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0 pointsdrawkbox7y ago0 comments

> I really just don't understand the obsession with Chrome, especially in hacker communities.

Chrome used to be very lightweight, fast and basically unseated IE as the top browser. It got that love because at the time Firefox was bloated and IE had a stranglehold. Chrome was also safer with a process per tab. Chrome made web browsing/dev pleasant like Firefox/Firebug did and it really took off being based on Webkit like Safari which also worked well on mobile. Chrome (and Safari) or Webkit pushed HTML5/Canvas/WebGL/SVG into real world use which changed the landscape of browsers.

Nowadays Chrome is bloated like Firefox was, has a stranglehold like IE did, is now pushing its own market standards and breaking existing open/market standards and generally being a forceful, non respecting to standards, web browser. It sure is unfortunate and another sign that bizdev/marketing/executives rule over engineers at Google now.

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cat1997y ago

This is bad history.

Firefox was top dog when chrome came out - it had unseated IE already for many users fed up with XP-era crapware.

Firefox was not simply 'bloated', but designed for classic HTML rendering at a time when javascript (aka 'web 2.0 ajax') dev was taking off and memory was not as abundant as it is now - though slow, it was more that the core architecture was out of date than it was 'bloated'. Indeed firefox was already a stripped down version of 'the mozilla suite' (see also seamonkey, thunderbird, etc - all of which predate chrome).

Chrome then came in, borrowed another project's browser engine, and decided to say 'screw memory, just fork processes' and avoided the whole multithreaded thing all together, oh yes, and open blank tabs faster with a little animation for perceptions sake.

This facilitated html5/javascript bloat, and by extension kept it in the lead as the only browser that could handle it.

of course I'm biased here (as is parent) - but chrome unseating firefox which unseated IE is born out by the facts.

drawkboxOP7y ago

> Firefox was top dog when chrome came out - it had unseated IE already for many users fed up with XP-era crapware.

Maybe in mindshare for devs but Chrome officially unseated IE browser saturation in 2012. Firefox didn't pass IE until 2015 [1].

Firefox was amazing on its resurgence in mid-2000s but did get into memory/bloat stages that opened it up for minimal/performant Chrome that was also more secure at the time primarily due to the process per tab. This possibly did lead to more js bloat later, initially it was lightning fast and also had a debug console and was based on Webkit which was better than Firefox rendering.

Firefox definitely saw Web 2.0 come in from 2006 on and was revolutionary in web development/debugging with Firebug and eventually that was part of the browser and is now industry standard to have a console/debugger on the browser.

Most developers were using Firefox by 2005-2006 and then Chrome a couple/few years later and it has been top for almost a decade now.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#/m...

aylmao7y ago

> Chrome made web browsing/dev pleasant like Firefox/Firebug did and it really took off being based on Webkit like Safari which also worked well on mobile.

This is the big one for me. When I'm not developing I actually prefer to use Safari-- I like it's interface better and it feels more at home in macOS. It's "good enough" too.

What I'm really a user of is the Chrome Dev Tools. Firefox's are looking quite solid lately but I just haven't switched over.

MarsAscendant7y ago

What I'd love is to have Firefox dev tools functionality in Chrome.

Firefox highlights the edge lines of the selected element automatically, and in all directions (if I recall correctly). I have to use an extension – VisBug – to achieve that in Chrome.

There's also the fonts window, which lets you in on what fonts are used on the page, and lets you modify the selected element's font settings – size, weight, slant/italic etc.. I pay a lot of attention to typography, so that part is important to me.

bad_user7y ago

Why not just use Firefox?

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mdekkers7y ago

and basically unseated IE as the top browser

And didn't get to this spot on any kind of technical or feature merits, but essentially by relentless nagging on the Google search page to have users install it. Sure, devs/geeks etc were eager early adopters, but the bulk of users were steered this way by Google.

altfredd7y ago

I got the "love", because it was (and still is) advertised on google.com. Most non-technical people readily install malware when prompted. If malware is advertised on google.com, they will install it more quickly.

Microsoft have been stalling IE development for years, which allowed Mozilla to gain huge marketshare. This resulted in a lot of people learning, how to install a third party web browser. By the time Chrome was unveiled, Mozilla have coincidentally slowed Firefox development to a crawl. I remember the point, when the stable Firefox version was close to unusable, while everyone technologically proficient used a development release. It have been so bad, that some addons simply recommended not using the stable Firefox version. Btw, things have only gotten worse since then.

Chrome's dazzling success is result of it's aggressive advertising as well as sabotage and mismanagement, that killed off alternatives.

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