It will probably be helpful to give a little background before I present my argument. I used the original beta version of Google Chrome right when it came out and was not a fan of the interface and did not return to it for a long time. In addition, I am an avid Firefox user and my own Firefox profile (this is what a specific modified instance of Firefox is called) is modified almost beyond recognition compared to the normal build. I have been using Firefox as my primary browser for several years and hadn’t had much reason to switch. None of the other browsers could match what I had in Firefox in my opinion. In addition, I always have a bias for anything open-source if it can do the same job as well or better as a proprietary tool. Mozilla Firefox is completely open-source; Google Chrome is built on an open-source foundation, but it proprietary to Google. This may seem to be nitpicking, but it is an important distinction (If you want to try the open-source program that Google Chrome is built on, you can download developer versions of Chromium for Windows, Mac, and Linux here: http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/.). When a program is open-source, it does not matter if a vendor stops supporting it or does something undesirable with it; the community of users can keep developing it and making it better. When one company owns the program, if you need that program, you are at the whim of the company. The fact that Firefox is completely open-source is an advantage for Firefox.
Chrome
Firefox
About two weeks ago, something happened that prompted me to try Google Chrome. Julien Ridden (you can follow him on Twitter with @moodleman), one of a select group of people I consider even more passionate about Moodle than myself, sent me an invitation to Google Wave (blog post on Google Wave to come by early next week). Google Wave is a new, powerful real-time communication tool that is not yet available publicly. I can use Google Wave with Firefox, but I found it to be buggy and crash a lot. Some of this may be my own fault because all of the extensions that I have installed undoubtedly slow the program down. I rightly assumed that Google’s products would work well together. They place a lot of emphasis on interoperability with their offerings, from Gmail to Google Docs, etc… Google Wave runs much, much better on Google Wave, which it turns out is also the consensus among most Wave users. The reason that this is important is because of the potential of Google Wave. Google Wave, when it becomes public, can allow for a new paradigm of collaboration and communication in education outside of the four walls of the institution. At the moment, better support for Google Wave is an advantage for Google Chrome.
In education and in life, the ability to customize and change what’s yours to better suit your needs is vital. Firefox has a great suite of thousands of add-ons (https://addons.mozilla.org/) that you can add to Firefox to make it work better for you. There are many that are great for education. A good example is Zotero, an extension that helps you to make a working bibliography as you’re in the process of doing your research. I even control all of my social networks within Firefox without having to go to the respective pages. As a point for comparison, here is a picture of the Firefox profile I use on a daily basis. Chrome officially says that extension support is coming soon, but at the moment, it has little with which to compete in this section. It did just release bookmark syncing functionality very recently. Extensions can turn Firefox into a great research and learning tool, so the advantage goes to Firefox.
Firefox with Extensions
After using Google Wave, I decided to try to see if I could use Chrome as my primary browser for a time. I have been doing so even when I want to click on my Firefox icon. The greatest difference that I have noticed is speed. Chrome turns on faster, and loads and renders pages faster. In my admittedly limited experience, Chrome is so much faster than Firefox there is no comparison. While I am sometimes willing to sacrifice speed for functionality, the speed is greatly useful. Students are an impatient lot when it comes to technology not working the way that they want it to. Chrome can get students where they want to go faster and that is a good thing. Advantage: Chrome.
Stability and interface are two areas that are hard to judge here. While Firefox has been around longer and has had more time to perfect their interface, Google is often more innovative and good at predicting what people will want. Both interfaces are very functional and are a matter of preference. Students are very adaptable and after a brief moment of discomfort can navigate either without much difficulty. Both are very stable as well, due in large part to the fact that they run a separate process for each tab so that if one part of the program malfunctions, the entire program does not crash. Advantage: even.
Interoperability is another important consideration. It is helpful for students to be familiar with software to use it well. We do have two Mac labs in the building and sometimes a handful of Linux computers. Firefox works the same on every platform. In addition, using the Weave extension, you can sync your settings and favorites across every Firefox that you use. The students will not have to adapt to a new interface no matter what computer they are on. Chrome is Windows only at the moment, although it will definitely be on Google’s forthcoming Chrome OS. You can download Chromium builds for both Mac and Linux, but they are officially beta programs so they are not production versions that are guaranteed to work correctly and probably shouldn’t yet be installed on student machines. Advantage: Firefox.
The question must then become which is more important: raw speed or customization. This is a personal question. Even if Chrome allows extensions soon, Mozilla’s developer community is much more mature and established, so they will have much better customization options for a long time. Mozilla recognizes the need to increase speed, but I don’t see them matching Chrome in the next few versions. Chrome and Safari are based on WebKit; Firefox is not. Is there a definite winner? No. You need to determine what will work best for your students. What I’m going to do tomorrow is disable Internet Explorer on the Windows XP computers, update Firefox from 3.0 to 3.5+ and add Google Chrome. After allowing the students to use both, I am going to get substantive feedback on what actually works best for the students I teach. What works best for you? If you have any ideas, please let me know in the comments.
