The end of a long relationship …

I’ve loved Firefox since the day I installed it. I was an early member of Spreadfirefox.com and have been evangelising it prior to version 1. I even had my name in the New York Times as part of an advert for Firefox 1.0.

Sadly, almost four years later I’ve just switched. It was a tough decision — four years is a long time to be committed to one browser. Once in a while I’d pop open Safari, Opera or Flock but I’d always go back to Firefox a few days later.

Recently Firefox has been grinding to a halt on my machine. I’m used to waiting for my loved ones to get ready — it’s part of any normal relationship (just ask anyone who is married). It bothers, even irritates you but the wait is usually worth it. You know that there is always something exciting just beyond the next tab. So you make excuses — maybe it’s OS X 10.5. Maybe it’s some nasty plugin (I’ve removed most of them). Maybe it’s just because someone cut up five undersea cables in the region. Whatever it is, it would take seconds to switch between tabs. I spend a large chunk of my day on the interweb so those seconds add up. I knew I had to change but was putting it off in the hope that Firefox would suddenly become more responsive to my needs.

When I saw Haroon’s post on Webkit I knew that things would have to change. Haroon is probably the only person I know who is online more than me so his is serious recommendation. I downloaded the nightly dev build and was blown away with the speed and stability.

And thus my love affair with Firefox ended, sadly on February 14.

Of course, I may sneak back for a little love when Firefox 3.0 is released…