Amazingly fast. Doesn’t even feel like IE anymore. (With the right options, you can make it look a lot like IE 8, if your so inclined.)
Minimilist design, in a good way. But as I mentioned, you can make it look and feel a lot like IE 8.
Search Box and Url combined.
Tabs to the right of Url/Search box: I like that a lot. You can right click and select to show tabs on its own bar if you want.
box that pops up to ask if you want to save a password is different. (Not sure why they changed it, its not better or worse, just different.) It hangs at the bottom of the screen too, so a bit understated if you didn’t notice it at first.
Command bar and favorites on the same “bar”. You can turn either or both off, or have favorites on its own bar. They have a “home” button at the top right corner of IE 9. Which is arguable 99 percent of the time the only button used on the command bar. -by default all 3 are disabled, but right click your mouse to activate, and other toolbars, etc.
Lightning fast. Has other stuff also, like HTML 5 support and more security, but there are reviews on the web that go more into the hidden stuff of IE 9. I just wanted to mention the changes made to the surface of IE9 compared to IE 8.
I like it better than IE8 by a long shot, and better than Firefox, although I haven’t kept up with Firefox for a while, so I can’t say if its better or worse than whatever flavor of Firefox is now running. -I mostly abandoned Firefox due to some bugs and incompatibility issues with websites.
Haven’t used Chrome/Safari/Opera so have no idea how it measures up to those browsers.
Since most of us get to these forums with IE (whether 8 or 9), it’s a topic near and dear to many of our hearts. So I think the omission of a specific chess reference can be forgiven.
I like to keep it at 150% for all webpages (I have a big monitor), and often it will default back to 100%.
Never had that problem with IE 7 or 8.
Can’t remember back to IE 6, been too long.
Another ornery thing, although I figured it out: When you go to say “yahoo.com” and do a search in the URL/search box, it looks like its searching via Yahoo search engine, but I set my preferences for google search. Turns out it is still using Google as my default search engine. Its just looks like it was yahoo since my homepage happend to be yahoo.com.
-I just like having Yahoo.com as my home page for the news bites and other links. But I like google better as my default search engine.
Unlikely. If one browser is “much faster” than another, then your slower browser likely has been burdened with more optional plugins (not the browser’s fault, despite misleading claims to the contrary).
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But one thing all these tests do not do is take stock of what one’s personal configuration is, where one is surfing regularly, and what resources are required for those particular sites.
And on a subjective level, what one uses should simply be what is best to use through personal evaluation. Firefox and Chrome would not be as popular as they are (and IE’s market share less than 50% in browsers per Wikipedia) without having had something going for them over IE… I find no reason to migrate back to IE personally.
BTW, if browser news items are acceptable fare then it should be noted that Firefox 4 was just released. (I, too, think browser news qualifies as a browser is a virtually necessary component of a tournament chess player’s toolkit.) I’ve learned to wait a few weeks before upgrading, so that my plugins are all compatible and also for any subsurface bugs that should have been caught in beta but weren’t are fixed. But it is there.
I’m using Opera 11 as I type. It is fast. Faster than Firefox 4? Can’t see a difference even though all the tests I’ve seen rank it first overall. Both better than IE8? Light years ahead of IE8. IE9? Haven’t tried it yet, but will no doubt get it for those rare moments when one needs it for accessing something Microsoft.
This can be done in IE9. If you want to set default zoom level the same way you did in IE8, enable the menu bar (press Alt) then click on View and drop down to Zoom. Even without the menu bar, you can click the button farthest to the right edge of the screen, near the top—to the right of the Favorites and Home buttons— then drop down to Zoom that way.
What you cannot do in IE as far as I know is set site-specific default zoom levels. I use a great extension called NoSquint to do that in Firefox. (Early-stage cataracts, alas, still in my 40s.)
Also, you might want to reduce the screen resolution to make it easier to read text on your monitor. It is fast and easy to re-set the resolution higher to watch movies or videos or view photographs. I keep my resolution at 1280x720 or 1280x800 most of the time. The rare times I watch a film on DVD I bump that up to the native 1920x1080—and also change the brightness setting on the monitor.
Reducing resolution and screen brightness is easier on the eyes for those of us who spend (too) much time staring at our monitor screens. It also has a very slight but non-zero positive effect on your electric bill.
MS makes a big deal of pushing changes to the DPI rather than the native resolution. I never liked that in the old days; maybe it’s better-designed in Win7.
In online chess or analysis I can blunder easily no matter the size of the chessboard. There; we snuck it in…
Opera 11 is smokin’ fast. It’s my main ‘secondary’ browser behind FF. Why Chrome leaped past the similar-but-better Opera in market share I will never understand. It even supports extensions now. Another quick, lightweight browser that deserves a try is Avant.
I assume you were joking before, but IE means Internet Explorer.
No matter which browser I use to play online chess, I can blunder just as easily.
I figured out how to get to the favorites… its in the corner between the home icon and options icon (upper right).
Another thing I found out (quite accidently) that I like is you can move a tab off the browser and it will make its own window. Very nice when your getting a lot of tabs.
Edit: sweet: you can also drag tabs between windows.
As one poster has already noted, we are all chess players who use web browsers to pursue our passion for chess on the Internet. One topic alluded to are plug ins that might be useful for chess. For example, I’d be interested know what might be available for video capture add ons for Firefox and Oprera–useful if you want to capture chess lectures for future reference or to show to a club.
If you feel so strongly against the subject matter, just don’t click the thread and let other members enjoy their discission.
so, basically, this board has become a free for all because nearly anything can be “related to chess” in some way? Ok, I’ll be posting some awesome threads real shortly.
Dude, B-R-E-A-T-H-E. If you can relate it to chess, this is the place to post. If it’s of interest to me, I’ll read it and maybe post in reply. We won’t know if there is something worth discussing unless and until you start the discussion.
I find no reason to migrate back to IE personally.