IE 8 - install or no?

[Turbinator]

Who's using IE8 now, did you jump from IE7 to IE8, and do you like IE8?

Turby

[TonyM]

I've got IE8 on some of my systems since it's default in Windows 7. I use it sometimes, but still prefer Firefox due to the number of plugins available that offer many shortcuts/helper apps you don't get in IE.

IE8 is different from IE7, so if you're an IE person, you may not like it.

[jmlivingston]

I have it installed on one of my personal PC's, but don't use it since my preferred browser is Firefox. We've not been been able to deploy it at work, because it won't work with our Oracle applications.

[TonyM]

I have it installed on one of my personal PC's, but don't use it since my preferred browser is Firefox. We've not been been able to deploy it at work, because it won't work with our Oracle applications.

We're in the same boat with some of our management apps at work. The IT group keeps sending spam email every week or two telling people to not install it after it breaks someone's intranet tools.

I always try to convert people to Firefox anyway, it's faster and more flexible. I don't want to start preaching tho, so I'll stop now.

[bigmike82]

I've seen no difference between 8 and 7 after installing it, so you should be safe.

[sigfan91]

I just upgraded from IE6 to IE8 on my home system over the weekend. I don't like Vista so stuck with XP for as long as I could.

IE8 is a huge improvement over IE6, and from my experience with IE7 (on XP) in the office, an improvement.

So far I haven't noticed any additional strain on my home system (Athlon X2 3800+ w/ 1GB of RAM). It runs quick and pretty good at rendering most websites.

[Blackhawk556]

I switch between IE8 and firefox, all tests show that firefox is faster than loading pages when compared to IE8. firefox has thousands of add-ons and lets you customize it the way YOU want to. IE8 is not horrible, if you look up online yes you find people trashing it but remember IE is the leading web browser so the smaller guys are obviously going to bash it. Remember also that you are more likely to find bad things online about a product than good things, people tend to write more about their bad experiences than about their good ones.
If you are still using IE6 yes make the jump NOW but if your moving from IE7 the jump won't be that huge.

if you want to try out the fastest web browser out there download chrome from google. if you don't like IE8 or chrome you can uninstall them and go back to what ever you are using

[maxicon]

I recently upgraded from IE7 to IE8 on a couple of PCs, and it's been mixed to terrible. I'm a pretty durn good troubleshooter and googler, but the suggestions for fixes have mostly been ineffective.

My main PC had some quirky browser issues before, and I hoped this would clean them up, but they've gotten far worse. Many compressed pages (like most Wikipedia pages) won't open at all from Google - it asks what program you want to open them with. Tabs go dead with links that work fine in other tabs, hover popups (like at netflix) are broken, no end of troubles so far.

I also put it on a secondary PC, and it's working OK there, but is still not really up to snuff - mostly tabs going dead if I open too many. When I'm saving pics from web pages, it sometimes defaults to my last save location (like it used to), and sometimes goes back to My Documents, making me drill down to the correct location over and over again.

I keep hoping MS will put out SP1 for it soon. In the meantime, I'm using Firefox more and more, and am about to uninstall IE8 on my main PC.

[jammer2k]

Personally I have it installed at home but use FireFox for my browsing, keep IE8 for those few pages that are so MS specific that they won't render correct on FireFox (admittedly they are very few and far between).

At work I only allow IE7 since many of our web resources make an excessive amount of useage of ActiveX controls so FireFox won't do for them. IE8 breaks a couple of our apps so that is out.

Basically, I recommend having IE 7 or 8 (depends on which works best for you) as a backup and use another browser for you general browsing.

[jwest]

Google Chrome and Firefox for me. I have installed IE8 - but I don't like using Internet Exploder.

[rynando]

IE 8 is vastly superior to IE 7. It is a huge upgrade in areas where the previous IE browsers were lacking. As a few have noted it will break legacy web applications that rely on a IE5/6 model. Those apps probably won’t run on other modern browsers either. You can run it in a compatibility mode of sorts with may allow some of those aged applications to run under it.

To those of you having issues . . .well . . . I’m sure some people have problems with Minesweeper BSODing on them. Believe me, you’re in the minority.

R

[locosway]

IE has always been so backwards and broken. When a web developer writes a website he has to write two versions. One that's standards compliant, and one that uses broken code for IE.

The internet is built on open standards which allow everything to work seamlessly and without much work. Why use a piece of software that's closed and proprietary that violates everything the internet was founded on?

Same goes for OS's and other software. There's a ton of Open Source Software written by great people that do everything your paid for proprietary software does. Why not support them instead of some money rich company that's only interested in their bottom line?

[ldivinag]

IE8 had to include an IE7 and older compatibility mode to due to web pages written with technologies that are microsoft specific.

IE8 is trying to be more W3C complaint.

so that's why websites appear broken...

so the circle is nearly completely...

[locosway]

Just use FF or Chrome if you have to and you'll be fine.

[rynando]

IE has always been so backwards and broken. When a web developer writes a website he has to write two versions. One that's standards compliant, and one that uses broken code for IE.

In the past (and even today) other browsers haven't handled rendering in a very "standard" way either . . . Firefox, Safari and Opera all have had some very annoying "broken" CSS issues that I can remember having to deal with.

As far as CSS rendering goes IE 8 is a major improvement.

http://www.webstandards.org/2007/12/19/ie8-passes-acid2-test-2/

R