Among many of the web browsers available today, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome are very popular with some interesting differences between them that make them each unique. This article compares the 2014 releases of both Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. Firefox is a free and open source web browser developed by Mozilla while Google Chrome is a free web browser developed by Google. Firefox has a long history than Google Chrome but currently according to StatCount, W3counter and Wikimedia counter chrome is the most popular web browser while Firefox is the third. Google chrome has an innovative and simple user interface, but Firefox, on the other hand, provides a lot of customization and expandability. The availability of extensions to Firefox is high, but Google Chrome is much more compatible with Google services than Firefox.
Features of Mozilla Firefox 2014 Releases
Firefox is a free and open source web browser which is developed by Mozilla foundation with contributions from the community. It has a history of about 12 years where the initial release was done in September 2002. Currently, Firefox can run in a variety of different platforms including Windows, Linux, OS X, Android, Firefox OS, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD. An important feature in Firefox is tabbed browsing where the user can visit multiple websites at the same time and navigate them via tabs. The latest Firefox versions support a feature called tabbed grouping where custom grouping of opened tabs is possible to identify them easily. Also, related to bookmarks are two features as live bookmarks and smart bookmarks. A download manager is inbuilt where multiple downloads are possible with the facility to pause and continue stopped downloads. A powerful inbuilt PDF viewer that provides features such as thumbnails, page navigation is also available. The feature called private browsing lets users browse without saving information about pages visited and queries searched. One of the most powerful features in Firefox is the support given to integrate third-party extensions. By installing appropriate third-party extensions, Firefox gets more functions and capabilities and there are thousands of extensions available for free.
Firefox provide not only browsing capabilities but also the support for developers by built-in tools under the menu, web development. Moreover, third party extensions such as firebug provide s more enhanced functions for developers. Firefox supports many of the web standards such as HTML4, HTML5, XML, CSS, JavaScript, DOM and many more. Secure web browsing over HTTPS is provided using SSL/TSL that works on powerful encryption and endpoint authentication mechanisms. Firefox is hugely localized where currently it is available in about 80 different languages. Another advantage of Firefox is the ability to customize it as necessary as the user wishes.
Features of Google Chrome 2014 Releases
Google Chrome is a free web browser that is developed by Google. Though this is not fully open source as Firefox still Google exposes majority of its code via a project called Chromium. Google chrome is new when compared with Firefox as it was released just in September 2008, but still according to StatCounter now Chrome is the most widely used browser in the world. Google chrome also supports a variety of platforms including Windows, Linux, OS X and Android. Google chrome has a very simple but innovative user interface while features such as tabbed browsing, bookmarks and a download manager are included. A specialty in Chrome is that the address bar and the search bar is integrated into one. Chrome also provides easy and simple mechanism to synchronize data such as bookmarks, settings, history, themes and saved passwords just by signing in.
Also, Google Chrome obviously provides a lot of unique support for Google services such Gmail, Google Drive, YouTube and maps. Google Chrome also supports extensions that add extra functionality to the browser. Plugins such as Adobe Flash is bundled into the browser itself where the user does not have to install it manually. A private browsing method called incognito window prevents saving of information hence it is like an isolated browser that deletes everything after closed. A very special implementation fact to mention in Google Chrome is the use of multiple processes that separates each site instant. Hence crashing of one tab does not crash the whole browser. Because of this feature chrome is more stable and secure.
Google chrome also provide easy to use element inspector for web developers. Via the online store called Chrome web store various web applications can be inserted into the chrome browser.
What is the difference between Firefox and Chrome?
• Mozilla Firefox was released in September 2002 while Google Chrome was released in September 2008.
• Both Firefox and Chrome are freeware, but only Firefox is fully open source. Chrome provides most of its code to the community via an open source project called chromium.
• In Chrome, Adobe Flash plugin is bundled into the browser itself, but in Firefox this plugin has to be separately installed.
• Firefox lets user do a lot of customizations than Chrome allows. However, Chrome interface is much more simple than Firefox.
• Google does not have a separate box for search queries. Address bar itself is the search box, but in Firefox, there is a separate box for searches while the address bar also supports search queries.
• Sign-in in Chrome takes care of synchronization of data while it logs into all google services such as Gmail, Google Drive and YouTube as well. However, in Firefox sign-in only is for synchronization. Also as Google Chrome synchronization is done with the Google Account it is very easy to use and have a lot of features.
• Google chrome isolates each website instant to a separate process. Hence crashing of one tab does not crash the whole browser while this provides a better performance and security due to the inherent nature of the process. However, Firefox is usually a single process that hosts all the tabs.
• Firefox is more flexible and supports a lot of customizations than what Google Chrome allows, but Google Chrome is much simple to use than Firefox.
• The availability of extensions and support for extensions for Firefox is very high than what is available for Chrome.
• The pdf viewer in Firefox has more features such as thumbnails and page navigation than what is provided by Chrome.
• The mode that opens an isolated window that does not save any history or cache is available on both. In Chrome, it is called incognito window while in Firefox is it called private browsing.
• Firefox supports tab grouping but yet Chrome does not support that.
Summary:
Firefox vs Chrome 2014
Both are free web browsers that have many common features with support for a lot of platforms. An important difference is in the user interface where the Google Chrome has a very simple interface, but that compromises the customization and expandability Firefox provides. Google chrome has better support for Google services such as Gmail, Google Drive and Maps. On the other hand, Firefox has a wide range of extensions. Another difference is in how the applications handle multiple tabs where Google Chrome starts a new process for each website while Firefox handles all tabs in one single process.