More than ever before I’m asked why I haven’t moved to Chrome, as if it’s just the default option and anything else requires an immediate justification. Hey, it’s religion and atheism all over again! Anyway here’s a pretty table thingy showing why I still use The Firefox.
| Browser | Firefox | Camino | Safari | Opera | Chrome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JavaScript whitelist | plugin | plugin | – | – | built in |
| Cookie whitelist | plugin | possible | – | – | built in |
| URL blacklist | plugin | yes [1] | yes [1] | built in | yes [1] |
| XSS, clickjacking block | plugin | – | – | – | – |
| Supercookie clearing | plugin | – | – | – | – |
| Debian cert blacklist | plugin | – | – | – | – |
| MD5 cert blocking | plugin | – | – | – | – |
| Sidebar tabs | plugin | – | plugin | built in | – |
| Mac | sort of [2] | yes | yes | yes | low priority [3] |
| FreeBSD | yes | – | – | yes | – |
I’m not pretending this post isn’t biased in favour of Firefox, but as I said they’re the features I find important. If other browsers got similar functionality, I would consider using them. If you can see any mistakes in the table or have something to add, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll add/fix it :).
Footer note thingys
[1] I used to use the Firefox plugin, but now I just edit the system-wide hosts file which benefits any internet aware application.
[2] Firefox is a native, real Mac application (aka no XQuartz) but it uses XUL over Cocoa for parts of the interface and it really shows. It also doesn’t have anywhere near the integration (keychains, etc.) that Camino and Safari can boast.
[3] Chrome is a Windows app first, Linux and Mac app second.