Yes, I switched back to Firefox for Pentadactyl, a complete vim-like environment in the browser. I tried all of the vim extensions for Chrome, but Chrome just doesn't expose enough (any) internal APIs to implement Pentadactyl.
Chrome extensions are limited to modifying the current page and displaying an extension icon. They can't modify the browser itself. (Although no extension system will ever compete with Emacs for fully modifying the host application, Firefox does a decent job.)
Unfortunately for me, I have thousands of bookmarks and for some reason that makes Pentadactyl awfully slow. I don't know what to do, as I start Firefox simply opening a website will take twenty seconds before Pentadactyl lets me type. Chrome is always very smooth experience. Pentadactyl is not. I'd use Pentadactyl if it actually worked right. I'm not happy with its performance.
OK. Can I ask what you use for bookmarking and what type of urls you bookmark?
I have a few thousand bookmarks in Delicious, but I've nearly stopped bookmarking altogether. I noticed that I almost never look up bookmarks later, so I've started keeping really important urls in org-mode and discarding everything else. Google is good enough for most recall. For everything else, org-mode reminds me that the bookmarks exist which I tended to forget with Delicious.
I for one, just use Firefox's built in bookmarks.
And I bookmark everything, photos/videos I like, posts that have a nice quote, pages I'll read in after I'm done with dinner, random corners of the internet, threads I know will get pushed back a dozen pages by the morning, whatever.
Google is fine for most recall, as long as what you're looking for isn't in the darkweb (like my dozens of achive.org bookmarks), but why bother with Google, extra steps, extra friction.
Side effect of the awesome bar and compulsive bookmarking though: I rarely have more than a dozen tabs open because picking up where I left off has so little burden.
And yeah I do end up with thousands of bookmarks I probably won't even use again, but it doesn't interfere with anything.
I feel like half my bookmarks are the articles of HN submissions while I then get to march guilt-free into the comments page because I'll just read the actually article when I get a chance, darn it! I'm a busy guy!
> I rarely have more than a dozen tabs open because picking up where I left off has so little burden.
Me too. I will never understand people who complain about Firefox (or any other browser) getting slow when they have 50 tabs open. If you had 50 physical documents on your desk, wouldn't you put away at least 40 of them in a neat stack elsewhere? Just having them all spread out in front of me would give me a headache.
And yes, I also end up with thousands of bookmarks in a very complicated hierarchy. Sometimes this makes the Bookmark manager crawl to a halt.
One can also forget the bookmarks if they're local to you, as in Firefox. Plus they're backed up through Sync. This just in case when you can no longer rely on Delicious, or Google for that matter.
This article inspired me to try Opera again. But now 10 seconds spent in the Pentadactyl quick-start guide have made it clear that I'll be back on Firefox after being a dedicated Chrome user for at least four years.
Chrome extensions are limited to modifying the current page and displaying an extension icon. They can't modify the browser itself. (Although no extension system will ever compete with Emacs for fully modifying the host application, Firefox does a decent job.)