Internet Explorer 8, Are you using?

[Narei Mooncatt]

I noticed the new IE8  ad on Yahoo today and decided to try it. After about 15 min, I'm now reinstalling IE7. I'm gonna give it more time before I swap because some websites aren't yet compatible with it and the "compatability view" mode didn't work on at least one other site I frequent (and so far Furtopia doesn't seem to be effected). The main thing I noticed was button and text boxes used to log in to some places wouldn't show the text at all and were made to tiny to see them even if they were there.

The color coded tabs are an interesting touch. I never had a problem staying organized, but I can see it being useful and also livening up the window a bit. I just wish they didn't throw in all the extra accelerators, task managers, toolbars, etc in. Sure, some people may like them cluttering up their window, but at least give an option to not even have them so they don't take up resources even when not in use (i.e. disk space).

Disclaimer: Please no "get Fire Fox" posts. That's not the point of the thread, but I know if left unsaid, that FF users will all try to get IE users to switch.

[Baako]

Disclaimer: Please no "get Fire Fox" posts. That's not the point of the thread, but I know if left unsaid, that FF users will all try to get IE users to switch.

How about Opera users?

But seriously, I have tried most of the most common browsers and IE seemed to be the slowest and least reliable

I'm not trying to convert you to anything in particular, just trying to get you away from IE X_X

[Weisseman]

IE security is actually very good supposedly. Though IE8 is still new and will have problems. It'll be best to wait a few months so all the patches that are bound to come out will be there to make it better. That being said I don't think it'll draw back any FF/Opera/Safari/Chrome users.

[Narei Mooncatt]

I haven't had any issues at all with IE security wise (I prefer to use smart browsing. ). And from what I understand, most of the speed differences have been related to how fast the browsers render the pages and not how fast the info gets from server to end user. I doubt I'd even notice a difference on my systems. Been on IE for a decade or better and not once have I had the slightest problem that would make me want to swap to something else, so NYAH!

[Baako]

I haven't had any issues at all with IE security wise (I prefer to use smart browsing. ). And from what I understand, most of the speed differences have been related to how fast the browsers render the pages and not how fast the info gets from server to end user. I doubt I'd even notice a difference on my systems. Been on IE for a decade or better and not once have I had the slightest problem that would make me want to swap to something else, so NYAH!

O.O Someone has been planning their argument for IE very carefully

[Weisseman]

IE and FF are the only 2 browsers which use Web standards. So most nearly if not all the internet will work on both. It's very unlikely a page will not work on at least one of them.

[Ratchet]

Haven't tried it, mainly cause i can't (Mac you see) does look quite good and I've heard good things about it, still it wont prise me away from FF though, even on my netbook as I like the add ons

[Bloodtooth]

IE and FF are the only 2 browsers which use Web standards. So most nearly if not all the internet will work on both. It's very unlikely a page will not work on at least one of them.

But firefox is quite alot better at coping with poorly coded or broken HTML, whereas IE isn't as good. This was nice for me, and when I ran a website, and for a while a forum, I coded alot of stuff myself... and often had IE users reporting to me "Your site doesn't work!".

Best bug was on a forum, I once forgot to close a piece of code... and left the reply box without a size limit, so on IE it expanded into infinity until it crashed. Firefox fixed my code itself.

I laughed so hard, I nearly wet myself when I tried it for myself in IE.

To be honest though, the IE vs FF vs Opera vs Chrome argument is much like Ford vs Chevy or Windows vs Mac vs Linux. All have pluses and minuses. I prefer FF. It's fast, simple, and does what I want. IE has simply copied it, like FF copied things before it. FF however made it popular through using viral advertising on the internet, very, very, well indeed. Free advertising is the best, when customers do it for you.

[Weisseman]

Hence the "It's very unlikely a page will not work on at least one of them."

I've come across sites that don't work on anything but FF. In the long run that's not a good thing. At the very least you want it to work in IE and FF to cover the biggest chunk of the market. Plus people won't want to download a browser just to view one page. In Europe that might be so much of a problem if MS are forced to bundle other browsers though in the future.

[Narei Mooncatt]

I've come across sites that don't work on anything but FF.

Ditto that, which is another reason I don't like FF. Well, and also because any time a thread about IE only is brought up (not just here, but any forum I've been on), FF users can't help but to invade it and derail it into a "get FF" thread. If you use it and don't like IE, thats fine, but please don't feel the need to invade a thread specifically meant for IE discussions and use it as a FF promotion.

[Weisseman]

Everything has fanboys. As it goes the FF ones aren't as annoying as the Mac or Linux ones though =X Occassionally you'll get the "FF is teh win! Everything else sucks!" person but they are far and few between (least where I go to).

[Bloodtooth]

I've come across sites that don't work on anything but FF.

Ditto that, which is another reason I don't like FF. Well, and also because any time a thread about IE only is brought up (not just here, but any forum I've been on), FF users can't help but to invade it and derail it into a "get FF" thread. If you use it and don't like IE, thats fine, but please don't feel the need to invade a thread specifically meant for IE discussions and use it as a FF promotion.

The trouble is twofold here.

That is HOW Firefox became popular, they used to encourage users to do this. As such, it rapidly spread, new users talking about how wonderful it was and how much better than IE it was (Back when Firefox was new, it was a MASSIVE improvement.)

The second part is that FF is faster, simpler, and easier to use. The extenstions are awesome too. I love forecast fox. Also, yeah, FF can force most websites to work, even if the HTML is horribly broken. Lazy programmers love FF.

[Weisseman]

Simpler and easier to use is questionable. I wouldn't agree for people that don't know what they are doing. If they want something they can use straight out the box I'd says IE is better in that respect. For those that know what they want the browser to do however FF would be better overall. Plus the whole "it's faster" thing never really bother me. Waiting a few extra seconds for a page to load isn't going to kill me. Either way the whole thing is a pointless. It's just one of those marketing ploys to get people to use it. In practice it doesn't actually matter you'll never noticably see any difference. I sure don't.

[Bloodtooth]

Simpler and easier to use is questionable. I wouldn't agree for people that don't know what they are doing. If they want something they can use straight out the box I'd says IE is better in that respect. For those that know what they want the browser to do however FF would be better overall. Plus the whole "it's faster" thing never really bother me. Waiting a few extra seconds for a page to load isn't going to kill me. Either way the whole thing is a pointless. It's just one of those marketing ploys to get people to use it. In practice it doesn't actually matter you'll never noticably see any difference. I sure don't.

You will notice the different Icon!

...

Oh, and homepage is different if you don't change it.

[Drake Blackpaw]

I plan on installing IE 8 on one of my computers to play around with soon.  However, I use both of my computers to do web testing for work and IE7 and Firefox are the target browsers so I'm not in a good position to put IE 8 on one at the moment.  Microsoft did just release a beta tool that allows you to see pages in both IE 8 and IE 7 (the OS doesn't let you have both installed at the same time), so that may be my gateway to playing with IE8.

As for some sites not working well in IE 8, it sounds like they haven't updated their code to throw IE 8 into IE 7 rendering mode.  There is a line you can put in your HTML to tell IE 8 to render the page using IE 7 rendering.  We've played around with that setting at work for our pages and it seems to work well.

I will say that my favorite browser at the moment is Firefox.  However, IE 8 has some features that are suppose to give Firefox a run for it's money.  If the web development tools like Firebug that I use in Firefox become available for IE 8 then I may find myself using it more.  Will need to get my paws on it and see.

The best thing I've heard about IE 8 is that it does a much better job of supporting web standards.  IE 7 had some proprietary ways of rendering pages and supported IE only tags to do certain things.  Microsoft with much cajoling decided to join the rest of the world and actually follow the standards (ironically MS had a hand and signed off on all these standards).

And I like competition in the browser world.  Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari, Opera, bring em all on I say.  The end products will be better for having to compete and each one may find their own niche.