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/