, their own browser.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com