Accessing the User Interface

Sharly Chess includes a built-in web server that other devices can connect to. In fact, the entire interface is built using web pages — which is why you need a browser to access it, even on your local machine.

Don’t be put off by the technical terms — you don’t need to know anything about web development to use Sharly Chess. A web server is simply a program that sends web pages to browsers that connect to it.

Accessing Sharly Chess

The easiest way to access Sharly Chess is to click the Open application (browser) button in the application’s main window. This will open your default web browser and display the Sharly Chess interface.

It’s also possible to access the Sharly Chess interface from other devices on the network. You can read more about this in the Network section.

The main application window

The window that opens when you launch Sharly Chess is the server itself: closing it stops Sharly Chess. Besides opening the browser, it groups everything that concerns the application as a whole rather than a particular event:

Home	Open the application in the browser, and see the addresses other devices can use to reach it.
Networks	The networks your computer is connected to, and the address of Sharly Chess on each of them (see Network).
Plugins	Install and uninstall plugins.
Logs	The application log, useful when reporting a problem.
Settings	The language, the default federation and the date format; whether to launch a browser on startup; the experimental features; the data folder (open it, or move it elsewhere); and the updates (search for updates, include beta versions).

Since version 5.1, the language, federation and date format settings, as well as the installation of plugins, are found in this window rather than in the browser interface.