May 12, 2011

IE9 -- first reaction

The main thing that's immediately obvious is that Microsoft has done everything they can think of to maximize the central viewing area.

IE8 used an unconscionable amount of vertical space with big icons, entry fields, menu pull-downs, and permanent report areas. The new layout in IE9 manages to regain at least 30 vertical pixels, and that's a huge win.

The ridiculous amount of space used for overhead and graphics cruft was my biggest complaint about IE8, but it was something I was forced to live with. It's nice that Microsoft was aware of the problem, and has done something about it.

UPDATE: Well, that's interesting. None of the buttons on the text entry box work. I think I know what I have to do about that.

UPDATE: Nope, my idea was wrong.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Computers at 09:21 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
Post contains 136 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Yeah, everyone's done that with the latest browser releases.  On my huge 27" screen at home I don't care at all, but my notebook's screen is only 13" and it makes a real difference.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at May 12, 2011 09:38 AM (PiXy!)

2 I'm not hot on the disappearing footer that Firefox 4 stole from Chrome, but clearly something is afoot in the fight for the bigger area.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at May 12, 2011 10:19 AM (9KseV)

3 Steven, are you running with the tabs on the same line as the address bar, or did you move them down a row? I know the space is precious especially on a laptop but i hate a narrow address bar for some reason.

Posted by: RickC at May 12, 2011 11:42 AM (pVOtX)

4 They're on the same line, and it's fine with me.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 12, 2011 12:03 PM (+rSRq)

5 By the way, did you realize you can resize that? Just to the left of the first tab is a grabbable resize point you can slide left and right.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 12, 2011 12:06 PM (+rSRq)

6

Testing, testing, testing.

Indeed. I can do an underline using control-U, but the underline control does nothing. It doesn't even act like a button; no response when I click it.

This is rather a problem. I may have to use Firefox to do my posting. (Ick.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 12, 2011 12:18 PM (+rSRq)

7

Yeah, I knew about the resizing thing, but forgot to mention it/didn't want to make a suggestion (take your pick.)

I can confirm the buttons not working but the keyboard commands are working in the entry area.

testing Ok, turning on Compatibility Mode in the address bar makes the buttons work.

Posted by: RickC at May 12, 2011 01:46 PM (A9FNw)

8 Huh. I don't know if I ever consciously realized this or not before but in Chrome 11.0.696.65, the entire button bar isn't there. (When I checked the version #, it said it was installing a new version; once that completes, we'll see if it changes anything.) BTW, Pixy, if you're reading, I may or may not have mentioned this before, and someone else may or may not have, but I've noticed the comment text box usually has a superfluous space in it in Chrome (but not IE9.)

Posted by: RickC at May 12, 2011 05:46 PM (VKVOz)

9 New Chrome build is .68, same issues as reported in comment #8.

Posted by: RickC at May 12, 2011 05:47 PM (VKVOz)

10 I have a new version of the editor, and I'll test it and install it later today.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at May 12, 2011 08:51 PM (PiXy!)

11 The new editor works great in IE9, but I need to tweak the template code a bit before we can use it.  I'll get that done today.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at May 13, 2011 09:41 AM (PiXy!)

12 Pixy, thanks for your effort.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 13, 2011 10:49 AM (+rSRq)

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