Browser Wars!

[slgrieb]

While doing my morning news read, I came across a new blog on ZDNet by Steven J. Vaughn-Nichols predictably praising Chrome and denigrating Firefox. Well, that's not new; SJVN's lopsided viewpoint is well known. For a more balanced view check out Tom's Hardware Guide's Web Browser Grand Prix series.

For my money, the most relevant quote V-N offers is from longtime Firefox developer Jono DiCarlo: “After years of aspiring to improve software usability, I’ve come to the extremely humbling realization that the single best thing most companies could do to improve usability is to <i>stop changing the UI so often! </i> Let it remain stable long enough for us to learn it and get good at it. There’s no UI better than one you already know, and no UI worse than one you thought you knew but now have to relearn.”

So, have any long time Firefox users been driven to Chrome by recent changes to Firefox? I'm one. Isn't DiCarlo's remark also a perfect comment on Windows 8?

[Guts3d]

True dat! I dread Windows 8 here on Base.

[Ferrit]

Honestly I haven't seen anywhere near enough differences in the recent Firefox upgrades to warrant any kind of re learning or to ever use Chrome.
And i wish I didn't feel this way, but Win 8 is smelling a lot like Vista

[slgrieb]

Honestly I haven't seen anywhere near enough differences in the recent Firefox upgrades to warrant any kind of re learning or to ever use Chrome.
And i wish I didn't feel this way, but Win 8 is smelling a lot like Vista

For my money, the current 6 week release schedule for both Firefox and Chrome is absurd and pointless. My gripe about Firefox is that every new release seems to break some plugin or addon that I like, or screw up rendering on web sites I visit frequently. My complaints about Firefox have largely applied to Chrome as well, but recent Chrome updates seem to have given me fewer problems than Firefox.

Don't get me wrong, I've got a long list of things I dislike about Chrome, and right at the head of the list is their policy of silent updates. That would be worth a thread in itself. However, I like Chrome's security model, and at the moment it generally seems to work better than Firefox for me. All the same, it would be nice to see Firefox revert to a model of more well planned, stable updates. The reason Firefox is losing market share isn't that Chrome is so good, but that they are losing their developer base.

Win8. Big sigh. I always pound commentators who whine about user interfaces. I started out with CP/M 80 and I've even been an Apple IIc owner. I'm about 30 years into this personal computer stuff, and I like to think I'm still flexible and adaptable. I can't see adopting Win8 unless MS radically improves the Desktop environment.

At the same time, I doubt this will matter to most users. I've any number of clients who may have 15 or 20 applications open at the same time, but each and every one of them is generally running in full screen mode. Last year, I built a really sweet system for a local attorney, and she recently had me swap out her 23" Acer LCD monitor for an old Gateway 17" 4x3 monitor because she just didn't like looking at all the white space on the screen. Maybe MS really does get it, after all.