Well it’s been a few weeks now since I starting using Firefox for everyday browsing and I have to say it is currently unusable for multimedia web use. Here are a few of the things I have noticed in my time using it.

Performance/Stability

I watch a lot of Flash based video, twit.tv is running a lot when I am working. When I am watching video I often notice stuttering, even though the video is quite low bit rate. The stuttering mostly only occurs when I browse to another page in another tab or the system does something else. But we are meant to be multi-tasking here! That’s why I bought two monitors.

At first I thought it might be a Windows 7 issue, but I have some severe stuttering in OSX as well. Even when I am doing nothing else and just downloading the YouTube video.

Sound will often cut out completely when I load another tab that has other flash elements in it. Then the only way to get the sound back is to restart Firefox.

I narrowed the problem to Firefox by using the basic process of elimination technique.

• System Performance: I played several videos from Revision 3 as high def Quicktime movies (around 600MB each), both streaming and local, in a window and full screen. No stuttering at all while multi-tasking.
• Network Connection: Streamed HD movies in non-flash formats, from other computers. Played flash movies in other browsers. They all had no problems with my 20mbs down connection
• Operating System: Same problem in XP, 2007RC on the same hardware, and OSX on a MacBook Pro 13.3″

So it is nearly certain in my mind now that Firefox is the main culprit here. Flash is obviously a big problem just because it still does not have graphics acceleration etc, but we have no choice with Flash.

Speed

The Firefox team has done a good job improving performance in 3.5 when loading pages etc. However as soon as you load Chrome up again you see a noticeable difference in speed. Obviously this is my subjective view, but everything just seems snappier in Chrome.

User Interface

I have said it before, and I will say it again. The Google address bar in Chrome is the best UI invention to come to browsers in a very long time. The way it intelligently figures out what you want as soon as you start typing is great.

For example, I type “twit” and if I hit enter it will automatically take me to http://www.twit.tv because that is currently my most visited site that has twit in it. Other options are Google Search (or search of your choice) for “twit”, then “twitter.com”, and a link to an article I bookmarked about twitter development.

Why have a separate “Quick Search” box when you already have an address bar right there.

Conclusion

For now I am back using Chrome for everyday browsing and general use. It’s a real shame because I do feel a lot of loyalty to Firefox because the opened the door for all these browsers like Chrome, Opera and Safari to get a foot in the door. They were not the first alternative browser, but they were the first to start taking some share back from the IE monopoly.

Compilation is good, and hopefully Firefox will strive to make their system faster in future releases. They need to do some Snow Leopard like releases that mainly focus on performance, streamlining features and interface, and performance again!.