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A Few Improvements for Firefox's Android UI
The latest Firefox for Android nightly build now features a number of changes to the UI with the goals of "...keeping a clear distinction between different types of tabs; making better use of the screen real estate on different form-factors and orientations; and being more compliant with Android’s design language. ... the tabs tray is now divided into sections for each type of tab — regular, private, and remote — so that you always keep things separate and organized. Furthermore, once you select a private tab, the main toolbar becomes dark as a clear sign that you're in a different browsing mode. ... We now use a horizontal scrolling tabs tray whenever it improves our use of the screen space. This is achieved with a TwoWayView ... We've recently landed a new skin for Firefox for Android that is more aligned with Android's Holo design language. Almost all textures and gradients were replaced by flat colors giving a much lighter feel to the browser."
Give Mozilla credit man?
They are improving it vastly as Firefox 3.6 was beh and 4.0 was frankly aweful. The mobile versions for Android 2.x were terrible too. But that is not the case anymore. So much so I find myself starting to use it again in a non irritational like way and even like it.
I think one browser engine is harmful and I do not care if it is better. Ie 6 was far better than Netscape and even Mozilla 1.2 sadly and people forget that.
I do not want a webkit future no more than I wanted a IE 6 only future a decade ago. Website owners have to use all sorts of hacks with -webkit prefixes and strange relatie:position bugs that do not exist in IE nor Firefox. Many bash IE and Firefox for not being -webkit standard while ignoring W3C standards. It is not nearly as bad as it was but it is going in that direction as sites like HTML5test.com rush to benchmark futures that only exist in webkit to prove that any other browser sucks which are not even part of the W3C standard.
http://saveie6.com/
Chrome for Android is still only available for Android versions greater than 4.0, which excludes about 60% of all Android users, while Firefox is available to Android 2.2+, which constitutes about 98% of all Android users (source)
Perhaps the most important differentiator is one you don't see: putting user privacy first.
I've found Chrome offers no benefits over the latest versions of Firefox. At all. In fact, Firefox feels noticeably faster, more responsive, more extensible, and doesn't feel like a skeleton still waiting to be filled. It also feels like it's moving more quickly, somehow.
I think it's really down to perception more than anything. I've heard a lot of people badmouth Firefox lately simply because it's Firefox, and praise Chrome simply because it's Chrome.
Sounds about right to me. Generally, people still want Google to annihilate any competition because thats their browser of choice and again, generally, people want to validate their choice as correct by making it look like at the only proper choice. /me generalizes a lot, but really, that's how it is.