Serious question here... I now use Chrome, my parents use Chrome, and almost everyone I know has converted. Most HN users seem to use it too: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2105954.
Is there anything compelling in Firefox 4 to get excited about?
> Is there anything compelling in Firefox 4 to get excited about?
Sure! Here are some things I personally find exciting about FF4. I'm not saying everyone should find them exciting, they are just my personal opinion:
* FF4 is the only web browser to combine a tracing JIT with a method JIT for JavaScript. Some websites run amazingly fast with that. See the mozilla demos site for examples.
* IE9 has great hardware acceleration on Windows (but JS engine is inferior to FF4 and Chrome), while Chrome has a great JS engine (but hardware acceleration on Windows is inferior to FF4 and IE9), while FF4 is the only browser to have both great hardware acceleration on Windows + a great JS engine.
* Firefox is the only major browser that is 100% open source. (Chrome isn't open source, it bundles closed-source Flash and a PDF viewer as well as other stuff. Chromium is open source, but the vast majority of Chrome/Chromium users use Chrome.) Firefox is also developed in the open source way, completely in the open, unlike any other browser (including Chromium, where a lot of development is behind closed doors, then 'dropped' into the open - e.g., CrankShaft).
* Almost the same codebase used on desktop and mobile (mobile FF4 will hit RC very soon too). Opera has a mobile version, and Safari and IE have mobile versions too, but they are quite distinct. Firefox brings the mobile and desktop versions closer than those. Among the benefits is you can view desktop versions of websites in FF4 mobile very well. (Of course you generally want mobile versions of websites - but now and then, you do want a desktop version, especially on a tablet.)
Mozilla WebM support was developed 'behind closed doors' and 'dropped' into the open on announcement day. You're right that it's not the norm and the developers are generally opposed to that approach though.
2. Firefox Sync, which syncs bookmarks, tabs, passwords, history, and formfill data to all your different computers -- and to Firefox for Android. Firefox Sync encrypts your data client-side for privacy and security, and you can run your own sync server if you want to. (There are multiple open-source server implementations.)
Everything that gets synced -- bookmarks, preferences, etc. -- or just passwords? Do you have a source for that? I can only find evidence that passwords are encrypted client-side.
Hmm, good point. According to their documentation, "synced data is encrypted when it travels between your computer and Google’s servers" (this seems to refer to encryption in transit, i.e. SSL) and "As an added layer of protection, your saved passwords are encrypted on your computer and on Google’s servers using a cryptographic key."
That does seem to imply that only passwords are encrypted while in storage. That's not surprising, since Chrome has a "master password" for password encryption, but unlike Firefox it does not require transferring an encryption key for your other sync data. (The client-side encryption key is the reason you need to "pair" your devices to set up Firefox Sync, instead of just entering a username and password.)
Extensions. Firefox has the greatest browser extension ecosystem bar-none. In the past, you had to choose between Chrome's performance, and Firefox 3's extensions.
Certainly Firefox was playing catch-up in performance, but we're there now. Chrome is still far far behind in terms of extensions, and showing no sign of catching up.
Can you elaborate on the differences b/t Chrome and FF extensions a bit? As a Vimperator addict I don't doubt it, but Chrome does seem to have a rapidly expanding extension & app ecosystem.
A lot of Chrome's extensions don't integrate well with the browser itself. They feel a lot like bookmarklets rather than an actual extension of the browser (this is by design). Firefox extensions can be very well integrated. For example, NoScript on Firefox far exceeds the quality any of the alternatives on Chrome.
Simply put, Chrome extensions are HTML/CSS/JS, while Firefox extensions can actually manipulate the interface of the browser to a greater degree (making stuff like Vimperator possible when it wouldn't be possible on Chrome)
Other things were mentioned already, so not to repeat those:
On Ubuntu in particular (but on other Linux distros, too), Firefox 4 has a more platform-appropriate appearance and feel than the other cross-platform major browsers (Chrome and Opera).
For Web authors, there are more polished HTML5 form features to get excited about. For HTML5 feature involves new elements or attributes in markup, the chances of the features present in Firefox being polished is higher than the chances of the features present in Chrome being polished even though it might casually appear from html5test.com that Chrome support a larger number of these features. html5test.com tests if new APIs appear to be present--not if all the default user interaction works right or if the appearance of a feature is pretty across platforms (not just Mac and Windows but Linux, too).
The location bar history search in Firefox is remarkably more useful than in Chrome, because Firefox matches on more things than just the prefix of the URL (though Chrome has better search coming up and already available in about:flags).
Well, actually, syncing browsing history and passwords across browser instances in such a way that the data in encrypted and decrypted on your devices only is well worth repeating although it was mentioned already. (Syncing history and passwords is immensely more useful than just syncing bookmarks or sending over individual URLs, but history and passwords are the most sensitive browser data, so end-to-end crypto between the user's devices is important.)
(Disclosure: I'm consulting for Mozilla. Disclaimer: Speaking only for myself, though.)
There's a lot to be excited about. Chrome is a respected contender, but it is far from perfect, not everyone uses it, and I'm not sure why Chrome users think it's some divine creation. It's good to have more than one awesome browser.
In addition to all kinds of new HTML5 support, there's hardware acceleration, awesome SVG support, robust Audio API, and Panorama (press cmd+shift+e).
Well, I guess you could look at it the other way, with firefox 4 being released is there much in chrome that provides a significant advantage to the end user?
Sure Chrome has iterated faster and as a result the current Chrome is a lot better than FF3.6, is this the case with 4 now though?
I disagree. There are 400-450 million Firefox users that absolutely will benefit in huge ways from this update. There may have been a time for a while there where some chunk of those users felt like Chrome could offer them more, but that time is gone now.
I'd go a step further and say that now there are going to be an increasing number of Chrome users who will compare to Firefox 4 and want the performance and feature improvements that it has over Chrome and that may hold true for some time.
I'm loving working with IndexedDB. For some reason haven't been able to get my Chrome nightly to play nice with my site but it runs like a charm in FF4. For one, FF uses less vendor prefixes for IndexedDB. I'm not sure if that's my issue but it seems to make FF easier to work with given that when learning IndexedDB there are precious few resources out there aside from the spec.
There is some great discussion and excellent examples of using indexedDB in both Chrome and Firefox in this blog post from Mike West, Google evangelist:
I am using firefox 4 beta and its almost as fast as chrome plus some extensions I can't live without are not mature enough in chrome for example
pentadactyl + nosquint (hinting doesnt work well with vimium + autozoom), gmail checker (checks multiple gmail accounts), firebug and other development extensions.
You are right, if you are not hooked on some extensions chrome is a good option, my wife is a full time chrome user.
It's not as relevant to the audience here, but more than half of the Web still uses Windows XP and Firefox pays much closer attention to making Firefox look and behave appropriately on XP than Chrome or Opera (and Microsoft just gave XP the finger with IE9)
It's actually about as fast as Chrome now. Too little too late in my opinion, but at least it's fast enough that it won't actively piss me off when I need a second browser open for some reason.
I'd used Chrome exclusively for almost two years before the Fx4 beta cycle, and now I'm back on Fx full-time. I don't have time to get into the details, but Fx 4 is really a large improvement over 3.6.x.
Ditto. And I stuck with Chrome until Xmarks started giving me grief. Upgraded to the FF beta about three months ago, and really liked the improvement over 3.6. Even when the Xmarks / Chrome thing sorted itself out, I found that wasn't reason enough to go back. I've also started using a privacy plug-in called Cocoon (also in beta) that I'm really pleased with. Currently, it's FF only.
One other thing. It's small, and non technical, but I find I really like the very compact implementation of the pin tab feature. The way FF adds subtle indicators when the content on a pinned page updates is especially nice.
Is there anything compelling in Firefox 4 to get excited about?