Rob Wilkerson

I keep trying to leave Firefox behind.  And trying.  And trying.  Not behind, behind like feathered hair or roadkill, but behind as in dropping it as my primary browser.  I haven't had much luck so far and it's pissing me off just a little bit.  This I tell you this now because I just installed 3.0 b2 on my Mac hoping it would be better than 2.x and my bitterness is a bit more acute at the moment.  Needless to say, it's not better.  Not really, anyway.  It doesn't even look that much better.  I may even prefer the look of 2.x with one of Aronnax's outstanding grApple themes applied, to be honest.

I adopted Firefox as my primary browser somewhere around the 0.8 release.  It was fresh, clean and snappy and it was just a pleasure to drive.  I don't know when the transition occurred, but somewhere in the last year or so it's begun to feel clumsy, cumbersome, bloated and generally heavy.  Memory leaks, crashes, sluggishness when simply opening a new tab (which I have set to load about:blank) and seemingly random beach ball appearances have all taken their toll on my patience.  And before you ask, no, I don't have an endless parade of extensions loaded.  I've long since gone through the effort of identifying those that are really useful to me and those that are merely convenient or even whimsical and weeding them out.  Nothing has helped.  Certainly not enough to make me truly enjoy the experience of browsing with Firefox.

I've tried Safari.  I like it.  It's fast.  Unfortunately, it's not even remotely extensible.  Yeah, I know you can pimp Safari, but those aren't extensions.  Safari doesn't offer an official extension architecture, as far as I know.  The very fact that any extended functionality exists at all is owed entirely to the talented developers who wanted more and cared enough to dig deep and find a way.  Apple could slam that door any day, if they chose to do so.  I don't want to become dependent on something that could disappear tomorrow.

I've tried Flock.  Nice, but too much social butterfly bloat for my tastes.  Full disclosure: I didn't spend enough time with it to even determine whether extensions are available.  I may go back and give it another shot if I hear of any reason to think it's better than I give it credit for.

I had hoped that "Site-Specific Browsers" like Fluid (Mac only) and Prism (née WebRunner) might fill the void.  I love the concept.  The ability to run web applications as independent desktop applications solves a lot of problems for me - real and imagined.  On the "real" side, I love that I have some measure of protection if/when my browser crashes.  My apps are running independently and are unaffected by whatever fit of irritability strikes my browser.  On the "imagined" side I have better control over my desktop clutter.  Throughout the day, I spend a lot of time in Gmail and Google Reader.  I also spend a fair amount of time in Basecamp, several different Trac projects, Google Docs and few others.  That's a lot of tabs in a browser window so I typically leave only Gmail and Google Reader open.  Two permanent tabs are somewhat manageable.  More, well, aren't.

Site-specific browsers spare me from having to make that choice.  I can create a separate desktop application for each web app and have each window open all day long without affecting my browsing experience.  On the Mac, I have the added capability of hiding windows (via Cmd+H) to keep them open, but further reduce desktop clutter.  Those I don't explicitly hide away are hidden away for me by SpiritedAway (a very handy utility for clutter freaks like me).

Alas, none of these are extensible either.

I tried Camino, but to be honest, I did so when I was still pretty enamored with Firefox.  I may not have given it a fair shake.  I think I'll venture back in that direction for a little while.

Maybe I just need an intervention.  Maybe I'm hopelessly addicted to the extensibility that Firefox offers and its sluggishness and unresponsiveness are the price I pay.  Between extensions and Greasemonkey scripts, maybe my life has become too productive within the browsing experience for me to sacrifice it in favor external issues.  Maybe Meatloaf was right and objects in the rear view mirror really are closer than they appear.  Firefox 3 is still in beta.  Maybe there's still hope...