Silicon Shecky

Coming off the heels of IE, Firefox and Safari getting hacked at the recent Pwn conference this week, I have to sit back and wonder what has happened to the browsers out there. Why must they all be hunks of junk?

IE has more security holes than swiss cheese, we all know that. Even IE8 is turning into a security nightmare. Safari is, well, and apple product that is ok, but doesn’t seem to be fast enough, nor does it have great windows support. Chrome is a bland browser based off the firefox core (does Google not know how to program its own thing from scratch) that reall does not make it easy to keep track of my RSS feeds.

Then there is my beloved Firefox, which is becoming the bloated hunk of junk that it was never supposed to be. Seriously, I can open up to my iGoogle home page, and it takes forever to be able to do anything. At least IE I am able to start navigating within 30 seconds of opening the browser. Firefox takes 2 minutes minimum (yes I’ve timed it). Then there is the fact that it has a huge memory hole that just keeps sucking up memory for as long as you have it open. this is a major issue that the Firefox community needs to address, because when you have multiple programs open, and your web browser causes you to have to reboot, well, this becomes a pain for business.

I’ve tried opera, but wasn’t real impressed with it either. I don’t know, maybe I’m asking too much from a browser. Somewhat Secure, fast, and easy to use with a few nice features. Oh yeah, and you better be able to run the WOT addon.

Those that use Firefox love how it works. They know that it does not install software without your permission, and it tends to bee more secure overall. Well that is not always so true when using Firefox on a Windows based machine anymore.

See with some recent security updates to the .Net framework, Microsoft also installs an extension into Firefox without asking, and that is not all. The extension is tough to remove (you have to go into the registry to remove it), and it allows software to be installed on a machine without a user even knowing it.

Now security updates are important, but how can we trust them from a source such as Microsoft, if they are doing the same things as phishing and adware sites? Honestly, these underhanded practices really have to stop.

You can read more about this at ZDNet.

So I finally decided to check out Chrome for myself. With all the hype and talk about it, I figured I better at least see what it is like.

The install took far longer than what I had expected for a “streamlined” installation. Once installed, it was never able to finish copying settings from my Firefox, and yes I let it sit there for a good 30 minutes as I walked away from my computer to take care of other things.

The little popup at the bottom as you go over links I found annoying, especially considering it woould sit there with a message even whn not over a link. One forum I go to which has some long threads, it was not able to process the threads properly. I found the layout to be simple, but coming from other browsers, a little confusing, especially as to where bookmarks and other items were hiding.

Personally, I don’t think Chrome is all that good. To me it just another thing to confuse people with. Firefox, Opera, IE, Safari, all have been around for a while, and while I have used them all except Opera, I know that people swear by each of them. Chrome just muddies the playing field with a not ready for prime time experience.