Dare I say it but recently I’d started to use Google Chrome instead of Internet Explorer 8. That was partly because I picked up a rogue Browser Helper Object for IE8 that pretended to be the Search Provider for Google. I just could not get rid of it. But mainly it was becuase Chrome is such a good browser: fast, lots of real estate for the web site and the address bar doubled as the search box.
Microsoft have just issued the beta of IE9 and I am liking what I see…mostly. As expected it does all that Google does – maximaize the website and minimise the screen space used by the browser itself: check. The address bar doubles as the search box for your preferred search provider: check. Finally, finally, Microsoft have built in support for SVG graphics – years behind Firefox and Chrome: check. Support for HTML 5 is there…and that’s where the problem is, at least for me. The support for scripting in IE9 is bitty. For instance, as I type this blog post using a PERL editor, it sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. IE8 was better at this.
But hey, it’s beta code, so I will stcik with it and hope the bugs get worked out.
Pinning my favorite web sites to my task bar is nice enough. Sure I could have done that with a simple URL shortcut, but this is tidy. A fun feature is that the color scheme for the browser toolbar etc changes to the dominant color of the web site/app you are using.
What will Chrome do next?
