Microsoft updates wants to install IE8 on my computer. What's the word? Is this a good move or not?

Thanks.

IE 8 came with my installation of Windows 7

The only real beef I have with it is that some site (including one of mine) don't render properly in it. Granted there is a compatibility view that shows the site in how they look in IE 7, but it doesn't always do the trick

I'm not actually using the IE.. I use firefox!.. You will get tons of addons on firefox compared to Internet Explorer..

Thanks amber.ella.

Sounds like I'd better give IE8 a miss and get Firefox, then.

Thanks Nic. Sounds like I'd better get Windows 7 also.

Why not have both !
So many of my visitors use ie that it cant be ignored.
Personally find ie8 ok some issues like nick but then as more people upgrade to ie8 then our sites will need to be compatable.

I have installed and would recommend

Unfortunatly TredoSoft's multiple IE programme is no longer being supported, so you can have

IE 3.0
IE 4.01
IE 5.01
IE 5.55
IE 6.0

and whatever your latest one is, but IE7 isn't in there, and probably never will be

plus firefox, plus opera, plus chrome (Chrome2 is better than chrome 1, not sure if C2 is still in beta or not), plus safari (you can get a windows version) and on and one and on

test test test!!!

OMG - IE 3 doesn't support mouse wheels!!!!!

That fact that CSS isn't supported is not a surprise

allenion wrote:

Why not have both !

yeap, that's what i do...and use them roughly the same (probably IE slightly more as I'm the only one on our team that uses it so i keep an eye on it)

yer i use both ff and ie dont like 8 so i kept with ie7 at home

I haven't tried it yet!.. I'm actually using Firefox.. I can get tons of useful addons in it!..

Side Q for those that don't have/use IE 8...

Have you at least made your websites compatible for IE 8?

One of ours renders quite poorly in IE 8 and it's been a %%$# to fix

Please don't let there be an IE 9 anytime soon

PS. according to my logs, about 7-8% of our traffic uses IE 8 - not sure how that compares with others here

Am using IE8 for quite a time now and I am started to like it.
Both IE and FF have their own pros and cons
Pros about IE8 are
inPrivate  browsing feature,
quick tab
caret browsing
homepage and add ons..
you have to use it to like it or dislike it, but yest FF and IE features are so very different.

IE explorer does not do anything Firefox can't do or cannot do better also due to it's massive developer support on the plugins.

I can't imagine any developer spending most of their time on IE and the new update was a pain in the asse straight away for me. Rendered couple of my websites totally...unrendered! Pure blank pages and it sort of panicked me...NOT!!!

At Uni they preached that we should test our sites in all browsers! Then Google Chrome came along and I just thought am I hell. I launch the website in Firefox and if it works it's a good website. I fix issues in other browsers as I go along.

IE only has around 67% market share in browsing now and Microsoft actually things they are NOW heading in the right direction so may regain some of their older strength lol  "now" is a bit too late I think because Firefox will no doubt come back with something new and impressive soon.

4 years I've spent trying to figure out what is good about IE and everytime I use it, it bloody messes up! On XP, Vista you name it. Pain the asse!

URL REMOVED BY ADMIN - STOP DROPPING LINKS TO YOUR SITE IN YOUR POSTS

like it or not IE will always be with us and I do feel that there is a divide between those in the industry who prefer firefox and those who use our websites that prefer IE.
Recent stats from one of my sites ( last 30 days )
browsers
IE 78.71% ( IE8 28.98%, IE7 53.47% ,IE6 17.5% )
Firefox 14.24%
Safari 4.42%
Chrome 2.03%

As you can see despite what I might feel IE has to be my focus

I can't imagine any developer spending most of their time on IE

from the above I should committ 78.71% of my time to IE
or in an 8 hour day 6.3 hours to IE and only 1.1 to Firefox.

I'm not going to preach Firefox then use IE for any reason no way.

To me thats just stupid and I make money without looking at IE on a daily basis. If my site works in Firefox, code follows standards and valids in W3C and something is not working properly in IE. Tough really and when people say Hey theres something wrong with your site I say NO there is something wrong with your browser and Microsofts attitude, download Firefox!

Most people do and most people say thanks for pointing out that there is no need to continue getting so frustrated over the internet. The amount of people that say Aw so I didnt have to upgrade my broadband I just had to use Firefox, is unbelievable! Microsoft in this day and age of the internet are still making people think their internet is slow lol

I wouldnt open and browse on IE giving them more percentage without a good reason. I'm happy to watch it slowly slip and those statistics are old! The most recent statistics were at the same time IE8 was released and they lost a big percentage in last year.

allenion I couldnt agree more IE will be around for years to come which is a shame due to no web standards and slow speeds of IE. This is why I dont use apart from testing as still IE have the biggest % of browser users.


WebTechGlobal Maybe you need to read peoples post a bit better the %'s are from allenion's site not the overall % for browsers

I will personaly always use FF due to its stability, relyability, web standards and many more factors/bits that IE still have not got. But having said this as any webmaster and website owner should know you have to cater for all that use the net which means you will have to try your best to have a site that works in both FF and IE + other browsers.

Oh ye I do agree with that.

And sorry for misread on statistics there.

I point of view comes from the point of view "If its not broke don't fix it" thats all. If I know my code is no more complicated than it has to be and my site works in FF then my job is mostly done. If my client comes to with major issues about it showing wrong in IE then I obviously have no choice however this rare!

I've been in the situation where a website looks totally different in both browsers and my client only uses IE then accepts the website they are giving because they don't know its suppose to look far better or just not the way they are seeing it, but usually far better!

So if the client is still happy with it then I'm not going to add any hacks or fixes to bring what each browser parses more into allignement with each other. Under those conditions I don't normally have to open IE and I reckon I opened it once last month!

I haven't used IE for a long time, just firefox.

To save time if you have problems with rendering sites in ie8 add meta tag

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />

this forces ie8 to render the site as ie7

allenion wrote:

To save time if you have problems with rendering sites in ie8 add meta tag

Code: html

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />

this forces ie8 to render the site as ie7

What can you just add this to the header section of all sites to have ie8 look the same as ie7?