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Chrome had the nifty break away title bar tabs before anyone else. But the major improvement that made everyone switch was process separation for each tab. On

Chrome had the nifty break away title bar tabs before anyone else. But the major improvement that made everyone switch was process separation for each tab. One tab could crash while the others stayed functional and a security vulnerability in one tab would have a more difficult time compromising the others. It's also one of the reasons Chome uses so much memory, they failed to keep optimizing their copy-on-write paging behaviour so that tabs would share more memory among themselves. Nowadays Firefox has process separation for tabs AND it's not written by an advertising company, so I like it better.

chappi42 7y ago
> the major improvement that made everyone switch was process separation for each tab In addition I also consider the marketing reach and the success of Android as important. Fwiw I never switched completely to chrome and quite regularly got a hint to try out a better/optimised browser.
muststopmyths 7y ago
But the major improvement that made everyone switch was process separation for each tab Which IE8 had around the same time (It may have launched after Chrome, but in the contemporaneous betas, they both had the feature) What made people switch was a combination of everything google did having the sheen of "cool" around it, and the fact that I.E development was slow and shoddy.
- olyjohn 7y ago
  My perspective on browser history is a little different. I've been following and using Firefox since before it was Firefox. At one point in time, I was working in a computer store. IE6 - 8 was letting ActiveX controls and other scripts run rampant, infecting people like crazy. 99% of our business was malware cleanup and removal due to IE. Once you explained to people what happened, they were appaled and were happy to switch to Firefox, despite many sites only working on IE at the time. THIS is what really triggered the migration away from IE. Firefox was taking off (look at the chart in the linked article), and was starting to dominate, well before Chrome ever became a thing. Those of us on Linux also had Konqueror, and it had a decent userbase as well. I think that's when Google noticed that the IE monopoly was breaking, and they jumped onboard and took Konqueror's code and then launched their own browser. The same code that Apple used for Safari. So they basically came in on the hard work of Firefox and the KHTML team and took over the market by putting Chrome right on Google's homepage. It's my opinion that Chrome didn't become popular because it was better, or because it was cool (no average user cares about that). It became popular by being right there on everybody's home page, right at the perfect time that people were catching on to the fact that IE had zero security. Firefox broke the monopoly and freed us, and then Google and Apple came in and shat all over them.
  - ahartmetz 7y ago
    Blink forked off from WebKit long after WebKit forked off from KHTML. Maybe you wanted to say that, but it reads more like Blink (Chrome engine) forked directly from KHTML.
  - Agenttin 7y ago
    I seem to remember at the time Chrome was faster than FF.
    - mda 7y ago
      Way faster
scarface74 7y ago
Chrome had the nifty break away title bar tabs before anyone else. The first time I saw break away tabs in Safari for Windows in 2007. Before Chrome was introduced.
- basch 7y ago
  Werent safari 3 tabs below the bookmark bar? Safari tabs on top werent until 2009 I wanna say. I thought they quickly reverted it as well. Like Maybe it was just the safari 4 beta?
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Screenshot of an early version of Safari for Windows. Safari 3 https://lifehacker.com/safari-3-beta-now-available-for-windows-too-267828 https://lifehacker.com/safari-3-beta-now-available-for-windo... Safari 5 http://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/safari-for-windows-3-610x458.jpg http://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/safari-fo...
    - basch 7y ago
      I'm looking at the safari 3 screenshot and I don't see tabs in the title bar. I'm pretty sure it wasn't till safari 4 beta. The safari 5 screenshot you have is EDGE with a safari installer in front of it.
dredmorbius 7y ago
Is break-away different from gtk tear-off menus? Because that's ~1999 - 2001. Process sep per tab was a Chrome feature. Unless you count Lynx and separate instances per browser page ;-)

chappi42 7y ago

> the major improvement that made everyone switch was process separation for each tab In addition I also consider the marketing reach and the success of Android as important. Fwiw I never switched completely to chrome and quite regularly got a hint to try out a better/optimised browser.

muststopmyths 7y ago

But the major improvement that made everyone switch was process separation for each tab Which IE8 had around the same time (It may have launched after Chrome, but in the contemporaneous betas, they both had the feature) What made people switch was a combination of everything google did having the sheen of "cool" around it, and the fact that I.E development was slow and shoddy.

olyjohn 7y ago
My perspective on browser history is a little different. I've been following and using Firefox since before it was Firefox. At one point in time, I was working in a computer store. IE6 - 8 was letting ActiveX controls and other scripts run rampant, infecting people like crazy. 99% of our business was malware cleanup and removal due to IE. Once you explained to people what happened, they were appaled and were happy to switch to Firefox, despite many sites only working on IE at the time. THIS is what really triggered the migration away from IE. Firefox was taking off (look at the chart in the linked article), and was starting to dominate, well before Chrome ever became a thing. Those of us on Linux also had Konqueror, and it had a decent userbase as well. I think that's when Google noticed that the IE monopoly was breaking, and they jumped onboard and took Konqueror's code and then launched their own browser. The same code that Apple used for Safari. So they basically came in on the hard work of Firefox and the KHTML team and took over the market by putting Chrome right on Google's homepage. It's my opinion that Chrome didn't become popular because it was better, or because it was cool (no average user cares about that). It became popular by being right there on everybody's home page, right at the perfect time that people were catching on to the fact that IE had zero security. Firefox broke the monopoly and freed us, and then Google and Apple came in and shat all over them.
- ahartmetz 7y ago
  Blink forked off from WebKit long after WebKit forked off from KHTML. Maybe you wanted to say that, but it reads more like Blink (Chrome engine) forked directly from KHTML.
- Agenttin 7y ago
  I seem to remember at the time Chrome was faster than FF.
  - mda 7y ago
    Way faster

scarface74 7y ago

Chrome had the nifty break away title bar tabs before anyone else. The first time I saw break away tabs in Safari for Windows in 2007. Before Chrome was introduced.

basch 7y ago
Werent safari 3 tabs below the bookmark bar? Safari tabs on top werent until 2009 I wanna say. I thought they quickly reverted it as well. Like Maybe it was just the safari 4 beta?
- scarface74 7y ago
  Screenshot of an early version of Safari for Windows. Safari 3 https://lifehacker.com/safari-3-beta-now-available-for-windows-too-267828 https://lifehacker.com/safari-3-beta-now-available-for-windo... Safari 5 http://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/safari-for-windows-3-610x458.jpg http://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/safari-fo...
  - basch 7y ago
    I'm looking at the safari 3 screenshot and I don't see tabs in the title bar. I'm pretty sure it wasn't till safari 4 beta. The safari 5 screenshot you have is EDGE with a safari installer in front of it.

dredmorbius 7y ago

Is break-away different from gtk tear-off menus? Because that's ~1999 - 2001. Process sep per tab was a Chrome feature. Unless you count Lynx and separate instances per browser page ;-)