Internet Explorer 8. Any views on it

[ianonline]

Been wondering whether to take the step to IE8 now it is out of Beta.
Does anyone use it?, is it better than 7?. Can it be uninstalled?

[deezel]

I'm using it and in my opinion it's a lot better than IE7, yes it can be uninstalled


http://news.softpedia.com/news/IE8-Performance-vs-from-Google-Chrome-and-Firefox-94342.shtml

[tonys]

My opinion is - use Firefox or Opera instead :)

[Soreen]

My opinion is - use Opera instead :)

:cool:

[Reines]

I'm sure it's better than IE7, but I see absolutely no reason to use it over Firefox (or Opera/Chrome/Safari), and it is still far from "good".

[deezel]

Not good? why what's up with it? I have Firefox and IE8 and i can't see anything that makes f/fox any better , I guess cos it's Microsoft people asume it's no good , everyone to their own opininion but to me IE 8 is much better and much faster opening pages than Firefox :P

[tonys]

Point is - I don't use IE unless absolutely necessary. I use FF 99.9% of the time and very occasionally Opera.

[Reines]

Not good? why what's up with it? I have Firefox and IE8 and i can't see anything that makes f/fox any better , I guess cos it's Microsoft people asume it's no good , everyone to their own opininion but to me IE 8 is much better and much faster opening pages than Firefox :P
Well everyone has personal preference, though Firefox is faster* according to pretty much all benchmarks done (I'll admit I haven't used IE8 enough to compare myself), it also uses much less memory*, and has the huge advantage of add-ons.

From a developer point-of-view, IE has a disgusting track record of being standards compliant, and although each version has got slightly better they are still miles behind other browsers such as Opera/Safari/Chrome/Firefox. Maybe as an end-user this isn't an issue, but for anyone who develops websites IE is horrendous and the sooner people give up using it the better.

PS. I'm not (I don't think) bias against it because it's a Microsoft product, I use and love Windows 7, and have been defending Vista for the past year or 2.

*:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/150828/browser_battle_firefox_31_vs_chrome_vs_ie_8.html
http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/web/tested-google-chrome-vs-ie8-vs-firefox-3-1-462848

[darnok.fx]

I have noticed a bit of a delay when opening IE8 or a new tab before it gives me control. It's about 5 seconds or so. It didn't happen with 7, or in other browsers.

It's not spyware or anything, I justy think it's checking a bit too much but I cannot owrk out what. Though it might have been the inbrosing or smartscreen bits, but no.

If I don't get it sorted it will be back to 7 for me, when I'm not using opera or firefox.

[buster1967]

Installed IE8 and tried to install a few plug ins but everytime i tried it kept asking me to install IE8.

[Arkhan]

I'd hold off on IE8 for a little while yet. I did some testing on a couple of test rigs last week, and had trouble getting some plugins working cleanly (flash especially).

Also, because IE8 has changed it's method of rendering pages to be more standards compliant, people who've designed their sites for the 'custom' way older versions of IE render pages need to add an extra tag to tell IE8 to render it the old way, quirks and all, or it'll render it the new way, and then break because of the 'fixes'.

Of course, people who designed their pages cleanly in the first place and used minimal hacks won't be affected.

The upshot is, there'll be more older and less well maintained websites broken in IE8, even worse than the changeover from IE6 to IE7.

That said, I use firefox personally, but then I'm in love with adblock plus and flashblock. Local adblock proxies are nowhere near as good and frankly, every time I go out without it, the amount of flashing, blinking, massive space taking adverts out there scare me witless.

[buster1967]

I love firefox aswel but it keeps crashing all the time for some reason.

[Laser157]

I installed it a few days ago but have gone back to IE7

I had Google Toolbar version 4 installed and had blocked updating to avoid getting version 5 (this is not easy, GT is very keen to update itself!)

Anyway IE8 required updating of the toolbar, so I gave in. After this I had problems with opening hyperlinks from e.mails which caused IE to stop responding. Also IE8 was taking a long time to start up - maybe 10 seconds.

Went back to IE7 but kept GT version 5. Still had the problem with hyperlinks intermittently.

Uninstalled GT and all was OK. Then downloaded GT version 4 and installed it with the internet connection disabled. In safe mode I deleted all .exe files in the Google Program folder with anything to do with installing, notifying and updating.

Now IE7 and GT working fine and no annoying updates from Google.

After this hassle I'm not going to IE8 for as long as I can put it off.

[Laser157]

UPDATE

With MS pushing IE8 on updates I had another go.

After installation, IE very slow to start up, although navigated ok afterwards. The solution was to undo Spybot immunisation - makes a huge difference. It seems IE8 cannot cope with large lists in the hosts file.

Now it works really well - faster than IE7, and it's great that Google have brought back the highlighter tool in version 6 of the toolbar.

[silverblack]

I went back to IE7 sometimes with IE8 when you clicked a new tab no page would show had to open another browser window.IE8 does feel faster though will upgrade once the bugs have been fixed.

[kiplip]

Really enjoying IE8 so far. No complaints.

[deezel]

Really enjoying IE8 so far. No complaints.


Yes me too, it runs really well on the new Windows 7 the 64 bit version can be a bit fussy though but the 32 bit is fine :)

[Reines]

Been testing my new site on IE and I've got to say IE8 is doing a lot better than I was expecting. It renders almost perfect* actually, only issue I can see is <a> tags with padding still require the click to be on the text itself when it should allow anywhere within the element.

IE6 and IE7 still fall to pieces, but that's another story (or more likely, rant).

* Same as Firefox/Opera/Chome/Safari.

[timeout]

The main consideration on when to switch to IE8 is when you believe the worst of the security bugs have been ironed out.

Personally I'd give it 3-6 months before using it as a primary browser.

[Soreen]

Used Opera since God was in nappies, doubt I will change.

[s0l1dsnak3123]

Internet Explorer is and always has been the bane of the web developer. IE8 is much better than it's predecessors, but is still pretty crummy in comparison to the likes of Firefox, Opera, etc. I am a professional web developer, and every time I develop a new website, I develop it on Firefox, so that it is standards compliant, then I make a separate, modified version for IE. As you can imagine, this makes developing quite tedious, and for the likes of IE6, which many businesses and schools still use (god knows why), it is extremely irritating. Also, it hinders the natural evolution of the web because of so many people use old browsers that won't "play ball" as it were.