Internet Explorer 8.0: RELEASED!

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 19 Mar 2009, 14:51

According to TheRegister.co.uk at 16:00 GMT today. Info here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7952505.stm

I've been playing with the IE8 Beta on W7 Beta and it has some neat new features (check out Accelerators and Web Slices), many of which can be dealt with in Firefox with Extensions. MS also say it's also much more standards compliant.

It won't get me to switch from FF3 but I'll give it a go properly.

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"All sites need do - according to Microsoft at least - is complete the relatively simply task of inserting a tag in their code in order to render pages in IE 8's default standards mode - the new, web-standards compatible version of IE rendering. Sites that don't insert the tag won't render properly, and will be viewed in IE's non-standards "compatible view" mode.

But sites aren't doing this.

Barzudukas blamed the fact over-worked web developers have been putting off the move because there's been no deadline. "People tend to tackle things that are urgent," she said."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/19/ie_8_released/

gasteropod · Post by **gasteropod** » 19 Mar 2009, 16:31

I am now using it, seems fine so far.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 19 Mar 2009, 17:15

It's not yet on Windows Update but can be found here:

http://www.microsoft.com/ie

For those who find websites don't appear correctly in IE8, it's likely because they've been designed for IE6 and IE7's non-standard quirks. MS have said IE8 is much better at adhering to web standards. There is now a "Compatibility" mode which should fix this.

The Accelerators feature is a major enhancement for IE.

gasteropod · Post by **gasteropod** » 19 Mar 2009, 19:10

It appears you still can't pause downloads, why Internet Explorer has always avoided this feature is beyond me.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 20 Mar 2009, 00:24

Not only that but the download window is STILL rubbish, it's not been changed since IE5 way back in 1999. See, the same:

http://www.enetbot.com/images/download_ie_3.gif

The Open/Open folder buttons were added with IE5. Here's it in IE4, still basically the same again:

http://www.bitboost.com/tiletag/DemoDow ... ad-003.gif

Where is the singular download window for multiple downloads? A new download window for each download is so dumb!

I'm not too bothered about IE's omissions as for me it will never be as good as Firefox. It's configurability (yes it's a word!), tweaking and extensions means IE will always fail. That said, IE8 has gone a long way to catching up. I'm loving Accelerators. They really do save time.

I hope Mozilla add this to Firefox 3.5, therefore not needing extensions. This really brings web browsing forward. For now, here's an extension which is very similar to the IE8 one:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10722

gasteropod wrote:It appears you still can't pause downloads, why Internet Explorer has always avoided this feature is beyond me.

With the advent of BB this is largely redundant I find. I just kick downloads off and let them finish when they do. Massive ones, I copy a copy of the link and download later. I virtually never use it in Firefox and find when I do it never resumes properly anyway.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 20 Mar 2009, 00:26

Has anyone worked out how to use Web Slices? They sit on the Favourites Bar and with one click you can see a snapshot of a website pop-out (such as the weather).

I understand this green button is supposed to appear when a website supports web slices but no matter what I do, it does not. For example I understand eBay supports it, so I search for something, move over an item but no green button appears (nor does any toolbar button appear).

If I click here:

http://www.ieaddons.com/en/details/909/ ... ve_Search/

And try to add the Weather Web slice, all it actually does is load a new tab with:

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=weather&form=QBLH

Not exactly useful. What am I doing wrong? Thanks

EvaUnit02 · Post by **EvaUnit02** » 20 Mar 2009, 01:03

I've installed it, haven't bothered to use it though. Utter lack of interest.

Firefox is my primary; Opera is my back-up, which I adopted because IE7 was an unstable pile of garbage that would keep randomly closing without a single error message. No, there was NOTHING wrong with my Windows installations, it was an issue with IE7 - I experienced this in XP x64 and Vista x64.

gasteropod · Post by **gasteropod** » 20 Mar 2009, 01:07

EvaUnit02 wrote:I've installed it, haven't bothered to use it though. Utter lack of interest.

Which begs the question... why did you install it?

EvaUnit02 wrote:IE7 was an unstable pile of garbage that would keep randomly closing without a single error message

It didn't do that to me...

EvaUnit02 · Post by **EvaUnit02** » 20 Mar 2009, 01:19

gasteropod wrote:Which begs the question... why did you install it?

Don't be naive, there's still the rare sites that only work properly under IE. IE8 surely must be more stable than IE7?

gasteropod wrote:It didn't do that to me...

It just hit me, it must have something to do with the 32-bit version of IE7 running in a x64 OS. You see when you install IE for Win x64, it includes both a x86 version and a native x64 one. Most of the time one would be running the x86 version because there's no x64 Flash and fuck all is written for x64 Java.

Now that I think about, I don't ever recall it happening under XP32.

Oh yeah, I will never install any browser derived from Apple technology on my system - Safari, Webkit, Chrome, et. al. Total fucking garbage.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 20 Mar 2009, 12:03

What do you use Opera for? For me I use Firefox and only use IE as a backup, if I have to. I see no need for a third.

Chrome seems really basic to me and it's irrelevant how good or bad Safari is, it's not Firefox. Firefox is such a powerful web browser, all else fails. For example I installed Foxmarks last night, it's a fantastic bookmark sync tool. I now have my bookmarks synced across PCs.

I've had a quick play with Safari and I saw nothing that I cannot to in Firefox, plus I dislike the MAC grey look.

gasteropod wrote:Which begs the question... why did you install it?

You cannot avoid IE, if use Windows and IE8 is much better with web standards. Which can only be a good thing. I installed it, even though I rarely use IE.

IE7 never crashed for me too.

p.s - Let me know if you can work out how to use Web Slices Eva.

EvaUnit02 · Post by **EvaUnit02** » 26 Mar 2009, 15:46

bradavon wrote:What do you use Opera for?

For the occasional page that won't display/work properly in Firefox, that should be obvious.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 26 Mar 2009, 20:33

Why not use IE? That should be obvious

.

gasteropod · Post by **gasteropod** » 27 Mar 2009, 03:05

Yeah I don't get all this bullshit, I just use IE all the time and never have any problems.

EvaUnit02 · Post by **EvaUnit02** » 27 Mar 2009, 12:59

bradavon wrote:Why not use IE? That should be obvious .

Stop being a cunt, you already saw the posts where I said that IE7 would constantly crash on me.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 27 Mar 2009, 13:22

You have IE8.

I'm surprised Opera is more "IE compatible" than Opera is.

gasteropod wrote:Yeah I don't get all this bullshit, I just use IE all the time and never have any problems.

We're talking 1 in a 1000 sites Gas. Besides IE cannot do half the things Firefox can, so it's a moot point.

EvaUnit02 · Post by **EvaUnit02** » 27 Mar 2009, 15:10

Does IE8 offer ad-blocking capabilities on par with Firefox's Adblock Plus; and if so, are there specially written whitewash lists that are as comprehensive as Filterset.G?

Because there is such a solution built into Opera and such a whitewash list specially written for that browser too.

If I can't use my preferred Firefox set-up to view a particular site, I at least have an alternative that gives a very similar experience.

EDIT: I see, this InPrivate filtering is very comparable to Filterset.G and Fanboy's filter list for Opera, but it's still ain't as comprehensive. Pretty damn good though.

I have no problem being humble.

Does InPrivate block HTTP referrer headers too? It'd be pretty sweet it does.

Yi-Long · Post by **Yi-Long** » 27 Mar 2009, 16:55

bradavon wrote:
I'm surprised Opera is more "IE compatible" than Opera is.

HUH!?!?!?

(another day another Brad-ism

)

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 27 Mar 2009, 18:11

LOL, oops, yes:

I'm surprised Opera is more "IE compatible" than Firefox is.

EvaUnit02 wrote:Does IE8 offer ad-blocking capabilities on par with Firefox's Adblock Plus; and if so, are there specially written whitewash lists that are as comprehensive as Filterset.G?

Not that I'm aware of. Given how infrequently I use IE I don't really care about ads etc . . .

I don't bother installing IE Add-ons. I don't use it enough.

EvaUnit02 wrote:Does InPrivate block HTTP referrer headers too? It'd be pretty sweet it does.

I'd presume it does, why wouldn't it?

I've not bothered turning InPrivate on, in case it blocks something I want to see and again as I don't use it enough, I'd prefer it just worked. Firefox is my real browser so stuff like this in that is much more important.

BTW, does NoScript ever block anything you don't want it to? I've never installed it in case it blocks all manner of stuff I don't want blocked. I'm also concerned it causes sites to fall over.

p.s - Adblock Plus is amazing! So useful. It never gets it wrong too. Unlike the Adblocker in Kaspersky Internet Security, which forever stops pages loading. I'm very tempted to turn that off.

gasteropod · Post by **gasteropod** » 02 Apr 2009, 19:46

OK, after using IE8 for a fortnight I have noticed a couple of problems:

A lot of the time, if I open a new tab it takes a few seconds to load. That may sound silly, but it should be instant really, shouldn't be taking up to 5 seconds and I'm pretty sure it wasn't like this on IE7. This can also apply to simply opening the browser as well.

Also, there's a bizarre problem where it will just stop being able to load websites at all, and it's only solved by closing the browser completely and opening a new one. This may be caused by having a tab open for a fair amount of time, as it has just happened to me whilst having a tab open for a couple of hours. But when it's happened to me before, I don't know whether or not I'd had a tab open for a while so I don't know if that's the cause.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 03 Apr 2009, 13:49

gasteropod wrote:A lot of the time, if I open a new tab it takes a few seconds to load.

I find this too, on a couple of PCs. It's the new "Tab Page" function, to turn it off:

Tools
Internet Options
Tab Settings
"When a new tab is opened, open"

I like the feature so am reluctent to turn it off. I do find IE also takes longer to load. I am tempted to go back to IE7 as frankly it's only a backup anyway.

Actually turning that feature off there is still a delay but it isn't as bad.

gasteropod wrote:I'm pretty sure it wasn't like this on IE7.

It doesn't.

gasteropod wrote:This can also apply to simply opening the browser as well.

I find that too. I don't understand why as this doesn't open the "Tab Page" feature.

gasteropod wrote:Also, there's a bizarre problem where it will just stop being able to load websites at all, and it's only solved by closing the browser completely and opening a new one.

I've not found that but then I don't use it much.

I like the new Accelerator function, otherwise there's not much difference (from a front end perspective anyway).

Actually these delays with IE8 are stopping me upgrading friends/families PCs to it and frankly the majority of people just want a compatible browser. The amount of people who don't understand tabs for example and still open New Windows.

The IE6 interface was so out of date so IE7 is a natural upgrade but IE8 isn't so much. Sure it's much more standards compatible now but for most people this doesn't interest them.

gasteropod · Post by **gasteropod** » 03 Apr 2009, 18:39

What do you use the Accelerator function for?

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 03 Apr 2009, 19:08

* Search a word with Google
* Search a word with Google News
* Search a word with Wikipedia
* Search a word with Dictionary.com
* Search a post code with Windows Live Maps (better than Google Maps)

As I use Firefox I use an extension to do the equivalent. I use it all the time, particularly handy for checking what a word means but to have it in IE is also handy. The IE implementation is actually better.

Web Slices are also cool. They open a mini-view of a particular page in the Toolbar but it relies on sites supporting them, currently virtually none do. It will be useful for Weather reports for example.

gasteropod · Post by **gasteropod** » 03 Apr 2009, 20:53

OK thanks, I'll try and sort it so I can search stuff on Wikipedia, that would be quite useful.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 03 Apr 2009, 21:47

Add Wikipedia as a Search item in the top right search box and it will appear.

There are loads of other Accelerators to add:

http://www.ieaddons.com/gb/accelerators/

Also:

http://www.ieaddons.com/gb/webslices/
http://www.ieaddons.com/gb/searchproviders/

gasteropod · Post by **gasteropod** » 03 Apr 2009, 22:02

bradavon wrote:Add Wikipedia as a Search item in the top right search box and it will appear.

Ohhh, didn't know you could do that, cheers man.