Well, I've persevered with Chrome for some months, loved its minimalist look and speed, but like many I missed my Firefox plugins. Most notably, AdBlock Plus. However, I found a theme and plugin set to make the latest version of Firefox look and behave just like Chrome. So now I have all the good points of Chrome, with AdBlock and a thousand other actually useful plugins.

Being able to set the new tab 'speed dial' thumbnails, and fix them in place, is superb. Also, there's a plugin to allow resizing of text areas, which is a real boon. If anyone's interested (and hasn't come across these Firefox items yet) here's what I'm running;

Theme:
ChromiFox Basic (not the Extreme version, as it leaves the window's title bar showing).

Plugins:
Total ReChrome - blends the title bar like Chrome, and sets up tabs properly.
Hide Menubar - obviously.
Fission - progress displayed in the address bar (with your choice of colour).
Download Statusbar - if you want the tiny look of Chrome's download area.
Text Area Resizer And Mover - with various mouse options.
Toggle Private Browsing.

And just because they're the best:
AdBlock Plus - block anything you like, and easily add custom filters.
BetterPrivacy - Flash cookie killer.
Download Helper - grab any kind of video, flash, etc., with a right-click.
Lazarus Form Recovery - restore a typed-in form after a crash.
Nuke Anything Enhanced - hide/block almost anything you like on pages.

That's all folks.

With Firefox almost indistinguishable from Chrome, and damned fast these days too, there's nothing Chrome offers right now, and far too much Firefox does. I wish, I really wish, Google had been sensible enough to give Chrome the ability to use Firefox plugins from the start. Too bad. The only thing I think Chrome has that's better is the V8 engine, which is neither here nor there to me. I much prefer being in control of ads, my visual and normal bookmarks, etc., in the way Firefox lets me.

Really can't understand why you felt the need to expand on your reasons for going back to FF ...

Do you think anyone here is really that bothered ?

A simple 'bye bye' would have been sufficient ...

And even with all these addons, it still lacks the feel and usability of Chrome. Have fun with your Firefox.

Well, Firefox is not even half the speed that Chrome is.

I have Firefox (latest version) installed here, as I was a Firefox user. It takes three times more to load it than Chrome does. Sure this is not only reason for change, but for me Chrome is supplying much more easy-of-use than Firefox did.

This is very personal. You can't say a browser is bad or good relating it to your needs only. You can say it in a general way when you know how things are built-in, and the tests, overall performance and many other things which not necessarily you really care of, but that should matter in the final rate.

It seems what matters for you most are extensions, so sure Chrome isn't a good choice right now.

What I did realize when I did such change, is that at least 5 extensions I did not need anymore when using Chrome - it got all built-in, at full speed.

More extensions => worse performance. That's a thing to keep in mind.

I still miss some things, but needs to wait for a better support so more extensions can be ported.

Yep, I very much agree Firehalk. I'd prefer Chrome, but have struggled with various ad blocking options, like AdSweep, HostsMan, and another I can't remember the name of. The speed of Chrome is impressive, but if I ignore the much slower boot-up time of Firefox, I can then spend hours watching pages appear quickly without tons of ads. The slightly slower overall speed seems to be offset by the lack of pauses caused by adverts. Once it's booted-up I don't notice much difference to be honest, as a server bottleneck can cause lags sometimes. And easily grabbing any kind of video is useful too, as I'm doing a fair bit of learning and development in Drupal, and certainly need the videocasts.

As I say, once Chrome has plugins - heck, even just a decent ad blocker - Firefox will go in the bin I think. And StevePaul, the reason I posted how to make Firefox Chrome-ish was mainly for visitors who aren't sure about using Chrome for everything, need some of the things Firefox has, and are caught between the two. I know some people run 3 or 4 browsers, but I can't be doing with that myself.

Actually, I just realised while looking at some pages that the Nuke Anything plugin is very cool. AdBlock removes the ads and cleans up the pages, but Nuke lets you right-click and tidy up further. Sorry, not trying to sell Firefox, just I think these things will make Chrome amazing when they finally arrive.

would appreciate if you could provide the links to the plugins
they look interesting indeed :-)

Look on the bright side I suppose ...

It only took FF 5 years to get where it is ...

Originally Posted by sulasno

would appreciate if you could provide the links to the plugins they look interesting indeed :-)

Sure Sulasno - here's the theme and plugins.

Chromey Visuals:

The Chromifox Basic theme is at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8782.

Total ReChrome; https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9322
This basic theme works best, as the extreme version does too much and actually messes up. Though the tabs are upside down in the above theme, this plugin fixes them, as well as the title area. It leaves the window title there, but smaller, and when I compared the title bar area's height with Chrome's it's almost identical. You can also drag the window from anywhere in the top area like Chrome too.

Speed Dial; https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4810
This pretty cool. You can set the number of thumbnails on the page, whether they appear on new tabs, set as default on new windows, appear when you hit the home/clear button, etc. Also, they remain fixed as you place them, can be dragged around to reposition, and refreshed at set times or from the context menu.

Compact Menu 2; https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4550
Turns the menu bar into a single button which expands when clicked.

Fission; https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1951
Makes the address bar show page load progress. I always hide the status bar to get more screen space, so this is very useful. You can set the colour yourself too.

Text Area Resizer & Mover; https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8287
Something I grew to very much love in Chrome. This one allows you to set which option of mouse button and control keys do the job, whether to allow moving of the text area, resize single line fields as well, etc.

Toggle Private Browsing; https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9517
I'm not sure exactly how this compares to Chrome's stealth option, but it is configurable (and there are other versions too).

Advert removal and Privacy:

Adblock Plus; https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865
For any who may not know, you can right-click an advert area, select Adblock, and set your filter options (these can be altered or deleted in Preferences, too). It also features a preset list which auto-downloads. You can toggle filters to use, delete them, add new ones manually, etc. Apparently it filters before the page loads, so it speeds things up a lot.

Adblock Plus Element Hiding Helper; https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4364
Lets you set elements to hide to remove text ads.

Nuke Anything Enhanced; https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/951
Allows pages to be cleaned up when something big is irritating, or you want to clear up before printing a page.

Better Privacy; https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623
It seems Google and others use sneaky Flash plugins for tracking, which most users don't even know exist, and wonder why killing cookies doesn't work. This has various options for blocking and removing hidden Flash cookies.

Other useful stuff:

DownloadHelper; https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006
Lets you download any kind of video, flash, etc., using a button or context menu. It can convert to a video type of your choice following download if required. There's also a dialog which fetches hundreds of media sites for you to visit.

Download Statusbar; http://downloadstatusbar.mozdev.org/
If you don't like the download dialog, this shows downloads in the status bar.

Lazarus Form Recovery; https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6984
Saves form information so if anything fails you can re-fill a form again in an instant. It can be set to auto-remove saved information for security, and also have a password for access, etc.

I discovered that when you right-click the button area to customise the standard button settings, you can drag the plugin buttons around. If you're relatively new to all this (gods, some still are!) be sure to explore all of the plugin's options too.

All this doesn't, of course, turn Firefox into Chrome. As Google say, it needed building fresh, from the ground up. But if like me you can't stomach adverts and the lags they cause, or need some plugins which don't exist yet for Chrome, then this is a decent fill-in while Chrome development progresses.

On the speed side, I've been watching things carefully. My only connection is mobile broadband, which works very well most of the time. As others say, Firefox boots slower, and I found that was putting me off after using Chrome for a long time, but it wasn't just that. A large part of my dislike was the old look with the nasty window structure, and the lack of speed dial thumbnails and minimalist menu/buttons, etc. In actual use, most of the lags come from server clog, and when there isn't any I get much the same performance. More technically minded folks could provide speed figures to show how fast Chrome is, but in human terms the difference between a page loading in 1.4 seconds and 1.2 seconds is not really noticeable. What's very noticeable is the awful lag caused by adverts loading - and they're eating up bandwidth too (which matters on mobile broadband).

I'm watching Chrome's development, and to be honest if a decent Adblock came out for it tomorrow then I'd dump Firefox in an instant. Other plugins I could live without or wait for, but the advert problem is a big issue for me.

In case anyone knows, is there any real news on Chrome being able to use plugins, and even have Firefox ones ported over? If not Google, is anyone else working on some sort of core patch that could allow this?

Originally Posted by StevePaul

Look on the bright side I suppose ...
It only took FF 5 years to get where it is ...

That's a good point in many ways StevePaul. I think compared to the ongoing disaster that's IE, Firefox provided so much more, and still does. The Chrome developers have learned so much from Firefox, allowing them to go even further. I feel pretty sure that once we have Chrome plugins, Firefox will be left behind, albeit with the love of many devoted users.

Because of all that's gone before, I don't think it'll take Chrome 5 years to reach the stage that Firefox has in relative terms. Perhaps the only thing which could kill Chrome for users is if proper plugins are stifled, but Google would be cutting their own throat to do that, or even to delay plugin development too long. It'll be interesting to see what they do about it, as it seems obvious that they don't want things like AdBlock.

Michael3185

thanks for the links;

I am using Speed dial but I switched to only2clicks.com

Add on collector is a must have for Firefox users :-)