The problem with stopping using Firefox is that I’ve become dependent on the add-ons, particularty Echofon for Twitter, the webmail reader and Xmarks. For that reason I won’t be moving to Chrome any time soon.

Granted, I’m only using 7 extensions/addons, plus 4 themes floating around, but…FF only takes 5 secs to load once:

A. Bookmarks are organized, and
B. Updates to addons, etc. are in.

Anything longer is due to:

A. Crappy plugins
B. Sloppy end user interaction

Yeah FF can be a hog if untamed, however, Chrome is a far larger pita.
That “less-cluttered” interface is not very useful at all imo – since when did “hide all the buttons” mean “streamlined”? Or Google’s idea of a helper, that god-awful mosaic default page….nope that won’t giveaway I was shopping for the wife’s b-day gift at all….until she hits ‘New Tab’!

How flipping annoying is that sh*t?

I won’t even go into the total lack of privacy options in Chrome, or total lack of protection support for it’s users, memory hogging addins(just like FF btw), and so far…this article reads like a dipsh*t blinded by shiny(or lack thereof).

Do you really want to open another window for Google to peep through?

I’ve found that periodically (once or twice a year) blowing away your firefox profile and starting from scratch makes firefox much much faster to start up. That’s a price I’m happy to pay to have access to the more powerful extensions that are possible with firefox.

Chrome does not handle Flash or Shockwave as handily as Firefox or even Explorer. My kids play a lot of web games, and crashes are frequent on nickjr and lego.com.

Both Firefox and Chrome never take more than a couple of seconds to start on my W7 machine so I have no idea how it can take you 10-30. Also, Firefox looks great when combined with the All-Glass add-on and I for one can’t live without AdBlock Plus. Plus, and this is a small but important issue, Firefox’ smooth scrolling makes it much more usable day-to-day.

I’ve reverted to Opera, after moving to Firefox in it’s early days. FF’s general lethargy in use and frequent lockups on a fresh W7 install were the final straw.Opera is available on Windows, Ubuntu and Android and the Opera Link system is great.I use FF at work, simply because it’s that or IE6!

On my not particularly spectacularly fast machine (Core 2 Duo E7400 (2.8GHz)), Firefox start-up is 1.2 seconds. It also picks up my gnome theme and looks great. If it is taking you 30 seconds to start, you have something seriously wrong with your system!

BC… what’s the underlying OS/Machine? How long has it been since you gave it a good old washout? Most Windows apps on most people’s machines tend to follow that “gradual slowdown” lifecycle. Run CCleaner and Defraggler on the machine about 3 times and then what does it do?

Chrome pros: snappy, cool looks, Google search from the address bar
Chrome cons: no bookmarking option under right click (real shame as that’s what I use very often), no easy way of direct placing a bookmark into a folder, less convenient access to history pull-down menu (no dedicated arrow)

One of the things FF is looking at for future editions is updating in the background as Chrome does now. With Chrome you have only swapped a faster startup with your browser for a slower start to your OS.

I’m still astonished that it takes 5-10 seconds to load up in the event of add-ons not needing an update. Granted, Chrome is a little faster to load on any PC with a reasonable spec, but I found that on my very old, very slow laptop, Firefox was actually superior.

I too am stunned at Barry Collins’ claim of a 30 second start up for Firefox after not having opened it for a week.

Though Chrome is my browser of choice I have Firefox installed. I hadn’t opened it in at least two weeks (on my Win 7 Pro, Core 2 Quad system) before now and it opened and settled down in less than 2 seconds. There have been occasion swhere it’s asked me to reboot after having update but these haven’t seemed a hindrance. It’s still a great browser and you cannot beat it for extensions and compatibility. There actually a small number of sites out there (in my own browsing experience) that Chrome does not work well. Whenever this is the case I fill in with Firefox, though admittedly I don’t need to do this often.

Chrome has the usability touches that I like. The fact that any new tabs I open are already loaded with links for the sites I visit most often is just so convenient. I love the way it handles downloads also.

Google really understands usability and that has to be applauded.

It’s very unpredictable that new fad of clutter-free / ultrafast browsers will catch on in the very near future. Most of us do not really care about these factors when checking our mail, chatting, facebooking, watching Youtube, etc.