Chrome 2 vs Firefox 3.6

I was actively participating with testing Firefox (or called Minefield) before Firefox 2 even came out. Then I delve myself to testing other FOSS (Inkscape, Synfig, Pencil) and even started contributing as a developer (KonsolScript, Clash).

Some years later, Chrome came out with a powerful JavaScript engine, V8. It surely was powerful having to render 3D scene written in JavaScript -- I was surely disappointed at how Firefox was not evolving at all anymore.

I used Chrome for almost a year. I was totally satisfied at its speed. Then came Chrome 2.

There were some changes that made Chrome 2 less user-friendly:

• Deleting of history and download list individually -- you now have to clear it all or have a long list of mixed wanted and unwanted download list.
• Not completely removing the SQLite files used for history and/or possibly page caching.
• Unable to finish the page when user has low disk space available.

Firefox 3.6a1pre on the other hand still has that user-friendliness while trying to catch up Chrome's V8 capability.

To witness Firefox' improved speed, download from:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/

Install it then check Chrome Experiments website. The site enlists heavy JavaScript-driven web applications that only browsers like Chrome could easily run.

I had a good time playing World of Solitaire, which almost gave the feeling of simply playing Windows' Solitaire.

But I was particularly impressed with JS Touch, where it renders 3D scene of a hanging cloth. It makes me wonder, when will I see a 3D JavaScript game running from inside a browser.

Firefox also implemented tearing-off tabs out and into opened Firefox windows like Chrome does. Sadly it still has the same problem of memory bloat -- caused by hour-long surfing.
Overall, I'm surely going to get back using Firefox (or in this case, Minefield).