I had tested out the Chrome browser a few times since it had been released but I had been a longtime user of Firefox, so I never switched. I really liked the add-ons that I was using with Firefox so this was the anchor that was keeping me from drifting away from FIrefox. I like trying out new kinds of technology. But since I don’t want to spend a lot of time fighting technology and trying to keep it running, I often don’t run a lot of new or unproven software.
A couple of months ago, I had finally gotten tired of Firefox’s sloth like behavior which led me looking for an alternative. Safari is a great browser but it lacks in the extension department. To some this is Safari’s selling point, simplicity, which is what I am often a fan of too. These days, I spend a lot of time in my browser as more and more services move to the cloud. I want a browser that is a little more extensible.
Chrome was the best of both worlds. It has the extension support that I liked in Firefox and the super fast Webkit browser engine that makes Safari so appealing. After looking into it a bit I found that the beta, and now all releases, of Chrome support the very popular Greasemonkey scripts for Firefox. Except that in Chrome, Greasemonkey support is built in. Just add the scripts from Userscripts.org.
Since Chrome announced that they were also supporting extensions, the developer community has been busy churning out a multitude of extensions. But this is something that Chrome users need to be cautious of. One of the reasons a browser can slow down or become unstable is by having too many extensions. I would recommend that you only install the extensions that you think you will use frequently.
When I came to the conclusion that I was going to use Chrome as my primary browser I just stopped using Firefox. I set Chrome as my default browser. I wanted to see if I would get frustrated with Chrome and regularly go back to Firefox. I didn’t. Any website that follows web stands will render perfectly in Chrome. There is one really horrible site that I keep Firefox around for since I need that site to perform duties that earn me money. I won’t get into the details of that since I am not into biting the hand that feeds. If esprs/esgrs are terms that are familiar to you then you will know what I mean. Coldfusion, blah!
Chrome isn’t without it’s faults. I do get the occasional browser tab crash. However, the advantage to Chrome is that if one of the tabs crashes then only that tab will crash. Not the whole browser. I also wish that Delicious integration was as good as it is in Firefox, but the new Delicious Chrome extension brings hope.
Firefox used to be the alternative browser of choice for many Internet users in the know. I strongly believe that if Mozilla doesn’t quickly do something about the sluggishness of Firefox then there will be a mass exodus to Chrome. I know that Mozilla has put a lot of development time into their Gecko rendering engine but it might be time to start looking at Webkit.
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Hello & Welcome! My name is Matt and I’m a Canadian living in Taipei, Taiwan. Here you’ll find me musing about social networking, web services, and internet business. While you’re here, look at the 
