Come on then Peeb, what are your middle names? Can you beat Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso?

I'm in bed now and can't be bothered responding to all that, except to say that Python has/had no chance because it confuses/scares too many people.

Firefox will always have more functionality than Chrome, because it's built by/for people who want that, whilst Chrome sacrifices functionality for simplicity and speed.
It wont become irrelevant all the while Chrome's developer tools remain shite and awkward compared to Firebug.

See now what you've done, you've set me off again. :@

I'm putting this down and going to sleep.

No.

Nor that Wolfgang guy either.

And I aint telling. :P

TELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL.

Heh, I was agreeing with you, more or less, up til this post.

I don't think Python has "no chance", more that it will remain a niche product. Don't forget, Google are heavily invested into Python: a significant amount of their server-side code is written in it. That said, the popularity of Python frameworks like Django is still much less than Rails, and that itself is a smaller slice of the pie than PHP, so while I don't think Python will ever die off, nor do I think it will ever become as popular as Ruby, PHP or JavaScript.

I also don't think saying "Firefox will always have more functionality than Chrome" is the same thing at all as saying "Firefox will always remain relevant". You appear to be making the classic mistake most geeks make, in that you're assuming that functionality, extensibility and choice is what most people want. It's not. Most people who use the internet don't give two hoots about that, they just want to search on Google, read stuff on Wikipedia, buy stuff from Amazon, and maybe post on a forum or two. Simplicity and speed is precisely what they want. Most of them don't even know what a browser is, and it's only through Google's massive advertising efforts that Chrome has any relevance at all outside the tech world.

As for Chrome's Dev Tools, well, I kinda prefer Chrome for my work over Firefox and Firebug, mostly because after a while Firefox starts pushing my CPU to 100% a lot even for simple things like DOM operations, and also because it's faster. There are a few things Firebug does that I sometimes need, and in such cases I'll use it, but mostly I work better with Chrome.

I didn't say Python would die - I said it wouldn't usurp all other choices. (Though I didn't say JS would do that either.)


All those people you're talking about using Chrome are generally not the main Firefox userbase; they're mostly IE users.
I'm pointing out that people using Firefox are doing so for the plugins and configurability - there's no compelling reason for them to step backwards into a less-flexible browser - and so Firefox is going to stay around.

As I think I said - Mozilla didn't let Chrome in the backdoor, because they're aimed at didn't types of people.

My wife uses FireFox. It's not the only thing she's wrong about, nor the most serious.

Er, there is no server side.
I'm calculating a price and showing it in the browser, everything is done client side.

If it's a thing where you can order stuff that's probably a bad idea, if it's just for information you can probably get away with it.

Her choice in men is a bit dodgy ;-)

I know what you mean...the fathers of her two daughters for starters! :Y

Definitely just for info only. It's not even something that's likely to go outside the team, just being written as a sort of learning experience.

The proportion of users who care about the things that you can configure in FF which you can't in Chrome is going to be so tiny as to be insignificant. And Chrome has plugins/addons/whatever, I don't know where you arrived at a belief otherwise.

Chrome is good in exactly the ways in which FF was good when it was good. It's lightweight and fast without lacking in customisability. Those were the reasons people jumped from IE to FF and they are the same reasons people (the vast majority of) will jump from FF to Chrome. Alongside the continued steady trickle of not-technically-minded people who realise they don't have to use IE.

I used Firefox when it was better. I'm hardly a typical IE user. I may not be as techy as you, but I make websites for a living and use the web a lot. And I jumped to Chrome when it became better than FF. Caer is more techy than me and he did the same. I think this group of users you're describing is largely imaginary.

On the odd occasion when I have to use FF now it feels... almost as bad as using IE.

But this browser-jumpiing/-savvy demographic is hardly representative of the majority though, is it?

 

That majority may be luddites, but they're the luddites that your web sites have to appeal to (unless you build intranets/extranets, or demographically controlled/restricted sites).

 

(What happens when Chrome becomes like FireFox?)

I think if someone uses not-IE they've already demonstrated their willingness to go elsewhere if something better comes along.

And when Chrome goes the way of FF something else will come along. Maybe even Opera 8-O

And FF's numbers are starting to fall. Up to this point it does seem that Chrome has been taking uses from IE (assuming it's as simple as the stats suggest and not something weird like IE->FF->Chrome). But yeah, the past few months have seen FF's numbers falling too.

I still use FF, cos I hate Chrome.

Then you are a worthless anachronism.

(hug)

I could be the new TAK.

:'D

I use Chrome too, but not for customisability (in fact it's the frustrating lack of being able to get my preferences which is likely to see me switch to Opera 11 or Firefox 4).


Depends why they're not using IE - did they actively choose, did they stumble upon the Browser Choice shortcut, did their techy friend/relative make the choice for them, etc?

I wouldn't be surprised if Firefox was falling - in the past it was really just IE vs not-IE (Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox).

Now there's a choice of non-IE browsers (with a huge simplification of...) one for people who just want a browser, and one for people who want their browser to work their way. (not necessarily a direct correlation to techyness)

Firefox may well lose most of the first (much larger) camp to Chrome, and only lose some of the smaller second camp (if you've got your browser working exactly how you want, you need inertia to move).

It'll still be one of the top three browsers though, and remain relevant - even if it does drop below 10% it's still have a very vocal group of people using it.


As for Opera... dunno what to make of them. There's a couple of Opera guys doing HTML5-related presentations at a conference I'm going to in a few weeks - might see if I can ask them "why have you only got 2%" and see what they say. :)