Today I eventually made one big decision, dropping Firefox (call it Shiretoko, if you want) as my default browser and embracing Chrome. Why? Well, they’re right: Chome is fast. Really fast.
It is not even a matter of how quick it’s able to render a web page or to execute JS code (though that’s also an interesting topic) that lead me to the decision, I just happened to start Chrome, browse a bit, open some different windows with some 20 tabs each, and then, from TweetDeck, I clicked on a link. That’s exactly when it all started. I mean Firefox, begun to start. Intentional wordplay.
After reindexing my whole home folder, it finally showed up some content. It might even be that I installed too many plugins (firebug, ubiquity, seleniumIDE, downloadHelper, and userAgent switcher, that’s it), but it still needed~10s before showing up anything, not to steal any credit from the waiting time on loading my saved sessions of 2 windows with around 10 tabs each.
Then I decided to give it a try: I restarted Chrome. And that was the moment I decided I don’t want to waste my time wating for Firefox startup. Chrome -> Options -> Make Chrome my default browser.
Now we come at the problem mentioned in the subject: even if Chrome is now my default browser, Adobe Air applications such as TweetDeck still trigger a new Firefox tab upon clicks on an HTTP link. I googled around (too much google, I know. And it’s getting worse as I speak, I fear!) just to find a bunch crazy guys editing binary libraries using vim. Although I really love vim, I was pleased to find an interesting comment that led to a solution:
export GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID=Default
/opt/TweetDeck/bin/TweetDeck
I will miss a lot my dear Ubiquity extension, and I still think Firefox is not that bad as a browser. But I spend 95% of my computer life on a browser, as Google guys didn’t have troubles to argue, and therefore speed matters. A lot.