vesuvius said:

Note that this is not the IE beta 2 that was released a while ago, but an advanced version, according to the installation notes for Windows 7.

I was apoplectic with disappointment when I found this out.

I had hoped that my gripes with beta 2 would be wiped out - or some way to being so - but this is quite obviously is the most disappointing thing about Windows 7, for me (the caveat being so far).

Yes the Windows 7 OS is buggy, but it is beautiful and is not so broke (as they say in Yorkshire). I am already imagining Firefox  (running without hitch on Windows 7 I must say) with explorer's more perspicuous Glass.

warren said:

vesuvius said:

*snip*

The version released in december isn't "release candidate 1".  Where'd you get that idea from?

Also, don't trust Windows build numbers when judging the progress of Internet Explorer -- they aren't aligned at all.

warren said:

vesuvius said:

*snip*

The version released in december isn't "release candidate 1".  Where'd you get that idea from?

Also, don't trust Windows build numbers when judging the progress of Internet Explorer -- they aren't aligned at all.

spivonious said:

The only thing I like about IE8 is the way it treats each tab as a separate process.  Everything just seems a little off.  Suggested Sites is worthless, Slices seem like RSS to me, and there are lots of sites that render incorrectly until I resize the window (C9 included).  Hopefully they're busting their butts to get it finished in time to release with Windows 7, because IE7 crashes at least once a day for me.

spivonious said:

The only thing I like about IE8 is the way it treats each tab as a separate process.  Everything just seems a little off.  Suggested Sites is worthless, Slices seem like RSS to me, and there are lots of sites that render incorrectly until I resize the window (C9 included).  Hopefully they're busting their butts to get it finished in time to release with Windows 7, because IE7 crashes at least once a day for me.

It seems to me that IE isn't crashing that often in 7 than it used to do in Vista... I had far more crashes in Vista, since even text selection in crashed the browser in some cases.

Chrome does still have some issues in 7 64-bit... there's a fix that makes it usable. But the idea of having all the tabs represented as small thumbnails in the taskbar and that Chrome is still missing that feature made me switch back to IE for a while

But I agree: IE8 has still a long way to go until it's really done.

spivonious said:

The only thing I like about IE8 is the way it treats each tab as a separate process.  Everything just seems a little off.  Suggested Sites is worthless, Slices seem like RSS to me, and there are lots of sites that render incorrectly until I resize the window (C9 included).  Hopefully they're busting their butts to get it finished in time to release with Windows 7, because IE7 crashes at least once a day for me.

magicalclick said:

Yeah, IE8 is still really unstable. A lot of times it crashed when I launch My Favorite Folder. Sometimes are ok, I crash pop-up window will show up and I can cancel the bug reporting to recover my tabs without waiting. But sometimes my whole IE is not responding, and I have to use Task Manager to end one of the process myself (mostly the one use most memory).

I like the idea that IE8 is running seperate process for each tab, so I only need to end the one that's bad, but I can't tell which process is the bad one.

IE8 is bloated with features and yet there is no download manager and spelling check. It makes me wonder what feature team is planning.

intelman said:

magicalclick said:

*snip*

IE8 is impossible in 7 and next to impossible in Vista (Using IE8 RC).

I have sent so many error reports for IE8 crashes.

I hope they make the best out of it

One thing that I really LIKE about IE8 are the suggestions in the search text box. That's a nice idea and was very handy a few times.

jason818_253.33 said:

I have been using IE 8 for a month now and it runs just fine here.

Anyway... the other thing I've noticed about IE8 printing is the sheer size of the output.

As an example... printing a particular webpage I visit with FireFox generates about 1.5MB of PCL output... big, but expected.

Printing the same page with IE8-B2... OMG... 16MB... and then I have to kill the print job, because my LaserJet will take all day to grunge through that lot.

This means that, at the moment, any time I want to print a webpage, I fire up FireFox.

Again, I suspect that the problem is that IE8 is printing background images regardless of the tools setting (which I have set to NO) and when people don't use a specific media CSS to disable it,  IE8 prints stuff like body-backgrounds, and presemably uses PCL graphics.

fabian said:

IE 8 is far away from prime time...

littleguru said:

intelman said:

*snip*

I hope they make the best out of it

One thing that I really LIKE about IE8 are the suggestions in the search text box. That's a nice idea and was very handy a few times.

vesuvius said:

warren said:

*snip*

I didn't mention a Release Candidate. I pray for a beta 3 though.

Edit:  Would the mothership ship with an unfinished IE8 in Windows 7, seeing as this is the only public beta for the new OS?

 IE8 should be "leaps and bounds" ahead by now, but it is not!

elmer said:

Got stung by IE8-B2 again yesterday.

I wrote a 'contact us' webform for a customer, for which most content was normal flow, some contained floating elements and a there were a couple of absolutely positioned divs.

Nothing extraordinary, no hacks, and FFox, Safari, Chrome and even Opera all dealt with it exactly as I expected, without any problem.

IE... a blank page... WTF ??

After much screwing about, I managed to resolve the display of the normal flow content, by setting the containing div display types to 'inline-block' - which meant that all the other browsers were immediately unhappy... so I worked around that by forcing IE7 compatibility mode and using expression(‘inline-block’) so that the other browsers all continued to work.

**EDIT: A bit more time with it, and I realised that this is the age-old 'has-layout' problem of IE, as the divs have position:relative and width/height settings of auto... so IE fails to display them. The 'inline-block' for IE is a trigger for 'has-layout' which allows them to be displayed. Once I recognised the problem, I realised that I could eliminate the stupid expression() hack, and instead implement the trusty old 'zoom:1' hack... to give IE it's required 'has-layout' status, while using display:block... and not bog down the page with expression() scripts.**

However... the AP’d divs were still missing... so more experimenting and sleuthing ensued... and after many MANY wasted hours and banging of head on the desk... I finally found that when IE encounters an AP’d div that has a sibling which is not AP’d and which contains a float... it just doesn’t display it. What clued me into the problem was that when inspecting the html with the developer tools, and clicking on the AP’d node, it would suddenly appear on the screen... like it needed a wakeup call. Anyway, more experimenting and I found that putting an empty <div></div> in between the two gave it the smack up the side of the head required, and IE finally looked the way all the other’s looked on first try.

I then did some hunting about on the internet, and found that this mess has been around since the olden days of IE and is *still* not fixed... so I went back and check the original problem against IE7 and IE6 and, sure enough, they has the same issues and required the same solution.

Much as I’d love to believe MS are going to sort this all out before IE8 is released, I'm already starting to resign myself to 4-5 more years of IE-Work-arounds, as these are both problems we've been living with in IE since V5

joechung said:

elmer said:

*snip*

Did you undo the IE 7 compatibility mode and try to reproduce that bug?  If you left it on, you're basically getting behavior as designed since IE 7 compatibility mode in IE 8 strives to be as much like IE 7 as possible, including bugs.

PaoloM said:

spivonious said:

*snip*

I'm using Chrome and it's all fast and stuff, but it croaks on a number of sites (codeplex, etc). So it's still IE at Casa Paolo...

elmer said:

joechung said:

*snip*

Yes... and it didn't work.

I actually deveoped with FireFox, and the galling part is that every other browser renders exactly as expected... only IE continues to give me grief, regardless of the mode, and requires me to implement hacks to fix it.