A provocative article by Keir Thomas assures that “Firefox May Already Be Dead”.
I wouldn’t go as far as that, but if I see myself as the trend, I can definitely say it’s definitely heading that way.
The problem with Firefox and IE is the growing complexity of web apps and their reliance on JavaScript.
For example, have you seen the source code for Facebook? There is a lot of software code that gets transferred for the client computer to process. In this scenario, the browser not only becomes an HTML renderer (which is what IE and Firefox were primarily built to do), but a code processing application. Google waited, it seems, for the right moment to introduce a new breed of browsers: the ones that are capable of flying through JavaScript code and not through dummy HTML.
This is what Dave Winer talks about in his post “What Firefox Should Do“. The browser can’t just read source code. It has to react, make decisions. Is this video? Render a video player. Is this JavaScript snippet being called repeatedly? Let me cache it.
The only thing that keeps me from switiching to Chrome 100% is Firebug, and probably one or two other extensions I use once in a while (like S3Fox). Google is reportedly working on something akin to extensions and Firefox seems to be standing still, waiting for that to happen.
The latest software updates for Firefox have been security related. But even in that department, Chrome just kicked Firefox’s and IE’s ass.
The other big issue I hear is Mac OS availability. I’m sure that’s coming too.
I started using Chrome back in September, and it quickly became my main browser. After running Chrome, I realized how much time I spent waiting for Firefox to render stuff, to react to my input. I can’t go back now. It’s like watching HDTV at your friend’s house and going back to your NTSC set at home.
Not cool.
Can Mozilla just rewrite the whole codebase and come up with a radical browser? Why do that if Webkit (which is an open source project and the basis for Safari and Chrome) does such a fantastic job already?
It truly is a hard time for Firefox.
What about you? Have you made the switch from Firefox to Chrome? What keeps you from doing so?
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