Google Chrome to mimic Firefox with add-on support, user scripts
By Matt Jansen
It was only a matter of time, but Google has announced that Chrome will support add-ons and user scripts which are a stable of the Firefox user experience. Google Chrome has created a name for itself with a simple interface and ultra-fast JavaScript, but this announcement addresses criticism coming from users who expect greater flexibility from their browser.
Ojan Vafai, an engineer at Google says “There’s two different kinds of add-ons. The Firefox things extend your browser, so to speak, and then there are user scripts. We intend to do both of those in Google Chrome,” according to InformationWeek.
That has the potential to quickly close the gap between Google Chrome and Firefox, especially if Google is somehow able to make its browser compatible with existing Firefox extensions, or require minimal replatforming. Internet Explorer also supports add-ons but Microsoft has historically been less supportive of that community.
By developing Chrome, Google is making a direct challenge to Microsoft’s dominance in the browser market. No wonder Microsoft is jockeying for time by lobbying against the Yahoo-Google advertising deal.
The centerpiece of competition between the browsers is focused on speed, and specifically how fast JavaScript can execute. On the heels of Google Chrome’s release, WebKit just announced another leap in JavaScript execution efficiency with its SquirrelFish Extreme release. WebKit is an open source rendering engine and it’s used by Safari and some Linux browsers.
Mozilla isn’t sitting idly though, it’s actively looking into how Google Chrome separates processes in different tabs, thereby isolating page errors to a single tab. In contrast, a single error in Firefox can crash the entire browser.
Conversely, Google is looking establish improved stability with Chrome. Vafai said “we hope to do them right. As many people notice in Firefox add-ones, there are problems with instability.” Compatibility problems with Firefox add-ons can cause the browser to become disjointed, especially when two of them attempt to modify the same sections of code.
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September 20th, 2008
it’s funny, the more i use Chrome, the more unstable it seems to get… crashes a lot more, can’t handle sites with flash, hangs every time i close a tab… all that to say, i’m switching back to Firefox
September 20th, 2008
ever since i installed chrome firefox has been crashing……………………….
October 8th, 2008
same problems:
For the frist week, chrome performed extremely well. now I can hardly open youtube or other flash-sites without crashing flash or freezing chrome entirely for a while. so I chose to switch back to firefox whenever i open multiple flash sites. but firefox is more instable too now… all the fun with browsing is gone on my computer.
October 16th, 2008
You can also use Chromepass as passward recovery tools for google chrome .