Why Firefox Has Jumped the Shark

"the stupid URL bar that explodes into a list of sites whenever I type even a single letter there"<p>Um, that feature is brilliant, it's the only way I can still handle my bookmarks. Haven't tried Google Chrome, so I don't know if they have come up with a better solution. Have they?

I use (actually use) about 35 plug-ins, around 50 user styles, and a few Greasemonkey scripts. Until Chrome gets all those, no way I can use Chrome.<p>I've customized my Firefox experience so much, most people can't even recognize it. No way I can do that on Chrome.<p>And in Linux, I run Firefox totally in a ramdisk, so it's ridiculously fast:<p><a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1120475" rel="nofollow">http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1120475</a>

"It just doesn't feel right any more" - this point makes no sense at all, and the worst part is that the whole article is based on this saying.<p>(I suspect the real meaning is "It is not that brand new shiny toy any more, and Chrome is")

The expression "jumped the shark" has jumped the shark.

Little more than linkbait, and less well argued than a Dvorak piece.

Lots of handwaving, some ad hominem and plenty of condescension. I like Chrome's speed and stability. I really like the idea that if one tab crashes (beyond recovery), the rest will survive. But I still use Firefox and will go on doing so until Chrome gives me two things I need:<p>1) a set of plugins (add-ons, extensions, whatever) equivalent to the ones I use<p>2) a way to decide that yes, I want to have a title bar<p>The feature #2 might seem laughable to most, but it's important to me. What Chrome devs did there, I can only describe as "arrogance". It's okay to decide that the title bar, in your opinion, is a waste of "screen real-estate". It's perfectly natural to ship Chrome with the title bar removed by default. But it's arrogant not to offer an option to turn it back on. Some of us are actually using that "screen real-estate".

Firefox has become the thing it was created to replace, a beast of a browser that seemingly sucks up resources from nearby computers just to open a new window.<p>Also, the term "jumped the shark" has jumped the shark.<p>[edit: that said, as much as I like Safari 4 and Chrome, I find it very hard to live without Firebug and the Web Developer extension when it comes to building websites (though the webkit inspector is getting closer with each release)]

This guy sums up my sentiments on the issue quite nicely. Firefox just can't hang anymore in the presence of Chrome, and Safari (and arguably even IE). I dig plugins as much as the next guy, but it's not enough to make me open Firefox for anything more than testing these days.

I use Firefox at work and Chrome at home. There's no way I could use Chrome for my job, it just doesn't have anywhere near the developer capabilities I need.<p>But Chrome really is beautiful. And lightning fast. Unfortunately, I regularly bump into things I can't do, like block those god-forsaken flash ads, email a link to the page I'm viewing or Ctrl-Tab to switch back and forth between tabs (as opposed to cycling through all of them), just to name a few. And these things make Chrome not quite "feel right" to me.<p>Chrome has some things to learn from Firefox, and Firefox has some things to learn from Chrome. And competition is healthy. So I'm sure interesting things are coming.

I like Chrome much better. The only thing that I use Firefox for is Firebug. Other than that, I try to avoid most of the plugins Firefox is famous for anyway. I find that they just make it slower. Maybe 3.5 will change that though.

On the technical side, there's no reason that FireFox should lose out to Chrome, but I think the argument that he is making is that Chrome has a better design, and user experience - an idea he sums into FF not feeling right.<p>If Chrome add-ons in the future cover the needs for most people, and both are rendering things well, then it may just come down to a design choice for most people.<p>Personally, I don't care much for google on my personal computer and hope that it doesn't come to be the case. One of the biggest holes in my current set up, is that all of my e-mail goes to Google. I don't trust Google so I consider this a security threat.

I just know I never used Firefox again after Safari 4 Beta...

I must admit that I've stopped using firefox completely since I got hooked on Chrome, but I was never a big plugin user. I wouldn't go so far as to say firefox was dead as a result though. The oddest thing is that I don't miss having an ad blocker in chrome, and I have no idea why! Maybe I've just gotten used to seeing ads again, or maybe Chrome blocks popups better than firefox did back before I got the adblock plugin.

The use of the word 'why' in that title is entirely disingenuous - his whole point is "just because".