Internet Explorer 8 Thoughts

Now that Internet Explorer 8 has been released for 2 weeks and we've all had time to test it, what are your current thoughts?

Compatibility seems much better than the first beta that I tried, but I still notice plenty of websites that don't render correctly and need the compatibility view button toggled. Is this the fault of IE8, or the website coded as a fudge to work with IE7? (I really don't know).

Ignoring that fact, it works great in all other respects. Much more stable than IE7 and the crash recovery is a welcome feature, even if FF has had it for quite some time.

As websites start to update their coding to work with IE8, I think people will be very pleased with this new browser.

IE8 is fully CSS2.1 compliant, which puts it on the same level with Chrome, Firefox and Safari. If websites are broken in Internet Explorer 8, it's because the developers used non-compliant code so it would render properly in the non-compliant IE6 or IE7.

I think IE8 is a monumental step forward for the underpinnings of the internet. Now all the developers can get on with their lives and develop code that works on all platforms, rather than spending their days figuring out how to trick IE6/7 with BS code that makes standards cry.

Unfortunately I find IE8 to be a little pokey, and its UI a little cluttered for me to run with it. I also can't do without addons, and the addons I like don't exist for IE.

Yeah, that's one thing that I really miss with IE. I thought they might have added this feature in to IE8 as it is the most striking difference with FireFox. Automatic spell checking is a miss too (although I do use IESpell).

IE8 is soooooooooooo much better than previous versions of Internet Explorer, IMO.

Yes, some websites do render incorrectly but that is probably because they have coded sites to work with the flawed IE7 engine. If they can allow the same range of addons that FF uses I would switch back very quickly.

IE8 has a Compatibility button - Shouldnt this button allow IE6,IE7 support - Im not sure I havent checked it out?

Yep it makes a page render in IE7 mode as far as I know. Webmasters can force trigger this by using a meta tag or http header, or users can enable this manually per website

I have been using IE 8 and Windows 7 on my Laptop since they were released. A couple of weeks or so ago IE 8 has partically stopped working. Favorites won't open, Tools is missing along with some other icons on the right side and have been replaced with down arrow icons. When any of them are selected an error dialog box comes up and reports that IE has stopped working. I attempted to redownload and install IE 8 and I get a message that it isn't compatible with the OS. The same thing happens with IE 7.

Windows 7 has not been released to the general public yet. Release date is Oct. 22.

This sounds like the work of a virus to me.

Have you completely removed this virus?
And are you sure this virus is not the cause of your Internet problems?

I understand about sites with IE6 or 7 patches, but my site has NONE and it displays in EVERY other browser I can find.

Perhaps it is a Google vs Microsoft issue?
Site created with Google-Sites won't work in IE, hmmmm.

Have you tried IE 7 Pro ? It has a lot of features that I use and I like it real well. It is compatible with IE 8.