Anything is better than IE!

So true! but is there one that is any lighter than this?

Firefox is best all around, but Chrome is pretty lightweight.

Chrome …no more firefox for me on the PC.

So I wonder if Chrome is lighter than Safari?

Does Chrome do plug-ins and extensions?

Despite FF's glacial launch and quit (no big deal, really - once it's fired up, it's fine), I'm not sure that I'd want to go back to a browser that's just a simple browser.

I only do a few productivity enhancing add-ons ( don't have the time to waste with the fun stuff, unfortunately ), and they really do make a lot of stuff simpler, faster, better organized, etc.

Now, I'm not that familiar with the Chrome way of doing things, but suspect it precludes any web app specific persistent caches over indefinite number of sessions ( that also mirror server caches ) - If so, that would be a deal breaker with some heavy lifting web apps that do that sort of thing - or any other caching outside of the browser's normal caching.

Firefox is a resource hog, but on this Macbook it's only about 5%, dealable. Wow, glad I looked - My Hotspot Shield ( free VPN server ) unconnected ( I'm home, safe, but really should remember to just fire it up and always leave it connected ) vacillates between 0% ( 99% of the time ) and a 0.5% spike. OK, now that Hotspot Shield has connected to the VPN server and I've got an IP address, etc, it's still basically 0% ( except for the occasional 0.5% spike ), but Firefox is now 10-12%. Well, small price to pay for security in public wifi, but I think I'll disconnect at home, thank you. BTW, in case you're interested: http://www.hotspotshield.com/ ( for the Mac ) and http://hotspotshield.com/clientless/iphone/ ( for the iPhone ) - Their privacy policy is cool. As far as the browser, I don't notice any hit tunneling via their server - It's still snappy. All mail is https of course.

Ed

Edit: On second thought, I really should VPN all the time, including at home, wherever, and just suck it up when I'm using the browser, since some of my log-ins (such as CMF front ends, versus SFTPing to the directory) aren't https ( therefore text 'in the clear' ). My Macs are locked down tight, whitelisted ports, no ping response, good passwords, etc, and the LAN is secure; but anything 'in the clear' is 'in the clear'.

Yeah, I probably wasn't clear as I could be.

There's other free VPN servers, but Hotspot Shield is the simplest. I forget the other I used before, but had to add a new config for each new router for the device/computer-to-router-tunnel ( as well as it didn't have a GUI, either ), so that could be a hassle if you roam a lot, as well CLIing interfacing.

But with Hotspot Shield, it's all automagic. You just launch it once, thereafter its icon always shows up ( deactivated ) in the menubar whenever you launch any http client ( this means mail, too, and of course you'd be tunnelled for straight FTP, too, if your're already initialized, although I haven't noticed if uninitialized, if launching an FTP client will initialize it ). Then you just click it to select initializing/connect to make the tunnel. When you do that, a Hotspot Shield status/initializing/whatever page shows up briefly in the browser as a new tab/page/however_you're_config'd, then redirects to their revenue landing page http://rss2search.com/new/?widgetClass=IDG-Acudeo&from=land which is some news stuff and a bunch of ads.

However, the revenue page only shows up once per tunnelling session, so it's not a thing really. Thereafter you just browse, mail, whatever, tunneled with no more intrusion. If you want it off your menubar, you have to click it to select quitting. It's persistent settings, so it stays off until you relaunch the app again, and that setting is persistent, with it showing up in the menubar when you launch an http client. At mostly 0% overhead with an occasional 0.5% spike, it's no big deal to just leave it there.

Now that I think about it further, from the router hardwire/cabling to the global TCP/IP network to the destination remote production server is less critical, since hardwiring is unsniffable. There you're subject to whether or not the server's been cracked, hijacked, whatever, and that's not something a secure router-to-destination connection is going to be able to fix ( especially if it gets NAT'd off to some internal untunneled wifi virtual addresses { which I wouldn't put past some of these cheezy corporate setups, despite the braindeadness of the major cost and performance deficits due to administration hassles, poor throughput, gazillion access points due to channel saturation, etc } ).

Hmm, perhaps that explains why my noscript extension throws an adclick XSS exploit prompt ( I should just permanently ban these dorks instead of the per session deny, since these schmucks don't break anything ) - Probably just an erroneous interpretation of erroneous code on crack, but I don't trust the opportunistic leeches that infest these corporate advertising garbage scows .

Oh yeah, rbytes tested Hotspot Shield for spyware and adware, and it's clean.

Ed

I gave up on Firefox nearly a year ago, and switched almost completely to Google Chrome. However, I use the Developer Release version, not the beta version or release version. The advantage to the Developer builds is that you get more features.

I find it to be quite good, but there are one or two sites I've come across that just don't seem to work right in it, at which time I fire up Safari.

i like firefox most




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