Which browser should I use? Chromium-based or Firefox-based browser?

[MariosX]

Hello!

There's no doubt, that my favorite browser is Google Chrome.

I've been using it for years because it was using less memory, was reacting faster and I was encountering less problems with it than Firefox (with the same pages open) and that was at least 2-3 years ago.

But because Firefox wasn't good for me at that time it doesn't mean that it didn't got any better or other Firefox-based browsers were not good enough.

 

However, I've been wondering for a while now which browser is better to use

Should I continue using Google Chrome?

Should I switch to other based-Chromium browsers?

Should I switch to other based chromium browser?

Or should I switch to Firefox or other-firefox browsers?

 

Any why?

[Jarrichvdv]

It really is still bad, just that it has some fanboys for some reason

 

I use IE at work, and it's a horrible mess, the few times I've needed to use IE on win 8.1 at home has been a frustrating process just to get a simple task completed, I stick with Chrome these days because it's simple, has the very few addons I like and it "just works", but at my age I prefer simplicity, and to FF look but ugly and hate using themes 

It wouldn't hurt to provide an example as to why IE is a mess. I use it too everyday; and it works pretty flawless.

[Forjo]

It wouldn't hurt to provide an example as to why IE is a mess. I use it too everyday; and it works pretty flawless.

If you're one who installs stuff on defaults all the time and likes to gift yourself with every toolbar imaginable then yes, IE is a mess. But I spend 99% of my time in the Metro browser, and I have very few issues.  And when I do, it's nearly always Flash or some website with an absurd number of ads on it (so again, Flash).

 

One thing I don't like is that mouse scrolling in the Metro browser doesn't seem to work until the page is mostly (or in some cases) completely loaded. It's odd because it always works immediately when using touch. Hopefully, it's something they'll fix.

 

And on my Surfaces and phone, IE all the way. Reading mode rocks and nothing can touch IE for, ahem, touch.

 

-Forjo

[Ryanjmchale]

I use Chrome Canary (64bit) build.

[DJGM]

It wouldn't hurt to provide an example as to why IE is a mess. I use it too everyday; and it works pretty flawless.

IE is a mess IMO, because the UI has extremely limited customisation, and looks terrible when everything is unhidden.

Every element of the UI is in the wrong place, and there is no way to put things where they should be. The only thing

that is in the right place is the Title Bar, and even that is thanks to a third party add-on that re-enables it.

 

 

That said, the IE/Trident rendering engine has certainly been improved somewhat in recent years.

[ViperAFK]

IE is a mess IMO, because the UI has extremely limited customisation, and looks terrible when everything is unhidden.

Every element of the UI is in the wrong place, and there is no way to put things where they should be. The only thing

that is in the right place is the Title Bar, and even that is thanks to a third party add-on that re-enables it.

 

 

That said, the IE/Trident rendering engine has certainly been improved somewhat in recent years.

Yeah they've definitely been neglecting the desktop UI for IE. Its remained almost completely unchanged since IE9, and a lot of it has been unchanged for way longer than that even. The IE desktop UI just comes off as kind of disjointed and hacked together to me, especially the weird default of the tabs being shoved into the same row as the urlbar.

 

The other things that IE lacks compared to other browsers:

 

1. No tab pinning

 

2. No proper bookmarks manager, managing bookmarks from IE's bookmarks sidebar is a pain, especially since the sidebar likes to hide as soon as you do something like deleting a folder. You can't right click on empty space in the bookmarks sidebar to create a new folder, the only way is to right click on an existing folder, which makes no sense. Just bad ui.

 

2. very limited search engine customization for the url bar. Had to use IE's crappy addon site just to add google, and some popular search engines that are easily available on other browsers like firefox and chrome aren't available for IE's searchbar at all (didn't see wikipedia for example anywhere on IE's addon site, couldn't find anyway to add it as an option for IE's search bar, very easy to do this in firefox or chrome).

 

3. I really, really hate how 'notification happy' recent versions of IE are. Can't browse for two goddamn seconds without some notification popup at the bottom of the screen. "ADDONS MIGHT BE SLOWING YOUR BROWSER, CLICK HERE TO DISABLE!!1". its especially bad if you have "enhanced protected mode' enabled, prompts you constantly that some of your addons aren't compatible with it, but gives you no option to disable the addons to make the messages go away, because when you go into the addons manager, they are just marked 'incompatible', with no option for disable them completely.

 

/IE rant

 

IE *has* gotten a lot better under the hood over the years, but still lags behind firefox and chrome when it comes to standards support, and as mentioned above its UI and customization leave a lot to be desired.

[Raa]

You didn't specify if you were on a Windows platform or not, so I had to null vote.

 

I'd suggest using a Trident based browser primarily, or a Chromium based one after that (I've used Chromium itself and find it quite good as an alternative!)

[Vvo]

Torch, based on chromium

[Guest]

IE is a mess IMO, because the UI has extremely limited customisation, and looks terrible when everything is unhidden.

Every element of the UI is in the wrong place, and there is no way to put things where they should be. The only thing

that is in the right place is the Title Bar, and even that is thanks to a third party add-on that re-enables it.

 

 

That said, the IE/Trident rendering engine has certainly been improved somewhat in recent years.

 

So you basically clicked on every option to make the UI seem as bad as it could be?

[Guest]

Yeah they've definitely been neglecting the desktop UI for IE. Its remained almost completely unchanged since IE9, and a lot of it has been unchanged for way longer than that even. The IE desktop UI just comes off as kind of disjointed and hacked together to me, especially the weird default of the tabs being shoved into the same row as the urlbar.

 

The other things that IE lacks compared to other browsers:

 

1. No tab pinning

 

2. No proper bookmarks manager, managing bookmarks from IE's bookmarks sidebar is a pain, especially since the sidebar likes to hide as soon as you do something like deleting a folder. You can't right click on empty space in the bookmarks sidebar to create a new folder, the only way is to right click on an existing folder, which makes no sense. Just bad ui.

 

2. very limited search engine customization for the url bar. Had to use IE's crappy addon site just to add google, and some popular search engines that are easily available on other browsers like firefox and chrome aren't available for IE's searchbar at all (didn't see wikipedia for example anywhere on IE's addon site, couldn't find anyway to add it as an option for IE's search bar, very easy to do this in firefox or chrome).

 

3. I really, really hate how 'notification happy' recent versions of IE are. Can't browse for two goddamn seconds without some notification popup at the bottom of the screen. "ADDONS MIGHT BE SLOWING YOUR BROWSER, CLICK HERE TO DISABLE!!1". its especially bad if you have "enhanced protected mode' enabled, prompts you constantly that some of your addons aren't compatible with it, but gives you no option to disable the addons to make the messages go away, because when you go into the addons manager, they are just marked 'incompatible', with no option for disable them completely.

 

/IE rant

 

IE *has* gotten a lot better under the hood over the years, but still lags behind firefox and chrome when it comes to standards support, and as mentioned above its UI and customization leave a lot to be desired.

 

What do you mean that it has no proper bookmarks manager? You could use CTRL+B or go to C:\Users\USERNAME\Favorites to manage your bookmarks. Need something better and more powerful than File Explorer? You could use PowerShell scripts, third party solutions, and whatever else.

[ViperAFK]

What do you mean that it has no proper bookmarks manager? You could use CTRL+B or go to C:\Users\USERNAME\Favorites to manage your bookmarks. Need something better and more powerful than File Explorer? You could use PowerShell scripts, third party solutions, and whatever else.

thanks I had forgotten that IE had one, that was my bad :) but even this manager is quite overly-simplistic compared to firefox's (or even chrome's).

 

Firefox's bookmarks manager has a full tagging system, and a much nicer UI. far more powerful and organized than what you get with IE's bookmarks.

 

Just look at firefox's bookmarks manager vs IE's. IE's looks like an afterthought at best:

 

 

[DJGM]

So you basically clicked on every option to make the UI seem as bad as it could be?

 

Nope ... I've just unhidden all the unnecesarily hidden elements, to show that the full UI of IE is an uncustomisable mess.

I've not made it look that messy, the UI designers at Microsoft made it look that messy. What were they smoking?!?

[Guest]

Nope ... I've just unhidden all the unnecesarily hidden elements, to show that the full UI of IE is an uncustomisable mess.

I've not made it look that messy, the UI designers at Microsoft made it look that messy. What were they smoking?!?

 

Look at it this way, the menu bar, the commands bar, and the ability to show tabs under the address bar are in for legacy purposes. Everything shown does look like crap, but the default view is not that, everything is hidden.

[DJGM]

The problem with the default UI view of IE with everything hidden, it looks more suitable for a tablet, not a desktop.

[Forjo]

Personally, I prefer the elements hidden. I want to see the site I'm browsing to -- not the UI. That's the main reason I use the Modern browser. Expanding a tree of bookmarks is a waste of time for me. I have them from the past, but the sites I go to frequently show up in the auto-created frequent sites area. I type a couple of characters and there I am. It's much faster than expanding a tree and searching for what I want. And for the really frequent ones -- I just click the pinned tiles.

 

I understand that some people want to do things the way they always have -- don't want to change paradigms. I see this as the main reason for the hatred of the Start Screen. But if you give the new paradigms an honest try, more times than not you'll find faster and more efficient ways of doing things. There are always exceptions, but these guys design based on user metrics - not the desires of a vocal few.

 

-Forjo

[simplezz]

Hello!

There's no doubt, that my favorite browser is Google Chrome.

I've been using it for years because it was using less memory, was reacting faster and I was encountering less problems with it than Firefox (with the same pages open) and that was at least 2-3 years ago.

But because Firefox wasn't good for me at that time it doesn't mean that it didn't got any better or other Firefox-based browsers were not good enough.

If you use ABP + NoScript, then nothing beats Firefox. It doesn't have to load all the ads and scripts which really speeds things up. Chromium is slow in comparison, at least on my machine it is.

As far as memory goes, Firefox actually uses less than Chromium by default. Although certain extensions, including ABP can cause significant memory usage. Still, my machine has plenty of memory, so it's quicker for me to sacrifice memory for processing speed. I even run my Firefox profile in a tmpfs so it never even accesses my disk at all except when syncing on shutdown.

 

However, I've been wondering for a while now which browser is better to use

Should I continue using Google Chrome?

Should I switch to other based-Chromium browsers?

Should I switch to other based chromium browser?

Or should I switch to Firefox or other-firefox browsers?

If you're happy with Chromium, stick with it. Personally I couldn't ever give up FF. Extensions, customisation, etc are too important to me.

[gohpep]

The problem with the default UI view of IE with everything hidden, it looks more suitable for a tablet, not a desktop.

What does your browser layout look like in chrome?

 

 

Yeah they've definitely been neglecting the desktop UI for IE. Its remained almost completely unchanged since IE9, and a lot of it has been unchanged for way longer than that even. The IE desktop UI just comes off as kind of disjointed and hacked together to me, especially the weird default of the tabs being shoved into the same row as the urlbar.

 

The other things that IE lacks compared to other browsers:

 

1. No tab pinning

 

2. No proper bookmarks manager, managing bookmarks from IE's bookmarks sidebar is a pain, especially since the sidebar likes to hide as soon as you do something like deleting a folder. You can't right click on empty space in the bookmarks sidebar to create a new folder, the only way is to right click on an existing folder, which makes no sense. Just bad ui.

 

2. very limited search engine customization for the url bar. Had to use IE's crappy addon site just to add google, and some popular search engines that are easily available on other browsers like firefox and chrome aren't available for IE's searchbar at all (didn't see wikipedia for example anywhere on IE's addon site, couldn't find anyway to add it as an option for IE's search bar, very easy to do this in firefox or chrome).

 

3. I really, really hate how 'notification happy' recent versions of IE are. Can't browse for two goddamn seconds without some notification popup at the bottom of the screen. "ADDONS MIGHT BE SLOWING YOUR BROWSER, CLICK HERE TO DISABLE!!1". its especially bad if you have "enhanced protected mode' enabled, prompts you constantly that some of your addons aren't compatible with it, but gives you no option to disable the addons to make the messages go away, because when you go into the addons manager, they are just marked 'incompatible', with no option for disable them completely.

 

/IE rant

 

IE *has* gotten a lot better under the hood over the years, but still lags behind firefox and chrome when it comes to standards support, and as mentioned above its UI and customization leave a lot to be desired.

The IE team has said IE12 will be a redesign. Coming this fall. I haven't seen chrome change a lot over the years either.

1. Start screen and taskbar pinning.

2. Not sure if troll or serious. You can press the green arrow at the top of the favorites popup to pin it, so it won't go away.

3. Again, not sure if troll or serious. http://www.iegallery.com/en-us/Addons/Details/815. I simply just typed Wikipedia in on the gallery site search, and it was right there.

4. Addons might be slowing your browser is to notify you of hijacking browser plugins that are normally installed on IE which it its bad rep. Disable enhanced protected mode, disable incompatible addons, enable enhanced protected mode.

Standard

 

If you use ABP

Well, Chrome has ABP, and IE has a very lightweight alternative to using an adblock addon.

[ThaCrip]

i been using Pale Moon x64 for roughly a few years now. it works well and don't burn a ton of RAM like Chrome does.

[ViperAFK]

What does your browser layout look like in chrome?

 

 

The IE team has said IE12 will be a redesign. Coming this fall. I haven't seen chrome change a lot over the years either.

1. Start screen and taskbar pinning.

2. Not sure if troll or serious. You can press the green arrow at the top of the favorites popup to pin it, so it won't go away.

3. Again, not sure if troll or serious. http://www.iegallery.com/en-us/Addons/Details/815. I simply just typed Wikipedia in on the gallery site search, and it was right there.

4. Addons might be slowing your browser is to notify you of hijacking browser plugins that are normally installed on IE which it its bad rep. Disable enhanced protected mode, disable incompatible addons, enable enhanced protected mode.

Standard

 

Well, Chrome has ABP, and IE has a very lightweight alternative to using an adblock addon.

1. I mean the tab pinning feature that firefox and chrome have, that keeps the tab always open to the left side of the tab strip, not just a pinned shortcut.

 

2. True, but the default behavior is counter-intuitive. Visually the IE bookmarks menu looks like a sidebar. Generally, with sidebars they don't close when you perform an action inside it, so when it closes on you like that its rather jarring. Also jarring, when you pin it it suddenly jumps to the left side of the screen instead of just expanding where it is.

 

3. Apologies, last time I tried that site the only one that showed up was "Define with Wikipedia", perhaps its been far too long since I've looked, my bad on that one. I should have double-checked that before posting.

 

4. I'm aware of this, and absolutely understand the rationale behind the prompts (I've cleaned many a computer filled with browser toolbars, hijackers and other nonsense), but my point that IE is way to notification happy still stands. If I have enhanced protected mode enabled, and the addons are already disabled because of that, I don't need IE constantly prompting me about it, there needs to be some kind of "don't prompt me about this again" button on the prompts (or it should at least let you disable the addons in question without having to go and disable enhanced protected mode first, come on that is really counter-intuitive...)

 

And no I'm not a 'troll'.

[gohpep]

1. I mean the tab pinning feature that firefox and chrome have, that keeps the tab always open to the left side of the tab strip, not just a pinned shortcut.

 

2. True, but the default behavior is counter-intuitive. Visually the IE bookmarks menu looks like a sidebar. Generally, with sidebars they don't close when you perform an action inside it, so when it closes on you like that its rather jarring. Also jarring, when you pin it it suddenly jumps to the left side of the screen instead of just expanding where it is.

 

3. Apologies, last time I tried that site the only one that showed up was "Define with Wikipedia", perhaps its been far too long since I've looked, my bad on that one. I should have double-checked that before posting.

 

4. I'm aware of this, and absolutely understand the rationale behind the prompts (I've cleaned many a computer filled with browser toolbars, hijackers and other nonsense), but my point that IE is way to notification happy still stands. If I have enhanced protected mode enabled, and the addons are already disabled because of that, I don't need IE constantly prompting me about it, there needs to be some kind of "don't prompt me about this again" button on the prompts (or it should at least let you disable the addons in question without having to go and disable enhanced protected mode first, come on that is really counter-intuitive...)

 

And no I'm not a 'troll'.

It's clear you're not a troll with this response. It's hard to find reasonable people like you on the internet. Sorry I offended.

1. Ok that's fine. I guess the IE team will have to add that.

2. Yeah, it's hard to see why they would do that at first but it is mostly because people who read left to right are bothered with UI elements on the right, and the favorites button is on the right, and it would look weird if the button on the right would open a menu on the left. I am hoping they do something about that.

3. It's fine.

4. It's mostly because Microsoft is a company that supports businesses, and IT folks need that info. I do agree that it is counter intuitive graphically but the reason why they can't be disabled in enhanced protected mode is due to a technical limitation, since the addons are not able to 'talk' with the browser. But I do understand how you would get annoyed by that.

[simplezz]

Well, Chrome has ABP, and IE has a very lightweight alternative to using an adblock addon.

I can't speak for IE because I never use it, but in Chromium, ABP doesn't work the same way as it does in Firefox. The ads are still downloaded, rendered etc, then ABP just hides them. You can even see this happening as a page loads. So while it may hide most of the adverts, they still slow down rendering and eat bandwidth in Chromium.

[Max Norris]

I can't speak for IE because I never use it, but in Chromium, ABP doesn't work the same way as it does in Firefox. The ads are still downloaded, rendered etc, then ABP just hides them. You can even see this happening as a page loads. So while it may hide most of the adverts, they still slow down rendering and eat bandwidth in Chromium.

The front-end also lacks a fair bit of functionality from the Firefox version as well.  The rules editor is extremely basic (at best), the "blockable items" panel is completely missing, so it makes it very difficult to block scripts (if it even does at all), and even when the rules are identical between versions, the Chrome version still fails to hide some of them.  It's nice Chrome has the option but it's still a far cry from the Firefox version. 

 

IE's TPL's do work, but there's near zero functionality with it, but if you just "subscribe and forget it" it does the job well enough.. tried their version of ABP, wasn't terribly impressed, if I were an IE user I'd probably go with an external solution like AdGuard or something.

[Zoom7000]

I've always prefered Firefox. Dunno why, but just couldn't get on with Chrome. I use Firefox on a daily basis with the following add-ons:

 

Adblock Plus

Auto Copy

Cutyfox URL Shortener

IE Tab (Purely for Exchange 2007 OWA)

Ominibar (This is perfect for emulating Google Chrome's search bar)

Tab Mix Plus

YouTube Center

 

Those add-ons do cause the startup to delay to about 3-5 seconds, but it certainly isn't the end of the world!

[gohpep]

The front-end also lacks a fair bit of functionality from the Firefox version as well.  The rules editor is extremely basic (at best), the "blockable items" panel is completely missing, so it makes it very difficult to block scripts (if it even does at all), and even when the rules are identical between versions, the Chrome version still fails to hide some of them.  It's nice Chrome has the option but it's still a far cry from the Firefox version. 

 

IE's TPL's do work, but there's near zero functionality with it, but if you just "subscribe and forget it" it does the job well enough.. tried their version of ABP, wasn't terribly impressed, if I were an IE user I'd probably go with an external solution like AdGuard or something.

Well, if you use an adblock TPL and your own personalized list, along with the element hiding css rules, it's pretty much on par with ABP.

[cropcircles]

I've been running SRWare Iron for a couple years and really like it. Give it a go. 

"SRWare Iron: The browser of the future - based on the free Sourcecode "Chromium" - without any problems at privacy and security"

http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php

[Guest]

IE's TPL's do work, but there's near zero functionality with it, but if you just "subscribe and forget it" it does the job well enough.. tried their version of ABP, wasn't terribly impressed, if I were an IE user I'd probably go with an external solution like AdGuard or something.

 

You can always host your own TPL, way better that way because you know exactly what you're blocking. Quite easy to set it up as well. It is just a text file that gets installed with one line of code.