I’ve been using Chrome for Mac for a while now and honestly I really like the browser. But there is one fatal flaw, the inability to extensions to tie deeply into the browser. What am I getting at here? Simple, extensions like NoScript and Flash Blocker can’t work properly in Chrome.
Most of the extensions in Firefox I use revolve around making the browser more secure. To this end one of the first extensions I install is NoScript. NoScript is an extension that allows you to block all scripting on sites you don’t specifically white list. This is useful for blocking malicious behavior on many websites. The extension also prevents cross site scripting attacks. Well I’ve been curious when or even if NoScript will be made available for Chrome. The bottom line is it never will be since there are no hooks in Chrome to allow extensions to selectively interact with scripting elements.
To further compound the issue Chrome’s cookie handling, at least on the Mac version, is unusable. When I hope the cookie browser in Chrome it just hangs there and I get the spinning beach ball of death until I have to force quit Chrome. Of course I’ve been seeing a lot of tracking cookies popping up which has gotten to the point I’m finding absurd. There are no extensions for Chrome that allow me to block all cookies except those I specifically white list and I really want this behavior.
This means I’m forced back to Firefox which I’m not horribly fond of. In Chrome each tab is a separate process which means you close it all the memory is freed properly. Firefox on the other hand never seems to properly free up memory from closed tabs and windows which leads it to eventually consume insane amounts of memory. Hopefully the newly release 3.6 will be better than previous versions. If it’s not you’ll be seeing more browser oriented bitching coming up on this blog.