Browser Wars: Mindshare

I recently ran into a rather interesting situation. After a small discussion about keeping web browsers up to date, someone recommended moving to Google’s Chrome. In response, a different person stated that moving from Firefox to Chrome would be a “Major downgrade.” This struck me, and I was intent on informing this fellow on how WebKit-based browsers like Safari and Chrome are actually very fast and standards compliant. I waited for his response, and it came back with much snark and typical nerd condescension.

“Try using a WebKit-based browser with more than 20 tabs,” he said. “Try telling me how great it is.” He went on to boast about having more than fifty tabs open at any one time, and that Firefox is the only browser that can handle that kind of load. Personally, I never have more than a couple of tabs open at one time, so I can’t speak from experience. However, I can speak to how often I hear about Firefox leaking memory like there is no tomorrow.

I’m curious if any of you have run into problems using a ridiculous number of tabs in Safari or Chrome. If you have, please leave a comment on this post detailing your issues. This simply sounds wrong to me, and I feel it requires much more data to resolve the truth. My feeling is that this is malarky. I’ve never had speed trouble with Safari, so I want to hear from you.