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Of the people I know who have switched from Firefox to Chrome, the reason is always speed. Chrome is undeniably faster than Firefox. Unfortunately for the autho

Of the people I know who have switched from Firefox to Chrome, the reason is always speed. Chrome is undeniably faster than Firefox. Unfortunately for the author of this article piece, the problem isn't putting a new frontend on Gecko, the problem is that Gecko isn't fast enough. I haven't been involved with the project in years other than following the blogs of key developers, but I've always been under the impression that the platform guys had the latitude to do whatever they wanted but making big changes for unknown gains is undesirable. This is very different from the Netscape controlled bureaucracy that led to the m/b fork.

ZeroGravitas 16y ago
When people actually test these things I think they generally show that Chrome isn't undeniably faster than Firefox. Chrome wins on Javascript execution and Firefox currently has major startup problems because of a large codebase and poor UI that continually interrupts you and asks for restarts. But Firefox wins, against stereotype, for memory usage and page load speed (more so with ad blockers installed). They've clearly lost the faith of many vocal geeks, but I'm really not sure how much of that is based on fact rather than some kind of herd instinct.
- grayrest 16y ago
  > But Firefox wins, against stereotype, for memory usage and page load speed (more so with ad blockers installed). I'll agree on memory, and that's one of the reasons I continue to use Firefox but memory is not speed. It's my impression that Chrome wins on JS execution and DOM manipulation/reflow, which is really what I are about as a developer and (generally) as a user. When you're on a low end machine, these make a big difference. When you're on a machine like most developers have, it really doesn't except in technology demos. The Jaegermonkey and Layers work should help out, but I'm not sure that Firefox will ever catch Chrome. It's a difference in development philosophy. Webkit reverts ANY performance degradation while Mozilla reverts all performance regressions except for new features. I prefer Mozilla's philosophy since the places where this matters is generally a performance vs edge case correctness tradeoff.

ZeroGravitas 16y ago

When people actually test these things I think they generally show that Chrome isn't undeniably faster than Firefox. Chrome wins on Javascript execution and Firefox currently has major startup problems because of a large codebase and poor UI that continually interrupts you and asks for restarts. But Firefox wins, against stereotype, for memory usage and page load speed (more so with ad blockers installed). They've clearly lost the faith of many vocal geeks, but I'm really not sure how much of that is based on fact rather than some kind of herd instinct.

grayrest 16y ago
> But Firefox wins, against stereotype, for memory usage and page load speed (more so with ad blockers installed). I'll agree on memory, and that's one of the reasons I continue to use Firefox but memory is not speed. It's my impression that Chrome wins on JS execution and DOM manipulation/reflow, which is really what I are about as a developer and (generally) as a user. When you're on a low end machine, these make a big difference. When you're on a machine like most developers have, it really doesn't except in technology demos. The Jaegermonkey and Layers work should help out, but I'm not sure that Firefox will ever catch Chrome. It's a difference in development philosophy. Webkit reverts ANY performance degradation while Mozilla reverts all performance regressions except for new features. I prefer Mozilla's philosophy since the places where this matters is generally a performance vs edge case correctness tradeoff.