Tuesday, January 19, 2010

IS Google Chrome the Next Firefox

I am a fan of Firefox and I have been using since 2004 end, but I have little concern or thought on Firefox and its future.
Firefox is lacking behind Google Chrome in following area
  1. Javascript speed
  2. Implementation HMTL 5 web form (though opera leads)
  3. HTML5 websocket
  4. More HTML5 related...
Javascript Speed, this is well known fact that V8 javascript engine is leader in this space but actually Safari is king in javascript handling
HTML5 Webforms :
Actually HTML5 did bring new things in many areas but it is split into web forms, protocol etc what matter is "after effect" of html5. For example, in the text field "watermark" like implementation using most concise JQuery needs around 500 lines of JS code and few lines CSS. So what is the problem? My point may be sounds naive but still valid in the Internet scale application.
1. Bandwidth saving
2. Browser performance -- no need to download and it knows how to handle effectively since it is natively compiled into browser engine
3. Development effort --- it is somehow shifted to browser developer but it is one time cost
4. Webforms makes very semantic browser knows what type of input and for ex. iPhone like touch based device may throw relavant virtual keyboard etc
HTML5 Websocket:
Firefox has code in its trunk and waiting to be blessed by reviewer. It is more than an year (I guess) here is the bug ref. So what is happening?
Obviously firefox is lacking for the reason and it is clearly good thing for Google Chrome.
Hm... I started using Google chrome when google debuted its chrome browser. And firefox moved to my second most used browser list and conceding its pole post to Google chrome. But change is necessary to keep things evolve...