Firefox 3.5 fails to impress me. Google Gears also missing.

I’ve been using Firefox 3.5 for some time now - alpha, beta, rc and now final.

In my opinion firefox fails to improve performance as promised. It has some new features, it has some bad new features and it misses the speed we want and need. Ajax sites seem just as slow as they were in Firefox 3.0. It still isn’t 100 on the ACID 3 test and so on.

It has private mode but instead of opening a new window - maybe with a different color scheme to mark it’s privacy - it simply closes every tab and window and opens a new empty one in private mode. That’s bad implementation in my opinion. Chrome is clearly ahead here.

Google also has some shame points because, even if Firefox 3.5 has been out for some time as a RC and now stable, they failed to upgrade Google Gears for it. Do I smell some Chrome favoritism?

I will still use Firefox because I don’t like Internet Explorer and because I still dislike Chrome for no particular reason - just a feeling - and also because I use some extensions not available elsewhere.