Internet Explorer 8 has arrived. Beta at your own risk.
Mikey 13 comments
Microsoft's new web browser Internet Explorer 8 is here - in beta at least. According to this article on ReadWriteWeb.com, among the new features are:
- Facebook Integration
- eBay Integration
- Live Maps Integration
- Integration with Me.dium
- Working with AJAX Pages
Like previous version, be aware that you can not have 2 versions of IE installed. This makes my job as a web developer extremely painful, as now I will have to run another virtual environment for testing.
For those still using Internet Exploiter Explorer, I implore you to use a real web browser like Firefox or Opera. Firefox (my browser of choice) is freaking fantastic and has many features that will never come to IE in a million years because of it's closed architecture.
In this humble authors expert opinion, as a veteran professional web developer and a web surfer, Microsoft should drop out of the web browser game and leave it to the people who actually understand it.
Like any beta product, try at your own risk.
...in response to this comment by Jim- Just a Guy. Ha ha yeah well if you knew the headaches caused by the mere fact that IE doesn't support web standards...
In web development there are 2 paths to design. There is the right way, and there is the Microsoft way.
The right way consists of following the guidelines specified by the W3c - or web standards as otherwise known. The result is a web site that renders as expected in standards compliant browsers like Firefox and Opera.
But then switch to Internet Exploiter and everything turns to sh*t. You have to code special hacks just to make things work how they are supposed to and hope you don't break anything when you switch back to a real web browser.
Now with IE8 at our doorstep us web devs will be supporting another version of IE. Oh yeah did I mention IE6, IE7 and IE8 all render differently? Well they do. Sucks to be a web dev.
Don't get me wrong because I'm not a Microsoft basher - I like a lot of their products. But IE is a steaming pile of poo which we can do without. Leave the web game to the big boys, MS.
Rodney
Thursday 6th March 2008 | 10:28 PM...in response to this comment by Mikey. I, on the other hand, am a Microsoft basher. A Microsoft loving, Microsoft basher. When they do something well, they do it damn well (see Active Directory & Exchange). When they do something sh*t (like IE or WGA), they suck hard. Damn hard.
How you can justify releasing 3 different browsers in a few short years that all produce a completely different end result when viewing the same page... well, it shows little concern for end users, put it that way.
Muzza
Thursday 6th March 2008 | 10:41 PMBut guys...it is ok...the have a Render IE7 button! Only one browser restart required! hahah
As a Firefox loyalist, I cringe whenever I have to test functionality in IE. Its death would be one funereal I would gladly attend.
...in response to this comment by Rodney. It's sheer lunacy. They need to discontinue the previous browser before moving on to the next. This wont happen though because thanks to many lazy web developers who still don't follow web standards, all those old sites will break on the newer browser. And MS doesn't want that bad publicity, even though deploying a crappy non-standards based browser makes them deserving of a public lashing.
I can't loathe IE enough.
Franken
Friday 7th March 2008 | 06:33 AMI find it hilarious this article is about the new internet explorer and the adverts being served up at the end all say "repair internet explorer"
Ben
Friday 7th March 2008 | 07:50 AMI've been a web developer for the past 10 years and I can say without a doubt that IE sucks!
That being said, I have a suggestion for everyone. Instead of running multiple virtual environments to test in, simply run Multiple IE
http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE
It works wonders for me and my skin has never been softer (oops sorry, wrong advertisement)
...in response to this comment by Ben. Brilliant! Thanks Ben. Although I do like have Internet Explorer segregated :-) But I will try out the site you posted. Cheers.
Dunol
Friday 7th March 2008 | 08:38 AMHere we go again... Another another multi million dollar turd?
Having used it yesterday briefly (don't panic! I have it in a virtual box), it seems to do an OK job. Curiously there is a 'Emulate IE7' button which when clicked asks you to restart the browser which switches to the IE7 renderer.
There's a few other useful things which Joe Web Surfer will no doubt be happy with but ultimately, because of the built-in integration for Facebook, Ebay etc... it comes across as a try hard failure to compete with Firefox's plugin open plugin architecture - which already has those plugins and hundreds more.
Not impressed.
Alina
Friday 12th December 2008 | 05:00 PMMicrosoft doesn't understand the web. Don't get too excited about IE8 before you know if we will be supporting IE6, IE7, IE8 standards mode, IE8 legacy mode, IE8 quirks mode, and anything else MS throw into the mix.
Rodney
Friday 12th December 2008 | 05:25 PM...in response to this comment by Ben. I like tredo's multiple IE as well but it comes with some drawbacks. Often, people cannot use favourites in any flavour of IE after installing it unless IE is the default browser and many users cannot enable pop ups at all, in IE 6 or 7.
That said, I still use it at work where we have sadly many pages that only run in IE6...
Jim- Just a Guy
Thursday 6th March 2008 | 01:40 PMI am sensing a little hostility here. I have never liked IE. No matter how fancy they try to make it it never lives up to what the guys at Mozilla do.