I’m Sticking With Mozilla

I’m Sticking With Mozilla

on Jun 23rd 2012 with 37 comments

I’m a big Mozilla fan (as they’re the only one of the big players still with a genuine, open view of the web) and am still clinging to the humble little fox as my browser of choice. So when new Moz things appear I get all excited – here are my latest five..

Thumbnail illustration by Scott Hill

Command Line Interface

Take a look at this command line interface for browser manipulation, coming soon to Firefox.

Command Line Interface

iPad Browser

How about an iPad browser which genuinely tries to improve the tablet browsing experience? (Live demo in the video at the bottom of the article.)

iPad Browser

Mozilla Thimble

This is great; a beginners’ playground for learning HTML, CSS and JS that allows you to publish live when you’re done.

Mozilla Thimble

Boot to Gecko

The Boot to Gecko project aims to make the open web the platform for mobile devices. Take a look at this demo too.

Boot to Gecko

Developer Tools

Download Firefox Nightly to try out some of the coming features, such as developer tools with its Layout view and Responsive mode.

There’s some really interesting stuff happening over in Mozilla land. I’m staying put.

 
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Cameron has been twiddling around online since the internet was just a young lad in short pants. He now spends most of his time helping Envato make the world a better place, one CSS selector at a time.  

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  • http://www.owen-walters.com owen

    I used firefox for about 5 years, then heard chrome had actually overtaken firefox in terms of users, thought I’d give it a go.. been using it for about a year and It’s giving me really bad quality JPEG graphics, banding gradients, hash drop shadows, havent a clue what it is, but all I know is its not like that in firefox so with that and this article I think I will go back to firefox. :)

  • http://varemenos.com/ Varemenos

    Ya mozilla still have me. All i want from them right now is to fix the memory leaks and have a good native web developer tool equivalent of firebug.

    ps: thanks for letting me know about the webdev console didnt notice it.

  • http://alexrodrigues.co.uk/ Alex Rodrigues

    I’m a huge fan of the entire mozilla company.

    I especially like their X-ray goggles.It gives a nice little insight as to how the page is laid out, without looking at source code.

  • Ian Rock

    I switched to Chrome a couple of years ago from Firefox (and I’m a linux user, THE HORROR!) due to how sluggish FF was becoming.

    Those new dev tools and the CLI might persuade me to give it another look in.

  • http://www.menacedesign.pl Artbeard

    That Responsive mode is really a great feature.

  • mike

    Chromne is so much faster when you live in an area with only a DSL connection. Ive tried Firefox recently but it is just too slow when your used to using Chrome speed. The thing I like about firefox is it doesnt use a ton of resources and is supported by more websites especially the one i use for Art School which uses a program built with JAVA called ANGEL. I just can’t get past how slow it is, if they made it faster I would definitely switch back.

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  • http://www.pendantbox.com Stelian Andrei

    I’ve used Firefox a few years. Then I got really angry with it. It was too sluggish, memory leaks, crashes, etc. I took a risk and switched to Chrome, although I wasn’t happy with the change. I learned to love it in time and it does just what I want, both as an everyday browser and as a testing platform. I still keep Firefox around because I have too and I need to, occasionally, use it. The recent versions seem to be a lot smoother than when I used it as my browser of choice.

    Still, it has to make up for a lot of the frustration it has caused me along the years before I decide to use it (yet again) as a development tool (don’t get me wrong, it is still taken very mush into consideration)

  • http://heyitsgeorge.com Hey, It’s George

    I’m a full-on Mozilla fan, too. I even used Thunderbird exclusively until Sparrow came out. (you can’t beat Sparrow’s UI and integration on the iPhone, sorry Mozilla)

    I’m glad to see a lot of other people supporting them. At its root, Chrome + Safari + other browsers are based on Webkit, which is itself another open-source project. But the browsers that get developed out of that are linked to specific companies, and I can’t stand how people think the same issues with Microsoft’s grip on Internet Explorer won’t make their way, even eventually, to Apple, Google, etc.

    Mozilla is genuinely a company that’s *focused* on the browser it’s producing, whereas Chrome and Safari (and even Internet Explorer) always felt like “afterthoughts” to me; Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc. had their main products, and, hey, they had a bunch of developers left over so decided to throw their hats into the browser ring.

    I know that picture is very simple; Google does a ton for Webkit and has been really active with their open-source contributions, and have taken some pretty interesting stances with their browsing experience.

    But I think, especially in the long run, Mozilla and their idealistic ways will win out. I love FireFox and support everything Mozilla does, hopefully more people will too.

  • Jesus Bejarano

    I am using chrome while reading this post , muahahahahahhaha, deal with it XD ..(i realy like FF tought :b)

  • BK

    I’m using Firefox with 16 addons installed and at the moment I got 199 tabs open. About half of them are images in 2000×3000 resolution and higher and the rest are usual websites like Amazon, Envato sites, Gmail, YouTube, Ebay, StackOverflow, MSDN, Apple Dev etc. Ram usage stays at 1.43GB and CPU usage is ~21%. Would your super-extra-fast Chrome be as good?

    • Curtis

      199 Tabs. Half Images? That makes little sense.

      1. Save the images to disk
      2. Bookmark organize the rest.

      A browser shouldn’t be built to handle nonsense like that as a primary objective. Many other more important things to optimize for.

      • http://www.tinocordes.dk/webdesign Tino Cordes

        Hehe… got to agree with you.

  • http://www.muzcore.com Murray Chapman

    The WWW has created a generation of users that jump ship as soon as there is a supposed better option. Chrome came a long at a time when Firefox was haivng some issues and a lot of people jumped.
    i have used Chrome. It is nice but sorry….. it has nothing on Firefox. I agree with the statement that FF is the only browser that still has an open view on the WWW.
    On a side note, using OGG instead of MP3 for audio. I’m cool with that. OGG is open source and the quality is better than all of the other compressed audio files out there at the moment anyway.

  • http://www.concrete5.org/r/-/365 synlag

    I like Google chrome, but firefox is not that bad!

    Best wishes
    Ron

  • http://wouterj.nl Wouter J

    You can be excited when Mozilla finally comes with Dev. Tools, I’m really disappointed. The browser where the Dev. Tools began, with a Plugin called FireBug, is the latest browser who can create a Dev. Tool by themself…

    And the Dev. Tools of Mozilla don’t give you much information. You can inspect elements and get there styles, nothing more.
    I really like the Chrome dev. tools and that is, among with the speed, the biggest reason why I keep Chrome as my Primary browser.

    • Curits

      The thing is, if you have something like Firebug that is pretty much the standard web dev tool that you would add on the FireFox, why would you develop your own internally? Firstly the users/devs already have/had a kickass Dev Tool, Second – because the tool already exists, why put resources on that when you could put them on something else?

      And if you were in a situation where you couldn’t download extensions, then it’s the situation that sucks, not the fact that FireFox doesn’t have it’s own built in Web Dev Tools.

  • http://brianswebdesign.com Brian Temecula

    I’d have a serious meltdown if I didn’t have my FF, Firebug and FirePHP. If I’m just browsing the web, I don’t really have a preference, but FF all the way for dev.

  • http://ww.gorna.bg/ Горна Оряховица

    FF really help me a lot for my work. And 10x for this article Cameron. Good luck.

  • http://www.wildpurpledesign.co.uk/ Bournemouth Web Designer

    I found FF sluggish and I now use chrome. However I’m on a brand new laptop now so might give FF another now try other than browser testing! Thanks

  • gavin

    I flick between all of the browsers on a day to day basis, both developing and browsing.

    I’d love all the browser to take into account what developers need. While the developers tools are great, FF must be aware of the issues relating to older browsers and IE.

    It would be great if they developed a tol that could show me an element would like like in IE from within FF. Now I know a lot of people are going to ask, why would they spend any time working on showing us how things will look in in another browser, but a true developer tool, nit just a browser feature would take this into account.

    Save us the leg work.

    • gavin

      Also a couple of things seem to be missing:

      Edit html? I see Copy inner and outer but no edit?

      Also, I really like pressing the up arrow key to increment values, its a shame I have to type in the value and then hit enter to see the result.

  • http://www.punchyourface.com Adam

    I used to ONLY use firefox because of firebug and the Chrome Dev Tool looked dumb and complicated. Then I actually TRIED it.. and WOAH it is so powerful. Can do WAY more then firebug OR the default Firefox tools (up to this point)

    I’ll be sticking with Chrome.

  • http://blog.mozilla.com/dolske Justin Dolske

    *fistbump*

  • http://www.shalusharma.com Shalu Sharma

    I am a fan of Chome. I love the tabbed browsing and the easy bookmarking. There is no doubt the mozilla is great but second best. That’s just a humble opinion.

  • http://www.compareandrecycle.co.uk Lee

    I really like Chrome but I’ll be sticking with Firefox for the foreseeable future.

  • http://bobcampbell.ca Bob

    When I’m at work I have both open… Chrome for my work email, and firefox for EVERYTHING ELSE including development. If I could be signed into 2 gmail accounts I would never open chrome for anything else other than browser testing, even though it loads websites a whole half a second faster… I’m a multi-tab kinda guy, no more than 10-15 but still firefox manages my tab resources much much much better than Chrome.

    Also, Firebug > Chrome Dev tools…

  • http://carloshermoso.com/ Carlos Hermoso

    I just ♥ Firefox so mad! (can see the good things in other browsers such as Chrome though)

  • JohnBon

    You forgot to mention the always present Slowmo mode where Firefox moves at a snails pace when its been left open for to long.

  • http://www.imstillreallybored.com Josh Bedo

    I’m also a Mozilla fan I’ve stuck with them since I originally started coding just because i’m also a huge fan of open source projects. I switched over to Chrome for a little while during Firefox 4.0 because it was a bit buggy and would always crash randomly but they fixed that in the recent updates and it’s definitely just as high quality as it used to be. I’ve always preferred their developer tools over any browser too it’s much more easier to edit things.

  • http://www.giulianoliker.com Giuliano

    Chrome is my daily driver since about 1 years ago. Only reason I’m still using FF is Firebug. I like it more than Dev tools in Chrome. Usually I have FF on left screen where I only preview my work and Chrome on my main screen where I do everything else.

    Most of the time I have to restart FF few times a day because it would become very very slow, especially if I have 5-10 tabs open with current website in development. I never have to restart Chrome although I restart my computer only once a week when I leave my office for a weekend.

  • http://firegubbing.wordpress.com alexandra
  • Miles

    I personally prefer FF, I like the menu layout and Chrome had issues with paypal shipping (don’t know if that’s the case still). I like the FF plugin base over Chrome my only issues with FF is performance, I don’t know how many times my FF has stopped responding, crashed, or just hogged way too much memory. I will say that the latest version is more stable and less prone to crashing. Though, I still prefer using Chrome to run large web apps and in-browser games as it seems to handle them better without slowing down the browser or my system.

    Great article, learned some new thing and didn’t know about the nightly builds and the new developer tools.

    Thanks!

  • emrah

    i will use chrome.

  • AntoxaGray

    Personally I love Chrome Web Instepcor more than Firebug now, even though I was using Firebug for 3 years.

    Still browsing internets in Firefox though.

  • Samuel Siau

    Im sticking with Chrome.

  • Asif n

    With firefox from the beginning but recently it was getting bloated and slower and slower. Swapped over to opera (what was I thinking?) what a load of crap that is.

    now happy using chrome, it’s fast and has a lot of the add ons of firefox, at the office at least as the connection is slower (3meg at most times) but at home with 50meg I still use firefox.

    • Ian Rock

      ^ Opera is far from “a load of crap”, they have have been pushing things forward just as much as Firefox. I suspect the Chrome / Webkit guys were looking over Opera’s fence just as much as Firefox.

      Speed dial has been standard on Opera before other web browsers even featured it as an add on. Their mobile web browsers still get updated and their mobile web dev tools are possibly the best in the business.