It’s been a long time coming, but the day is finally here. I have been using Firefox as my primary web browser since it’s initial release back in 2004 and even toyed around with it in beta before that. I’ve installed it for friends and family because they were having issues with Internet Explorer, and would have gladly recommended it to anyone asking my advice. Don’t get me wrong, I still would recommend it, but there’s a newer faster and more streamlined browser out there called Google Chrome. I’ve used it before, but now it has finally reached the point where by switching I will not miss any of the features or plug-ins/extensions that I know and love about Firefox.

If you, like myself, have been a long-time Firefox user, then the following reasons I’m switching to Chrome may interest you.

1. Speed
   I haven’t bothered looking with any depth in to benchmarks or anything like that, but when I click that Chrome icon on my dock, it is instantly open. Firefox, however, takes several seconds to show up. Any defender of Firefox, my former self included, would brush this off as the fault of various installed plug-ins, but I’ve tracked down and installed all of the same or comparable Chrome extensions (plus one or two new ones that looked neat) and it still opens like lightning. Page loads seem faster as well, but they were still pretty fast in Firefox once it was open, so that one is a close call.
2. Extensions
   Whether you call them plug-ins (Firefox) or extensions (Chrome), they are what makes a modern-day browser awesome. AdBlock is obviously a must-have (although I disable it on my favorite sites and/or sites that aren’t completely obnoxious about ads), but some of the other Firefox plugins that I’ve found Chrome counterparts for that are as good or better than those available for Firefox are Chrome SEO, StumbleUpon, and Ultimate Chrome Flag. A big part of what has held be back from switching to Chrome earlier was the lack or limited ability of a few of those.
3. Standards
   Whether or not you are aware of what web standards are or how they make your web browsing experience better, they are important. Some browsers (I’m looking at you, IE) have long ignored this fact and it has hurt them in the long run. One of the very first things I do when I install a new browser or major update is run the latest Acid test. As seen below, Chrome currently ranks extremely well (Hint: 100/100 is perfect), whereas the latest version of Firefox “only” scores a 97.




4. PDF Support
   If you, like me, view a lot of PDFs from various websites across the net, then you’d expect your web browser to natively be able to just view them inline without thinking twice. This works flawlessly in Chrome without any 3rd party extensions. In Firefox, however, you used to need a third party extension to get it to work and in the latest version that has stopped working and development on an update is all but abandoned because it would require a rewrite. Why Mozilla doesn’t just integrate this in to Firefox is beyond me, but thankfully Google felt it necessary for Chrome.

So there you have it. On both my home and work computers, Google Chrome is now the primary web browser. Between the speed with which they update it, the ever-growing selection of high quality extensions, and the features already built in, it will likely stay the default web browser on any computer I use for some time to come.