Microsoft Internet Explorer version 9

[GPowers]

How is IE 9 going for everyone? 

Is it good enough to switchback to using it instead of Chrome?

 

[PaulMarcel]

Dunno, but I love Chrome's side-tabs.  Having the tab bar on the left side makes it so easy to read the tab names when there are many many tabs open (I run ridiculous numbers of tabs during the day).

What?! you can't find the feature!?!

ahem...

new tab
navigate to  "about:flags"
click 'enable side tabs' and let it restart
now, you can right-click a tab and select 'side tabs' and the bar snaps to the left.

Not available on the Mac OSX version yet and I miss it on my Mac dev days.

 

[GhostFist]

Currently in love with Chrome on my Mac. Haven't used IE since PC days. Safari sux, Firefox is a good second choice. Don't know how IE9 rates.

 

[joraft]

How is IE 9 going for everyone? 

Is it good enough to switchback to using it instead of Chrome?

I would say NO.

I upgraded from IE 8, and switched back in a few days. I did not like the changes in the toolbars.

 

[Sparktrician]

Well, all I can say is that it works, but I'm primarily a Firefox user.  I have noted, though, that it's broken one of my Windows 7 gadgets from Weatherbug. 

[sad]

 

[fdengel]

IE is inherently inferior, as it is a Microsoft product.

If I'm setting up a new Windoze installation for whatever reason, just about the first thing I do as soon as it is on the 'net is DL and install Firefox.

 

[builderbob]

I haven't seen IE for years!  I'm happy with Safari but I'm gonna check out Chrome for Mac...just wanted to give it time to work out the kinks!

Bob

 

[Jeff Hein]

Dunno, but I love Chrome's side-tabs.  Having the tab bar on the left side makes it so easy to read the tab names when there are many many tabs open (I run ridiculous numbers of tabs during the day).

What?! you can't find the feature!?!

ahem...

new tab
navigate to  "about:flags"
click 'enable side tabs' and let it restart
now, you can right-click a tab and select 'side tabs' and the bar snaps to the left.

Not available on the Mac OSX version yet and I miss it on my Mac dev days.

Excellent tip Paul!

I have tried IE9, but I still prefer Chrome. I use the ChromeToPhone plugin all the time ( http://code.google.com/p/chrometophone/...

 

[NuggyBuggy]

Currently in love with Chrome on my Mac. Haven't used IE since PC days. Safari sux, Firefox is a good second choice. Don't know how IE9 rates.

What advantages does Chrome offer over Firefox ? I have become quite fond of a few FF extensions, and I like the idea of supporting Mozilla as opposed to putting yet another one of my eggs in Google's basket.  I've used Chrome but didn't see a reason to prefer one over the other.

 

[PaulMarcel]

I used FireFox on Windows (Vista and XP) and on OSX Snow Leopard.  It has memory leak issues on both platforms. Once it gets to a certain critical mass, it becomes much more unstable to where you can't quit cleanly. Version after version, still leaks.

I switched to Chrome last November.  Rock solid.  When a plug-in crashes, you get intelligent crash report (Flash is notorious) and any page that used it gets a 'broken plug-in' image where the plug-in was hosted.  If you refresh the page, the plug-in is relaunched.  So nice.

It's also much faster than I ever remember Firefox.  Has its own task manager so you can see what's going on with each tab/window so if one is consuming a lot of CPU, Chrome will tell you and give the option to kill it.

All those points are about the stability in light of the fact that a lot of plug-ins are unstable or JavaScripts go out for a ball of chalk and eat your CPU.

Also, as a developer, the developer tools built-in are very nice.  Those exist, too, on Firefox, but I prefer the built-in Chrome tools to what is effectively a bundled add-in.

I still use Firefox, IE, and Safari for testing things, but Chrome is preferred overall.

It's all personal preference... but give it a try.

 

[NuggyBuggy]

Thanks for the rundown PaulMarcel.  I have never experienced the memory leak issues for Firefox that you describe, and Firefox will run on my Mac OS X and Windows XP machines for weeks on end.

 

[Billnut]

Is there a website that could teach me all the tips and tricks for chrome?  Been using for a week or so and I think I like it.  Just need to figure a few things out.  IE has that little home button that chrome does not, I can bring all my tabs back to where I started.  Does seem much faster than IE.

Bill
Bonettto's Carpentry

 

[PaulMarcel]

Chrome can restore all your windows and tabs on startup.  The options are a little hidden since they want to minimize the toolbar clutter and maximize viewing space.  The wrench to the right of the address bar... click that.  It is basically the menu bar.  There are preferences under there and you can set opening a home page, blank page, or all previously opened pages on startup.  You can also set your home page, but remember to check the button to say "show home button".  The 'under the hood' tab has more advanced settings.  I'm typing this on the OSX (Mac) version; the layout and names are similar on the Windows version.

Where I noticed the speed the most: I used to have Firefox re-open all previous tabs (they are all my workspaces and such for work).  It's a big list.  Used to take a long time with Firefox and many pages would time out.  With Chrome, they load in a third of the time on startup and never a timeout (this is the case on the Windows version; Firefox uses a network connector that has limited "same site" connections whereas Chrome doesn't use that).

But, again, not a browser war... use what you like  

 

[NuggyBuggy]

I still use Firefox, IE, and Safari for testing things, but Chrome is preferred overall.

It's all personal preference... but give it a try.

PaulMarcel, since your post I have been using Chrome as my primary browser.  I didn't notice much of a difference, although I do like the built-in bookmark sync (especially with Foxmark's future in some doubt).  I like the slightly more streamlined interface.

However, I have noticed that sometimes pages will fail to load.  I'll need to reload them.  At first I suspected my office Internet connection, but noone else is experiencing problems.  This has gotten worse over the last week or so.

I started wondering whether maybe Chrome is sending back info to Google and that maybe that backtalk is where the delay is occurring.  So today I decided to try Firefox against Chrome.  Entering the URLs at the same time, Firefox will almost always load pages that will have Chrome spinning its wheels for perhaps minutes.  That doesn't confirm my theory, though.

I've also noticed that Chrome seems to behave strangely on some CGI scripts I've written.  Sometimes output will not be displayed immediately on the browser: it seems the browser sometimes - but not always - waits for the script to finish before displaying output.  This is disconcerting to users who are waiting for output to come back.

Finally, I've found that viewing source of CGI-generated pages under Chrome seems to work oddly.

 

[Steve R]

Firefox all the way! I only keep up-to-date on IE because MS sites work better with them.

Firefox is free and good, they support it and I get much less spam.... as long as I don't use Google.

All the others gather too much data about you.  FF has a stealth mode that lets you view things with out getting the ads afterwards.

But that is just my opinion...  I consult in the IT area and do not work on just one platform. I started with mainframes...as there was no PCs...  I was at the meeting that announced the web addressing stucture. http:// etc....  Stats show FF is used my more high level IT people than any other browser..... but that can change.

Baseline use what you like.... don't worry about big brother... if you surf clean....LOL [big grin]

Cheers,
Steve

 

[NuggyBuggy]

Baseline use what you like.... don't worry about big brother... if you surf clean....LOL [big grin]

I do worry about Big Brother.  I am a big fan of Google's tools, but it gets a little creepy sometimes.  Today, I had to get a login and password to download some software.  I used these credentials on one computer and started the download.  Then I opened the same website on my other computer, from which I had not logged in yet, and somehow Chrome had filled in these credentials for me.  I have no idea what they were doing, whether they were reading the credentials (which were sent to me by Gmail).  I can see someone thinking it very convenient, but I do NOT want my software doing this for me.

 

[lambeater]

I upgraded to 9 but don't like the tool bar changes. Really messed up my flowfinity login for work, so have to use my phone at present.

Lambeater

 

[EvilNuff]

I think IE9 is less bad than previous IEs (its more compliant) but its still not in the same ballpark as Chrome.  Its just bloated and wastes screen real estate.

 

[worknfool]

That seems to be where the bar is now set for MS and its behemoth of gradual evolution in a world of leap frog technology...it doesn't suck as bad as what it replaced. With their track record of sending broken bloatware to market who really cares what they do. While Apple keeps throwing new product and tech out there MS is doing what? IE9...? Yeah, that's gonna bring the company back. They have grown too big and are too intractable to develop anything really ground breaking or gotta have. The only reason I keep using their junk is 'cuz they're everywhere, but every time that I do I still feel like I need to take a shower.

Google and Apple gathering information like NSA also has me more than a little creeped out and annoyed. Firefox has done well for me, certainly better than IE ever did, plus it's not an agent of Google or Apple. MS lost my appreciation back with the Netscape war and now thanks to the competition that Gates so feared, their products are just moving steadily toward irrelevant. Smartest man in America that Gates guy...take the money and run so he can stand off to the side and point while MS flounders and dies. It may take a while but what are they really doing beyond working to just keep their legacy breathing.

 

[GhostFist]

not that I'm too keen on windows myself, but Windows 8 looks to be radically different from everything out there including previous windows versions. not saying it's good or bad.