On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 8:19 AM, Joel Marchesoni <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Honestly I try to switch to Chrome every month or so, but it just doesn't do what Firefox does for me. I've actually been using a Firefox mod called Pale Moon [1] that takes out some of the not so useful features for work (parental controls, etc) and optimizes for current processors. It's not a huge speed increase, but it is definitely noticeable.
>

Chrome is certainly behind Firefox in its extension capability. For
instance, it doesn't allow the extension of context menus yet (planned
for later this year or next), and even the planned API will be less
flexible than Firefox's  . It is hobbled by the fact that the browser
is not itself written using the same markup language as its
extensions, so Google's programmers have to add an API (along with a
C++ implementation) for every feature they want supported.

Regarding the JavaScript performance, both Firefox and Chrome have
just-in-time compilers in their engines (Chrome uses V8, Firefox uses
TraceMonkey), which each provide an order or two of magnitudes speedup
compared to interpreters that were used in FF 3.0 and before.

Regarding resource usage, it's difficult to tell. Firefox is certainly
a memory hog, with internal memory leaks, but when the page itself is
the issue (perhaps because the JavaScript programmer leaked memory),
then both browsers are affected. In Chrome, I've observed two
problems. First, if a page leaks, then the corresponding tab will
simply ask for more memory from the OS. There are no resource controls
at this point. The effect is the same as in Firefox. Second, each page
is scheduled separately by the OS. I've observed that Chrome tabs slow
to a halt in Windows XP because the OS is starving a tab's thread if
there are CPU-bound activities on the machine, making Chrome actually
very difficult to use.

 - Godmar