They do, and it will blow your mind: the search provider’s bar is the URL/address bar. Talk about utility! You can just type your search queries straight into the address bar and it automatically runs a Google search (or whatever search engine you want to set as the default, but I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want it to be Google).
I love it. No reason to clutter things up with unnecessary extra search bars.
I use a bunch of different search providers in the search bar, flipping back and forth between them all the time. Often for the same search. The search providers I use are Google (Default), IMDb, Internet Slang, Merriam Webster, Mr. Skin, pro-football-reference, Wikipedia, Yahoo NFL Player search, and Youtube. Switching between providers is a single mouse click.
I just now did a search on Rashida Jones on three different search providers. (Which three is left as an exercise for the reader.)
I can no longer deal with browsing sans mouse gestures. Once Chrome gets those I’ll probably switch.
I like Chrome better than Firefox for ordinary web page browsing. But I use Firefox for sites where it’s mostly downloading large files. The interface on Firefox is better and seems to crash less; there is a pause/resume option and the standard, horizontal progress bar is more informative than the tiny chrome DL circle that appears different for different kinds of files. Of course all this could change with the next upgrade of either.
I tried Chrome when it was brand new, but found it lacking. I’m happy with Firefox and see no reason to switch. I also have IE and Flock on my desktop and don’t use those either. Lately, I’ve been using Safari on my iPhone more than my PC.
I’m actually composing this message on TapaTalk on my iPhone.
Ah, in that case see post #54. That’s a Chrome extension which does exactly what you’re describing (as well as the IE8-style accelerators).
We’d be remiss in our duties to Ellis Dee if we don’t also show her Firefox 4.
And I assume you are already familiar with Full Screen mode. I personally prefer Firefox or IE for that, as you actually get a functional web browser if you scoot the mouse up to the top of the screen. Chrome just gives you a button to go back to window mode.
[spoiler]And, yes, my text is bigger. That’s an advantage of using Firefox. I have an extension that lets me set the text zoom and the page zoom. I set the latter at 75%, so I can see the whole page without scrolling, and the former to 140% to give me the standard 120% zoom people tend to use on small monitors. Plus I can set it differently per site very easily.
Chrome still won’t let me even change the font size (the settings do nothing to most pages), and only has full page zoom to some very odd presets: 83% and 69%.[/spoiler]
Yeah, but still in beta. So be careful! I tried it two days ago, and somehow it managed to completely break my old Firefox 3.6 in such a way that uninstalling and then reinstalling wouldn’t fix.
I had to spend quite a bit of time searching for any file Firefox or Mozilla related and delete it manually, then reinstall.
Luckily I could copy across my fairly recent bookmarks from Opera to Firefox, so I didn’t lose much. Still it was very annoying.
But when it’s out of beta and properly released in a few months, I’m sure Firefox 4 will blow everything else away. Until that day, 3.6 is still my favourite.
I use Chrome because when Firefox crashes because of flash or somesuch (which seemed to become more and more often until I switched) it freezes forever and/or quits out to my desktop, whereas Chrome just sends me a message that it crashed and allows me to keep going with flash disabled. Saves me a whole lot of fury! And add-ons seem much easier to deal with (and I was able to get all the ones I was using in Firefox). Also crashes much much less.
Only thing I miss is that in Chrome I have to open a new tab to get to recently-visited pages, whereas Firefox had the nice simple pull-down thingie in the location bar. I also sort of miss my old friends File, Edit, Tools, etc.
That extension still doesn’t let me use custom forum searches, like the Straight Dope search. I mean really, this is a browser developed by Google. Of all the browsers out there you’d think Chrome would kick ass in terms of search power, but no. Opera still beats it, and without having to add extensions. If Google can’t get the search right, then what else is screwed up with that browser? :dubious:
recent versions of FF run it in a “plugin_container.exe” process which theoretically lets the plugin crash w/o taking down the browser.
Chrome is the shizzle fo rizzle…
I’m old school, I still use Netscape. I’m staying in the family, Chrome just doesn’t feel like a browser. I’m sure there is a way to get some toolbars on chrome but I’m not gonna look. What is a browser without a toolbar? It’s like a Macintosh without an apple. Just got to simplify everything.
Yes, exactly. Chrome is starting to look all kinds of awesome.
Wow, that looks awesome as well.
I’m going to have to re-read through this thread a little closer now that I see the basics I’ve come to rely on are available in both FF and Chrome. (In a nutshell: Accelerators, Search Bar, sleek interface.) Thanks again for the feedback.
Tab behaviour isn’t as nice in Chrome. I don’t like the way you can’t hide tab close buttons. Time and again, when I have a largish number of tabs open, I inadvertently close tabs when I merely meant to select them. I soon became familiar with the “Reopen closed tab” shortcut! Doesn’t happen in Firefox because I hide the individual tab close buttons (with Tab Mix Plus).
Also, I prefer to have new tabs appear at the end rather than next to the current tab. Chrome doesn’t give you that option AFAIK. When I middle click a few links from various tabs, I have to hunt around for the new tabs. In Firefox, I know that they’re all at the end, in the order I opened them.
I’ve seen people asking for these features on the Chrome dev lists, but the developers seem adamant that they keep options to a minimum. They prefer it the way it is, and that’s that.
[edit] Oh, another annoyance - middle-clicking links getting confused with the “middle-click to scroll” feature. Firefox is intelligent enough to know that if you middle-click a link and inadvertently scroll the wheel slightly at the same time, you did not mean to enable that horrible “scroll the page by moving your mouse” feature. Chrome is not, and when you don’t realise that it has got it wrong you suddenly find yourself scrolling around the page violently.
Yeah, most people don’t like toolbars. We get rid of those pesky things.
Every time I start using a new computer, I have to re-figure out how to turn that feature off. I don’t remember if it’s in the Firefox or Mouse settings, though.
Somehow, I’ve got Firefox in a “Load webpage on middle click” setting. It takes the most recently copied text, say “Ximenean”, and tries to load a URL with it: “http://www.ximenean.com/”. Which doesn’t exist in this case (Hey, get on the ball! ;)). It loads this in the current tab instead of a new one , so I have to go back to get to the page I was on. I’ve got to figure out how to get rid of that…
It’s an extension:
https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/lfkgmnnajiljnolcgolmmgnecgldgeld
I find it interesting that Firefox 4 and IE 9 have stolen liberally from Chrome. It must be onto something.
One minor Chrome gripe I forgot to mention though is I miss the right click “set as wallpaper” feature in IE.
What did IE9 steal from Chrome?
