As an added bonus, I can double check and make sure that the right-half has olives and the left-half has ham, or vice versa, and not just hope that the person who answered the phone in a noisy restaurant got my overly complex order correct.

However, today I ran into a bit of a snag with Pizza Hut’s website. It seems the folks who designed it are from 1990.

Don’t Use Pop-Up Windows on Legitimate Websites

When I finished entering my order, I clicked to finish by entering my credit card information and clicked the button to submit my order.

Nothing happened.

This is a problem because clicking the order button more than once can end up submitting your order more than once.

I’m betting that the guys at Pizza Hut would probably notice that two identical orders for the same address came in seconds apart, but that doesn’t mean that the computer wouldn’t charge my credit card twice anyway. I waited a couple minutes to see if anything happened and then clicked the submit order button again.

Nothing.

Now, I’m frustrated and worried. Did I just order twice or did I not order at all?

Fortunately, Pizza Hut sends confirmation emails when I order online, so I checked my email. Finding no confirmations, I checked my spam folder to be sure and then tried again.

Still nothing.

At this point, I would guess that the average potential online Pizza Hut customer gives up. If the company is fortunate, those people call and place their order, but there are, no doubt, plenty of instances where potential customers are irked enough that they just don’t bother to place their order at all.

On a hunch, I tried one more thing. I went into the settings for my browser and added PizzaHut.com to my exceptions list for the pop-up blocker. When I clicked the order button, a small window popped up saying that my order was processing.

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!?!

Everyone Blocks Pop-Ups

Dear Pizza Hut,

I know that you guys make pizza, but I assume that you have an IT guy on staff somewhere that handles some of that “computer stuff” for you. You either paid someone a lot of money for your website ordering system, or you built it in house with some full-time employees. Either way, someone doesn’t know their head from their butt when it comes to building usable websites. I suggest you get them some training right away, or at the very least, that you remind them that EVERY SINGLE WEB BROWSER THERE IS currently blocks pop-up windows by default.

Signed,

The Customers Who Actually Use Your Website

Seriously.

• Internet Explorer blocks pop-up windows.
• Firefox blocks pop-up windows.
• Google Chrome blocks pop-up windows.
• Opera blocks pop-up windows.
• Safari blocks pop-up windows.

See the pattern?

The worst part is that the pop-up window on Pizza Hut’s website does NOTHING. It’s a dialog box that says it’s processing, only this is an online application and not a desktop application. Apparently, if that window won’t display, the order won’t process.

At least when other companies insist on using pop-up windows, they are smart enough to tell you that you need to allow pop-ups. Pizza Hut’s website just sits there.

Don’t Use Pop-Up Windows

I already “dumb down” my web browsing when placing online orders with non-online companies like Pizza Hut. I make a special effort to use Internet Explorer with no plug-ins or add-ons and not Firefox or Chrome because I have had too many experiences where the clowns who end up designing and implementing big brand websites never bother to test anything other than IE.

In other words, pop-up windows are so out of date, and considered such bad practice that even Internet Explorer blocks all pop-up windows by default. That means that Pizza Hut’s online ordering system is failing for everyone who has a recently purchased computer but who doesn’t know that they have to go in an make a special settings configuration change for Pizza Hut online orders to work.

Note to Pizza Hut: If you are wondering why there are an abnormally high number of users who fill in an order but never complete the transaction, turn on some tracking to show whether or not the pop-up window fails to display. You’ll find that is a major contributor.

Or, just get with the program. No one uses pop-up windows anymore.

What other websites do you use that require pop-ups be enabled to function properly?

Pop-Up Windows in Online Ordering is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

When Google Chrome first came out, the first thing people noticed was how fast it started. The chorus of users claiming that Firefox had gotten too big, too bloated and too slow grew louder. Firefox developers worked hard to streamline the code and make Firefox faster and more efficient, but for some users, the improvements were not enough. Much like me, they began to use Chrome as their quick browser and Firefox as their power browser. Of course, the constantly running googleudatetaskuser process annoyed me enough to keep it from leaping to the front of the good resource usage pack.

It turns out that Firefox’s slower loading may not be its own fault. Users who load their browser down with numerous new addons and plugins are adding not just functionality but more code to run at startup as well. The result is a slow loading web browser that cannot be fixed by making Firefox faster.

No longer willing to take the blame for slow starting web browsers, Mozilla’s Firefox development team began calling add-on developers out by publishing a listing of the most popular Firefox addons showing how much they slow down the boot process of Firefox.

One popular developer plugin, called Firebug, slows the startup time of Firefox by 74 percent. Put another way, the load time of Firefox is nearly twice as long if you have Firebug running. This is sobering news, both for Firebug developers, and Firebug users.

As a website developer and freelance technology writer, I both publish and write for numerous websites. I have the Firebug extension installed on my Firefox browser because I occasionally need some of its features. For example, Firebug can show me which links on a webpage are nofollow links. It is also necessary to run Google’s Page Speed plugin which analyzes how quickly a webpage loads and provides suggestions to make it load faster.

I do not need to use Firebug all of the time, however. In fact, I only use it a few times each week. But, with Firebug installed, my Firefox browser starts slower, much slower. By disabling Firebug and only re-enabling it when I actually need its functionality, my browser starts much more quickly. (I have long disabled unused add-ons to make Firefox snappier, but I never suspected Firebug of being a big speed killer.)

With this new spotlight on add-on speed, developers may refocus some attention on making their plugins more efficient. As a result, Firefox will start faster and load more quickly. In turn, some users may find the startup time of Firefox so quick without numerous bloated add-ons installed that they don’t need a “quick browser” anymore and they can just use Firefox all of the time.

It’s a win-win situation for Mozilla and users. For developers, it’s time to re-evaluate how well their code is written.

Of course, this is only half the problem. Since Firefox is still the only major web browser that requires a full restart to enable or disable an add-on, users are forced to decide what functionality they want to enable ahead of time or wait for a Firefox restart when they change the state of a plugin. No matter how fast Firefox starts up starting (or restarting) it three or four times to get the right functions working makes is slower and less usable than its competition which already allow on-the-fly enabling and disabling of add-ons.

Firefox Calls Out Slow Loading Add-ons is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

A blog post announced that Google Chrome beta is getting a built-in PDF reader. That means that I will no longer have to have a temporary directory to download PDF files into manually just so that I can click on the downloaded file to open it up in my PDF viewer. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer have been able to handle this for years via useful, easy to use, extensions and plug-ins.

The developers of Chrome no doubt claim that their browser lacked such basic functionality because of security reasons. I never like this answer. As the user, I should get to make the decisions about how I do or do not want such things implemented. It’s the same reason that I hate how Microsoft IE has no option to automatically re-open the last browsing session for "privacy reasons." But, it is what it is.

Now, Chrome has a PDF viewer installed by default. When I click PDF links, they should just open and display within Chrome instead of having to open them later in Foxit Reader. According to the blog, the PDF files will be sandboxed. That means that today’s run of the mill PDF exploits won’t work when the file is viewed in Chrome. Guess the hackers will have to come up with something new. In the meantime, it would be nice if Adobe could pull their heads out long enough to make their reader more secure. Oh, and lighter and less bloated would be nice too.

With a PDF reader built into Chrome, the last major feature missing that is keeping Chrome from becoming anything more than my "lightweight" browser is a Print Preview function. Nothing prints with less consistency or more waste than webpages, which makes print preview a critical function for anyone who prints anything off of the Internet more than once in a blue moon. As a freelance technology writer, I need to be able to not only find data and information, but to digest it, compare it to other data, and then keep that data should anyone ever raise any questions about it. Something like Zotero, or OneNote, or a bunch of screenshots helps, but nothing makes an editor feel warm and fuzzy like good old paper.

The ongoing irony about Chrome is that as a browser by the techies and for the techies, it has managed to produce some amazing features, functions, and speed, but it has some glaring holes that are very big deals for the average computer user that Google insists should just be fixed by an extension, or when they really don’t like it, that you "don’t really need it anyway."

Here is to the new PDF viewer. May you be as stable and garbage-free as the built-in Flash support. In fact, may Google build in all Adobe products and extensions so that finally someone can do so in a way that isn’t overstuffed, unsecure, and instable.

Google Chrome Built-In PDF Viewer is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

The basic speed dial window all browsers have.

I usually don’t like to post stubs or preliminary articles like this, but I went all reviewer on Mozilla.org this morning and, of course, ended up writing a review of my favorite Firefox add-on of all time, Speed Dial. As that review got longer I felt myself wanting to show people how to really maximize productivity with this Firefox plug-in by configuring Speed Dial the way I have ended up tweaking it and setting it up. Don’t get me wrong, my why isn’t the only way, but when you see the power and customization of the Firefox Speed Dial plug-in in use in my setup, you can see why I think that Speed Dial is the most important Firefox add-on anyone can have. In fact, it’s the one real drawback to Google Chrome for me right now.

There is a Speed Dial extension for Google Chrome on the Google extensions website, but it is a pale imitation of this powerful Firefox add-on. It doesn’t have dial groups which is the main powerful feature of the Speed Dial plugin.

Anyway, it would be irresponsible of me to get into posting my Speed Dial Firefox extension review right now when I have deadlines barreling down on my like runaway trucks with no brakes on the side of a steep mountain. However, I don’t want anyone following the link I threw onto my review at mozilla.org to arrive and wonder where in the heck the review I promised is. Therefore, I’m going to post a couple of screen shots that I think will help any user with even a little bit of power browsing experience to understand the kind of productivity gains that are possible with this plugin.

If that is you, either install the plugin and start messing around with it. Just got to Tools -> Add-ons -> Options and start customizing away. (I recommend setting up either a Speed Dial icon on your toolbars, or doing like I did and setting the right click on a page to include the context menu option to Add to Speed Dial. You can make that work by right-clicking on the tab if you prefer, but I’m used to right-clicking on the page itself when I want to do something. One of the best things about this add-on is how much it can be customized to work exactly the way you need it to in order to help out with your own time management by making browsing faster and easier.)

The quick, quick, version of how to use Speed Dial to speed up your Internet browsing and boost your online power goes like this:

1. Use Dial Groups – Every web browser offers some sort of dial based start up screen. Opera was first, but Google Chrome has one now too. IE has a similar concept although it is done via text links instead of actual configurable dials. What makes Speed Dial great is the ability to have MORE THAN ONE page of dials.
2. Set Speed Dial to show up in new tabs instead of waiting to click something. Every time you press CTL-T you’ll get a list of your speed dials to use. Just make your current homepage the first dial on the first dial group to keep instant access to it.
3. Customize the dial group tabs – You can change the colors to make tabs easier to find. Just don’t go crazy or you’ll hate it.
4. Customize the dial groups – Need more than 9 websites for one dial group? No problem. One of the configurations is how many sites to show on a speed dial group. You can change both the default, and even better change on a per group basis. You can have 12 dials under Work and 6 dials under Facebook Games or vice versa, depending on your lifestyle – If you have a widescreen monitor take advantage of that width by setting your default dial group configuration to 3 rows and 4 columns.

Lastly, if you are a power user looking for maximum time savings, you’ll end up with a lot of dials that link to a lot of webpages. By default, the speed dial thumbnails refresh frequently which means you could end up with a slow running Firefox when running Speed Dial and switching through several dials because thumbnails are being generated for each site no matter how fast you click. (See the link for details.)

There is lots more power. Read the docs or poke around the settings to see what else you can do to improve online productivity with Speed Dial. Or, come back here in the next day or two when I get time to go on full tilt. Even easier, grab the Best Hubris RSS Feed to make sure you get the updated Firefox plugin reviews as soon as they come online.

Then you can check out my post about Firefox personas if you need to read more about the Mozilla web browser.

Best Firefox Addon For More Productivity is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

When you spend a lot of time in the world of technology it is easy to get jaded. New features that are promoted (self-promoted, and then echoed by lazy writers) are almost never as useful as they are supposed to be, and half the time, they are not even new. I almost ruined my eyes looking at computer monitors full of accolades for Microsoft Internet Explorer 7′s “new” tabbed browsing feature, especially since I had been a power-user of tabs in web browsing since they came out in Firefox years before.

When new features are both truly useful and actually new, like the Ribbon Interface in Office 2010 (updated from a partial integration in Microsoft Office 2007), they are often met with initial resistance.

As a freelance technology writer I not only spend a lot of time in the tech world, I am actually forced to look at and use new software features regardless of how useful I could possibly find them because a client needs a review of new software utilities or a customized newsletter could benefit from a comparison of program features.

Check out a review of Citibank Thank You network rewards program.

The other thing that happens to us technology types is that we stop reading about what a program does. We most certainly do not watch videos that show us how to use new features. (How many seconds of your life does it waste to watch someone show you how to click File then New on a training video?) Fortunately, most of the time it works out just fine because when you are used to how software works, you know where to look for functions you need. However, from time to time, I miss out on a cool new feature or a great new function that would increase my productivity.

Firefox 3.6 Coolest New Feature

When it comes to software development, there are two kinds of functionality. One type of functionality affects the usefulness of the product. These functions make the software, better, faster, easier to use, and so on. The other type of functionality makes the computer software more fun to use, or just makes it look nicer. These days, it seems like there is a lot of action in the latter category.

Most of the “improvements” in the user interface design realm are actually just ways to make a software product look nicer, or most commonly, to make it so that you can superficially customize the application. Think of it as the equivalent of being able to add bumper stickers to your software.

For the most part, I don’t have much use for these beautification features. A computer is, what a computer is, and while using my own wallpaper is fun, it doesn’t really matter what the wallpaper is when I’m switching between eight full-screen windows in a desperate race to beat an important deadline.

As you can imagine, I haven’t played around much with Firefox’s personas feature.

This morning, however, I was bored (actually, I was procrastinating and rendering my ADD planner worthless) and I ended up on the Firefox Personas page after re-installing the Firefox NoScript Plugin.

While I don’t have much need for a new persona for my web browser, I was clicking around to see what was on the Mozilla website when I noticed something happen to my default Firefox browser.

When you hover over the sample picture graphic of a Firefox persona, it previews what that persona would look like if you installed it on your Firefox 3.6 installation. Tons of applications do previews like this, but the fun part is that Firefox previews the persona on your real installation. That is, the browser you are currently using to browse the available personas actually changes when you hover your mouse over the preview.

Now this is fun.

Normally, would have to download and install the browser extension or browser skin in order to “play around” with what it would look like. Then, when I am finished wasting time, I would switch back, and if I remembered, uninstall all the different personas I downloaded to check out. Hopefully they all uninstalled cleanly and there were no residual effects, although that is never a guarantee.

But, with the Firefox persona preview functionality I can see what my browser would look like with a hundred different personas, all without downloading or installing anything. So, I can see what my Firefox would look like if I installed the Kelly Brook persona (First, calculate the odds of the wife using my computer and Firefox…). Or, for a more whimsical (and socially acceptable at a client site) persona I can check out the Snoopy persona.

Here is my usual Firefox (the default) persona:

Here is the Kelly Brook persona:

In the end, personas are a play thing, like putting up a Go Buffs sign on my home office wall, but sometimes, playing is good. After all, all work and no play make Jack go crazy and try to chop up his family at the Overlook Hotel.

Firefox Personas Preview Feature is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

However, I do switch back and forth between Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox a lot. In doing so, I have developed a list of things that I wish Firefox did that Chrome already does. For the most part, these are little things that make surfing the web faster or easier, rather than make or break requirements.  That doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t really like to see these Google Chrome features show up in the next version of Firefox.

Chrome Better Than Firefox Features

The biggest one here has to be speed.  You have to give it to Google and their open-source browser project Chromium. What they have put together is hands down the fastest web browser. Each browser developer out there from Microsoft, to Opera, to Apple’s Safari, all have specific tests that they construct to showcase their browser’s speed. But, when it comes to real-world browsing speed, Chrome is undeniably the fastest.

Where Internet browsing surfing speed really counts is in a user’s ability to get to the Internet and then do what they need to do without having to wait for the browser program to load or refresh, or whatever. Start the timer when you click to run the program and stop the timer when your favorite website or homepage has finished loading and nothing comes close to Chrome’s speed regardless of which carefully chosen website the developer wants to use.

The reason is that Google’s Chrome browser has the fastest start-up speed. True, it cheats a little bit by displaying the interface and giving control to the user before it is actually ready to do anything productive (it keeps loading in the background), but even if you account for that extra boot up time, Chrome is still the fastest to start.

Firefox, on the other hand, is a NIGHTMARE to start-up, especially if you purposely left a bunch of tabs open to automatically reload the next time you started Firefox.  Here is the rest of the list. (I do know that some of these things can be done by plug-ins or add-ons for Firefox, and that is one of the great things about Firefox, but, frankly, I already have a TON of plug-ins loaded. I’d like to start cutting down on the number of Firefox add-ons I have, not increase them.)

Things I Wish Firefox Did More Like Chrome

1. Load Faster
2. Search from the Address Bar – It’s awesome, but it doesn’t do this.
3. Paste and Go in the Address Bar – Nothing has saved me more keystrokes.
4. Incognito style privacy – I get why Firefox does privacy mode the way it does, but I really like being able to have a private session going concurrently with a normal browsing session. Getting to choose between the two types would be ideal.
5. One Tab = One Process – For research purposes, sometimes I right-click a dozen or more search results before I go look at what opened up in those tabs. Sometimes one of those websites is junk and ends up hanging the whole smash. In Chrome, I open the task manager find the garbage site and shut it down without even looking at in. In Firefox I have to wait until I get back control and then hunt down the offending site myself.

How about you? What features from Chrome would you like to see in Firefox?

Firefox Beats Chrome But… is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

The latest nuisance comes courtesy of the Reopen Last Browsing Session feature, or more specifically the fact that there is no way to automatically reopen last browsing session.  (Although there is a way to disable reopen last browser session if you want to do that.)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m finally glad to see this functionality in Internet Explorer.  It’s bad enough for your browser to crash, but it really stinks for it to erase all of those open websites you worked so hard to find.

If you haven’t used IE 8 Reopen Last Browsing Session yet, it is probably because it isn’t really all that obvious that IE even has that feature, especially if you remember trying to find something like that in earlier IE versions and came up empty.  It isn’t a leap to assume that something that was missing last time is missing this time.  (Click the little gear icon that means settings or functions or something, and it’s the first choice at the top.)

It does say “Restore Last Browsing Session” on the screen that appears when you open a new tab, but if you use your browser a lot, or if you use another browser, chances are, you’ve been using tabs for so long, that you didn’t see the need to read whatever Microsoft decided to add once they decided it was a feature worth copying.

Ironically, for many users, having the option on a new tab is too late.  For example, I use the same feature in Firefox (which has had it for years, now) to help remind me of the things I was working on when I last shutdown my computer or browser.  If I had two more sources to go through, but it was getting really late, I would just leave those two tabs open.  When I started Firefox the next time, those two tabs would pop up right away and remind me to finish out the work I was doing.  That keeps me from having to write down a list, or put a sticky note on my monitor, or whatever.

Internet Explorer does not restore the last browsing session by default.  Microsoft says that this is because they carefully considered all the options and decided that for privacy reasons, it would be better if the last session did not automatically open when you opened IE.

That is fine with me.  I can see the arguments on both sides and certainly cannot fault anyone for coming down once way or another.  What is annoyingly preposterous is that there is no way for a user to customize this behavior and configure IE to do what they chose.  In other words, Microsoft has decided that, not only is it better to not display the last session by default, but that users are so stupid and inferior to Microsoft’s user interface design team that we shouldn’t even be given the choice!

One more time for the cheap seats, LET ME DECIDE HOW TO USE MY SOFTWARE ON MY COMPUTER!

You see, as it turns out, I am reasonably intelligent.  I can learn new things, figure things out, and yes, even use a computer that isn’t dumbed down to the lowest common denominator.  I can guard my own privacy.  I can use Private Mode browsing.  I can delete cookies.  I can delete history.  I can use CCleaner.  In other words, I don’t need Microsoft to be my mommy and wipe my nose and watch out for my privacy.  Just give me the tools to handle it myself (like Private Browsing Mode) and then let me handle it myself.

For Microsoft to assume what the best way for my software to be configured for me is patronizing and infuriating.  I know Microsoft is used to the people using its products being the non-computer savvy drones who just use whatever they have at work, or whatever comes installed on their computer by default; but if Microsoft ever wants the respect of people who actually know even a little bit about computers, then it needs to stop treating us like incompetent drooling monkeys.

Give me an about:config screen like Firefox.  Put the choice behind a button that says “Advanced”.  I don’t care what you do, just do something.

But don’t you dare decide what is best for me!

Reopen Last Browsing Session Internet Explorer 8 By Default is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

What I did find is that you can disable reopen last browsing session feature in Internet Explorer 8 completely if you want to.

How To Disable Reopen Last Browsing Session Menu

Go into the registry (if you don’t know how, you shouldn’t be messing with it anyway).

Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Recovery

Add a new DWORD value named NoReopenLastSession

Set its value to 1

That is all it takes.

Check this out if you want to set IE8 to reopen last browsing session automatically by default whenever Internet Explorer 8 is opened.

Disable Reopen Last Browsing Session IE 8 – Internet Explorer How To is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

I’m using Internet Explorer 8 today; not by choice, but because some Microsoft websites whine about you using other browsers and I was doing research for a Microsoft related article. I have a favorite of the page I want to open.  (The proper term is bookmark, but Microsoft insists on pretending that they invent everything, including all the stuff they steal from other software, so they didn’t use the term bookmark, like everyone else.)  So, I press CNTRL+B.

Now, Control + B is actually the keyboard shortcut for another browser (Firefox).  As proof that Microsoft knows full well what the real terminology for a saved Internet location in a browser should be, CTL+B opens the "Organize Favorites" window in Internet Explorer.  This is a nice touch of Microsoft user interface usability from the boys in Redmond to understand that those of who don’t just use the software that came preinstalled on our computers are very likely to be used to the keyboard shortcuts of other browsers.

Still, it’s a little bit unexpected, because I’m expecting the sidebar or toolbar, or whatever that opens when you click on the little gold start to show up, but the Favorites window is fine, too.  What is very weird, however, is trying to open a bookmark from this window.

Technically, the Organize Favorites window is not where you are supposed to be browsing and opening your favorites from.  Nonetheless, following the standard Windows user interface paradigm, right-clicking on a bookmark brings up a context window which includes the option to Open the IE favorite that was clicked on.

At this point, I’m a little bit bummed, because what I really want to do is open the bookmark in a new tab, but it is still better than nothing, so I choose Open from the pop-up menu and…nothing.

I choose Open again.  Again, nothing happens.  After a few tries, I roll my eyes, give up, close the Organize Favorites window, click on the gold star, and open the bookmark from the sidebar.  A few minutes later I switch over to Firefox for something else, and notice that there are 4 tabs open.  Those four tabs are the ones that opened when I chose open.

Seriously?

Just to prove it to myself I tried it again, and sure enough, choosing Open from the context menu in Organize Favorites in IE 8 opens the bookmark in Firefox. 

It is undoubtedly because Firefox is set as my default browser, but I still assumed that choosing Open in a IE favorites window would open the favorite in Internet Explorer.

I wonder if this behavior is intentional, or if in all of their testing, no one ever noticed this behavior.  It is likely a felony at Microsoft HQ to have another browser installed as your default browser, so maybe it just never came up.  Either way, Microsoft amused me today.

Bizarre Internet Explorer 8 Favorites Quirk is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Anyway, a lot of sites and feeds I read are starting to trickle out articles about why people are switching from Firefox to Google Chrome as their primary browser. 

When I read the reasons why these people think that Chrome is better than Firefox, I realize that they don’t use their browsers like I do.  They may think they are power-users, but until you’ve done 24 Google searches (still open in their tabs in case you still haven’t found what you need), opened 100+ sites, twenty or so online PDF files, clicked every one of the reference links at the bottom of eight or nine Wikipedia articles (Wikipedia is a good way to find sources, Wikipedia is not a good source for professional writers.) read through page 188 of a 533 page SEC public comments posting in order to find out just where the regulatory agency stands on what type of disclaimer is required in an investment related corporate email, all while still messing around on Facebook, Twitter, and Hulu, you don’t know what a power browser is.

Ironically, you don’t even have to push the browsers to advanced capabilities to see that Firefox is better than Google Chrome (at least for now.)

Why Firefox Is Better Than Chrome For Main Browser

When you are done running tests and calculating that Chrome loads a Javascript page in 1.834 seconds while Firefox takes 2.122 seconds, the choice comes down not to speed, but usability and functionality.  There are several critical features that are missing in Google Chrome, either intentionally, or someone just hasn’t gotten around to it yet.

I’m not talking about playful little plug-ins and things like moon-phase calendars or digital clocks or skins.  I’m talking about things that interrupt my workflow so dramatically, that it causes me to sit stunned for a few seconds while I try and figure out what the best way to proceed is.  Do I work around it in Chrome, or do I wait forever for Firefox to load and copy and past the link over there?

Here are the Top Reasons Firefox is Better Than Chrome As a Default Browser

1. File Handling – I don’t care if Chrome’s built-in download manager is better or not.  Sometimes I don’t want to download the file (or technically, I want to download it in the background instead).  PDF files come to mind.  There are hundreds of PDF files that are linked to out there.  In Firefox, it opens Foxit Reader and loads the file.  I can scan it and decide whether to read it, save it, or get rid of it and move on.  In Chrome, it downloads it, puts a button at the bottom of the screen and waits for me to decide what to do with it.  That’s after it asked me where to save it.  I had to create a temporary directory just so I have a place to put all of those little files that I have to fully download and store in Chrome, just so I can access it.  I also get no choice to Open, Run, or anything else.  You can’t get through 40 PDF files on a website by doing it this way.
2. Google Updater – Yeah, I know, they finally pulled their head out and started doing it in a way that makes sense, but I spent so many months killing, deleting, closing, and stopping Google Update from starting automatically with Windows, that I don’t even know how to go back to letting it run.  By the way, even if it doesn’t run all the time it still runs every single hour and doesn’t bother checking with you to see if now is a good time to update.  If you are pushing a tight deadline and trying to download, proof, and re-upload some big files, too bad.  Google Update will be wasting your bandwidth (and number of connections) downloading the upgrade from version 2.1.03.2 to 2.1.03.3, because we all know that is more important.
3. No Print Preview – Seriously, how hard is this to code? There is nothing quite like printing out what you think will be 2 pages only to get 14 pages thanks to all the extra stuff that prints funny.  I also hate that one extra line that prints on a new page. I never print without preview first, and Chrome doesn’t have one.
4. Plug-ins – No Zotero, no default browser. The same people that used to say plug-ins were one of the main reasons Firefox was so much better than Internet Explorer, now say they don’t need them. Not me.  Some of my plug-ins are optional, but plenty of my add-ons are not optional.
5. Bookmark Tags – No tag support for bookmarks? I long ago passed the point where folders were sufficient to find my bookmarks efficiently, this is a deal killer.

Notice that I didn’t say anything about Ad-block Plus or NoScript or other Firefox add-ons that make browsing less annoying.  If those are your main reasons for using Firefox, then by all means, switch over to Chrome.  But, until I have usable bookmarks, usable printing, usable file handling, and my can’t-live-without-them add-ons, Chrome will be my secondary browser.

Chrome Is Faster

Don’t get me wrong.  Chrome is faster, way, way, faster.  The quicker start-up time alone is worth the extra resources I use up having another browser.  When I need to check something out quickly, Chrome is my go to browser.  But, when I’m settling in to get some real work done, it’s worth the wait to start up Firefox.

Firefox 3.5 vs. Chrome 2 Why Firefox Wins For This User is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC