I may have sent messages in the past in which I expressed a much stronger liking for Firefox than Chrome.  At this point, I've changed my mind and, unless things change over time, as they may as Firefox continues to implement its new internal technical changes, I consider Chrome to be superior for general browsing. I haven't tested it for uses such as streaming or RSS or other uses.  I will therefore only address general browsing and the interface.  Others may want to comment on other aspects I haven't compared. 

 

This is a long message, a bit of a review and a bit of discussion of the interface.  I hope those interested in the subject find it useful.

 

If you try Chrome and find it superior for general browsing, you may still not want to use Chrome as your main browser.  There are various considerations.  I'll explain why I changed my mind and what you may want to consider.  You may have other or different considerations as well.

 

The reason I say Chrome is better for general browsing is because it loads pages faster than Firefox.  You may want to compare and see if the difference is important to you.  There is a very noticeable difference.  I hadn't compared Chrome with Firefox for speed on a fast machine.  I compared them on a slow machine running XP perhaps six or eight months ago.  I had expected that, if Chrome was faster, there would have been a noticeable difference, even though the machine was slow.  But there wasn't a difference that amounted to anything. 

 

I recently decided to compare on a reasonably fast machine running Windows 7 since many people have said on lists I'm on that Chrome is faster.  There is a very noticeable difference in speed on my Windows 7 machine.  I don't know what the results would have been on a fast XP machine.

 

I haven't used Chrome much but the increase in speed is the reason I say it's better for general browsing. 

 

The Chrome interface is different than Firefox or Internet Explorer.  It isn't difficult to learn but it is different.  You will likely want a tutorial or some instructional material.  If you are good at learning by exploring, you may not want or need such material, at least not to use in depth, but you may benefit in early learning by using material. 

 

The main things to know in terms of the differences in the interface are that Chrome shows many things as web pages, such as settings and history and there is one menu, which you can open with alt f, that is, hold alt and press f.  Of course, there are submenus and there are also items that open like web pages such as settings.

 

I don't recall if there are classic dialogs that open from the main menu.

But if you work with settings, you need to know that the settings interface doesn't work quite properly in the following way:

It's a web page-like interface but there some controls that don't work as they should.  I tried to activate two buttons today and I couldn't do so in browse mode using NVDA.  I don't know what JAWS does.  I had to manually go into forms mode, and activate the buttons.  I may have had to tab to the button because forms mode may not have been properly calibrated with browse mode in that interface, at least at times. 

 

I seem to recall that in another instance, I needed to be in browse mode to activate something but I'd have to experiment more to know if that is the case since I don't have a clear memory of whether that was necessary. 

 

There's a very useful settings search feature in settings. 

 

One of my main objections to Chrome in the past was that the book marks interface is not nearly as comvenient to work with as Firefox because the search feature in Chrome book marks appears to be inaccessible.  I very recently learned from someone on a list I follow that this problem can be more or less eliminated.  I say more or less because I haven't played with it much, but enough to see that it works well or reasonably well.  I'm hedging because I'd want to play with it more before saying just how well it works.  It' appears to work well from the very little testing I've done.  If you are in the address bar, you can type some or all of what you want to find such as york times or new york times and you can up and down arrow through results.  Some of them will be search results using a search engine but the top results in the list should be from book marks and history.  Try reading the current line after typing to see if that contains the first result.  I haven't played with the feature more than a little and I'm not sure.  But if it works well, this would eliminate what I consider to be an important deficiency. In other words, this feature may make book marks just as easy to use in Chrome as in Firefox. 

 

If you use Firefox extensions that you consider important and use them a lot, that may be a consideration in which browser you want to use.  and then, there's just convenience of not learning a new interface and continuing to use the familiar Firefox.  You, of course, can determine questions like that.  It's nice to have pages load a good deal faster, but the importance of speed may vary from user to user.  But if you haven't compared with a hands on test, you may wish to. 

 

Browsing is either identical or nearly identical between the browsers because they both use browse mode, or the Virtual PC cursor, which is the JAWS name for the same thing. 

 

So you can compare by installing Chrome, and then opening and using some web sites.  Control l moves you to the address bar, just as in Firefox.  I believe when you open Chrome, you are automatically placed on the address bar, but you can check.  If you want to make sure, it takes almost no time to execute control l.

 

I hope those who are interested in this subject find these comments useful.  If people are curious or dissatisfied with Firefox or another browser, they may want to try Chrome.  I haven't used Edge at all so I don't know how Edge compares. 

 

Gene