Browsers
Mozilla Firefox (4.x)
I was a Firefox user for years, so I consider it as the baseline for the comparison.
Best features
- The URL bar (awesomebar) is the best solution for its purpose
- NoScript: OK
- Adblock Plus: OK
- Flashblock: OK
- Images appear as 'icons' in tab 'favicons'
- Download remembers last used folder
- about:config can show most configuration details
- Even pinned tabs can show activity (eg Gmail: new message) = same for Chromium now
Top annoyances
- Memory usage
- Restart after installing/uninstalling addons, themes
- Weird release cycle
- Backspace must be configured manually for Back action (but at least it's there)
- 'File already exists', must rename manually
Google Chromium (Dev Channel)
Remarks
- Add-ons behave differently
- Adblock Plus: OK (author is the same)
- Flashblock: OK
- NoScript -> NotScripts: very humble as opposed to NoScript
- Due to its design, a single browser instance can spawn dozens of processes and threads
- Image zoom places focus under mouse cursor
Best features
- Speed
- Acceptable memory usage
- Ctrl-Shift-q for quit is hard to type accidentally (I tend to type Ctrl-Q instead of Ctrl-W every few weeks)
- Installing themes/addons don't require restart
- Addons can be disabled dynamically
- Plugin crash doesn't crash main browser
- No menu (wth needs that)
- Sync with Google Account
- Import data from another browser is smart, apart from browsing history
- F12 (Ctrl-Shift-I) brings up quite usable Developer tools
- Incognito mode is handy for new window/tab
- When saving to an existing filename, it renames the new file automatically ('1.jpg' -> '1 (1).jpg')
Top annoyances
- Download 'bar' stays at the bottom -> Solved (17.x): chrome://flags/ -> New Downloads UI -> Enable
- No multiple tab rows, even with addons
- Dev channel breaks various functions sometimes (while Firefox beta doesn't - at least here)
- No adjustable tab width
- Chrome vs Chromium (different license etc)
- Backspace doesn't work for Back
- Image zooming is far from perfect (but the 'focus zoom where you click' is a handy idea)
- Cannot open image in the current tab, only in a new one
- Tabs cannot be configured to open in foreground (which I prefer)
- Some commandline features are undocumented (--user-agent)
- Navigation buttons cannot be removed
- Proxy settings restricted to commandline options when not under a desktop environment
- Ctrl-F5 remembers position on page (Firefox brings you to the top of the page)
- Too much tab crashes on several web pages
Chromium internal URLs
chrome://chrome-urls/