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Comment by PhasmaFelis | Hacker News Reader

I like Chrome. I think it's a better browser than Firefox. Having to switch back, after several years settling into Chrome's extensions and configurations, would really piss me off. But I'll do it if Chrome implements this bullshit and Firefox doesn't.

Wonder if I've still got tabs saved from the last time I seriously used Firefox, years ago. Probably not...

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I use both browsers regularly, but Firefox out of preference. It amazes me at how under performing chrome has become over the years. Font rendering, for one. The fact that they STILL don't have DirectWrite font rendering on Windows, something that has been with IE and FF since FF 3.6, amazes me.

Good luck trying to get a webfont to render the same (or look any good) in Chrome as it does in IE and FF on Winderps. The sheer fact that it isn't IE for once...

The font thing, while somewhat recent in usage, should have been in Chrome ages ago. Not going to bother getting into Chromes other more critical flaws as I feel like these threads devolve into this kind of shit too easily.

Just sucks that Chrome has gone from this cool browser that actually is progressive, to some kind of Ad-friendly extension of Google that just qualifies as "better than IE!".

Methinks you should jump on FF, it's better, and not because it may not support some arbitrary HTMl5 spec that we wont see for half a decade.

It seems many Chrome users have last used FF 3.6 and still compare Chrome to that. Meanwhile Chrome has gotten slow and annoying. The old "boiling frog" anecdote comes to mind.

Yep. I remember Chrome was blasting fast when I switched to it when it appeared. I switched back to FF few months ago and I like it better, especially on Android.

I went back to firefox and could not be happier.

Indeed, with firebug for debuging and firefox sync, ever single feature I liked in Chrome is done as well or better in FF. Add the bonus that it performs faster and is leaner on memory, and I dropped Chrome some time ago.

Does Firebug pretty print minified JavaScript now?

Yes

If there is I couldn't find the option

The thing about Chrome is that while the font rendering is horrible the dev tools are super awesome. At work I end up using FF for reading text and Chrome for inspecting/debugging.

One of my main reasons for using FF is firebug. That said, chrome's dev tools are wonderful and I'll often use both in tandem.

What's your opinion of Firefox's new developer tools?

Firebug is much better.

- Tools like YSlow and PageSpeed require Firebug.

- You can't disable the browser cache from FF devtools, which really sucks when you are trying to debug a broken redirect.

- When inspecting an element in FF devtools, :before and :after CSS properties will not be shown. I wasted many hours debugging a CSS refactor because of this (imagine going up the DOM, comparing computed CSS properties until you reach the root). Both Firebug and Chrome devtools will show :before and :after properties.

I think Firebug and the Chrome devtools are comparable in quality.

> When inspecting an element in FF devtools, :before and :after CSS properties will not be shown.

It was fixed recently. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/09/new-features-in-the-firefo...

Can you even debug a web worker with Firebug? How about SourceMap support? The times when I've had to switch to FF devtools have been pretty painful. The profiling and tracing tools in chrome also seem lightyears better.

> Chrome devtools will show :before and :after properties.

And on that, I was plesently surprised to see Chrome will now display :before and :after psuedo elements in the DOM structure

The responsive design view is very handy. It switches the size of the view port without changing the size of the whole window. I still use firebug most of the time, but there are some issues with firebug you have to be careful of. See this post for an example http://perfectionkills.com/understanding-delete/#firebug_con...

The profiler is nice, a lot better than Chrome IMO.

I would switch back to FireFox if I could figure out how to remove the titlebar so that my tabs properly lined up with the top of my screen. (Running under Linux Mint Cinnamon).

Try this

https://code.google.com/p/mactype/

Chrome already implements it [1], it's in your browser right now.

I personally use Safari, but if Mozilla supports this pledge, I'll move back.

[1] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list?can=1&q=EME&c...

It's a draft that's still changing. How are they supporting a moving target?

update every 6 weeks

How many CDMs have they created? Genuinely interested.

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=275788

"Part 2 will incorporate the EME API with the Widevine CDM and is slated for a later release (M31)"

OK, and what does the Widevine CDM entail? Does it run on all operating systems?

I just went here:

https://tools.google.com/dlpage/widevine

Seems only Window and Mac for desktop, maybe it's only in Chrome for Linux on ia32 and ia64?

It appears it runs on Linux and Windows, but not on ARM devices.

I switched from firefox to chrome because of firefox's chronic memory leaks, and decided to live without extensions. Now I've switched back because firefox won't attempt to load tabs until you actually focus them.

Bookmark all tabs, exit one browser, open another, import the bookmarks. Mozilla and Chrome can import each other's bookmarks.

BTW I switched to Firefox on my laptop since it seems to be much less resource-hungry than Chrome. Not painful.

Give FF a try again. It has vastly improved since FF 3.6.

Yeah, sounds like this is a good time to do that.

+1, switched to Chrome with regret, because of Ff's bloating UI in 3-3.6 and its accompanying slowness.

-1 to the logic of switching "if they implement drm": If your drmized content isn't available in FF, you'll have all incentives to come back. Unfortunately.

> -1 to the logic of switching "if they implement drm": If your drmized content isn't available in FF, you'll have all incentives to come back.

No I won't. I'll either find an uncrippled version of the content -- for example on TPB -- or I simply won't look at it.

DRM is a perversion of the WWW, and Berners-Lee is wrong to allow his invention to be sullied in this way. The web has been successful because it consists of open standards which means anyone can build on it. Just as tcp/ip is an open standard and Berners-Lee didn't need anyone's permission to build http and html. Take away that openness, and you'll be destroying something very valuable.

If the MAFIAA don't like the open web and want a locked-down system, let them build their own. I'm sure it'll be every bit as successful as Windows RT or the Ford Edsel were.

I think aragot was using 'you' to mean 'the user'. While you may be motivated to find uncrippled versions of the content, you can rest assured that the vast majority of users will not, and will just switch browser.

You're probably right, although having said that I know lots of people who don't have an IT background who use BitTorrent because it is less hassle than DRM.

Please consider switching back to FF, at least for the same reasons, if not for all the other ones (FOSS, no backdoors and so on). If you want the same look as Chrome, try the UX nightlies. Butter smooth too. Best browser ever.

Does it finally have good flash and JS blockers? Regardless, i hate the tab system and address bar search in Chrome, wish it was like Firefox's, then I'd switch because it's faster...

I switched back to Firefox when Chrome's performance slid to the point where it was unusable after a day. I forgot what it was like to have middle click work correctly.

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