IE 8 is far away from prime time... | The Coffeehouse

fabian

Hi all,

The only major issue so far with Win 7 (x64) is Internet Explorer 8. It can best be described as "not ready". The reliability monitor in Win 7 agrees with me. It gives my system a reliability ratings on 1 - 2 out of 10 due to IE.

9 of out 14 error reports send so far is caused by IE (4 days period).

The version of IE that comes with win 7 is 8.0.7000.0 and the version that Microsoft released as RC1 on in December is version 8.0.6001.18343

If that version number means that the version of IE that ships with Win 7 are a later build the RC 1 Microsoft will have a very huge problem when IE 8 goes RTM.

Sad!

vesuvius
Das Glasperlenspiel

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
atom heart mother

In reply to vesuvius

#Jan 13th @ 11:33 AM

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.

ZippyV
Fired Up

I don't like the feature explosion. There are a lot of new features in there that I'm probably not going to use. On the other hand, a basic download manager that can pause and resume is still not there.

Suggested sites: useless
Webslices: not going to use it
Compatibility mode: I guess we're stuck with it for the next 10 years because Microsoft screwed us in the past 5 years
Selection: every time I select something I get this weird green button that I don't need
RSS bookmarkbar (bookmars with a popmenu with all the rss items): I use it all the time with Firefox.

Will it gain marketshare back from Firefox? No.

vesuvius
Das Glasperlenspiel

In reply to warren

#Jan 13th @ 11:41 AM

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!

fabian

In reply to warren

#Jan 13th @ 11:41 AM

It got the info on the Release Candidate on the Internet .. so it must be true Smiley

Jokes aside...there a number of post on the net that displays this image

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Internet-Explorer-8-IE8-Release-Candidate-1-RC1-Is-Already-Here-100216.shtml

Some says, one more public test version early 2009 and then RTM

Bas
It finds lightbulbs.

You know, they went with a longhorn reset... Couldn't there be a slim chance of an IE8 reset?

stevo_
Human after all

Yea its a mess so far..

spivonious

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.

PaoloM
Hypermediocrity

In reply to spivonious

#Jan 13th @ 12:34 PM

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...

littleguru
<3 Seattle

In reply to spivonious

#Jan 13th @ 12:34 PM

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 Smiley

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

DCMonkey
Monkey see, monkey do, monkey will destroy you!

In reply to spivonious

#Jan 13th @ 12:34 PM

I haven't had IE8 on w7 crash on me yet, but I'm kind of meh about the new features too. The one web slice I tried (the digg top 10) didn't seem to support the scroll wheel. I don't know if that was IE8's fault or the slice author.

I also thought I'd appreciate the color coding of related tabs, but I've found that the colors make it harder to determine which tab is active. I pretty much have to search for the gray close "x" on the tab now. I wish I could turn the colors off but I can't find an option for it.

And why is there an email button on the toolbar by default? I don't even have an email client installed.

Speaking of toolbars, when IE7 came out without a menu bar, I was one of those that supported the decision since I never used most of the items on the menus anyways. The Page and Tools menus on the toolbar seemed to include all of the stuff most people would need that wasn't already presented somewhere else in the UI. Now I look at the messy Page menu in IE8, and think maybe they need to bring the menu bar back as a primary UI feature.

PS: The accelerators might end up being usefull down the road. I haven't had a need for them quite yet. I'll probably use the search for selection the most if I remember it's there. What I'd really like is a "paste the selected url text into the address bar and go there" accelerator for when people don't make links out of their urls in forum posts. Is that possible to do client side with an accelerator?

BitFlipper

A few things I hate a bout IE8:

1) The per-tab process seems to slow down opening of new tabs.

2) Constant hangs, although being a beta, I can't really complain about that one.

3) I can no longer open new tabs right next to the current tab, as I could with IE7. And no, tab grouping is not the same, not even close. And turning off tab grouping doesn't fix it either. In IE7 you had a choice about this particular behavior, now you are forced into one way only. I tend to browse like this:

Do a search. Quickly scan down the results, and middle-click on any interesting link. This way I find all relevant links first without losing my train of thought. Then only do I look at the tabs that I opened.

Once I have all my search results of interest in their own tabs, I look at each tab, one at a time. Often I find additional links on the page that I'd like to follow. So once again, I middle-click on all interesting links. In IE7, the new tabs would open right next to the current tab, keeping everything grouped the way I want them. In IE8, all new tabs are placed all the way to the right, completely losing context with where they came from. And tab grouping doesn't solve the problem. After a while, they just end up being opened somewhere to the right.

At the least, can we just get the "Open new tab next to current tab" functionality back as an option? Please! I am very close to giving up on IE and going with FF. I have been resisting but it is getting harder and harder to stay with IE.

magicalclick

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

In reply to magicalclick

#Jan 13th @ 1:56 PM

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

I have sent so many error reports for IE8 crashes.

littleguru
<3 Seattle

In reply to intelman

#Jan 13th @ 2:09 PM

I hope they make the best out of it Smiley

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
Yippi skippy

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

elmer
I'm on my very last life.

In reply to jason818_253.33

#Jan 13th @ 3:55 PM

IE8-B2 regularly explodes on me when printing, with an integer/0 error... can't even report it, as it just blows all IE windows away.

Really handy when printing the bank-balance... as the bank website then gets all hissy about whether you logged off or are trying to get a 2nd session... UGH!

Problem seems to be stemming from the fact that printing background images are enabled regardless of the tools setting, and there is some issue with system shading or some-such api call.

elmer
I'm on my very last life.

God that "reply-to" thing is annoying... I always forget to set it to "Reply to Root" when posting a general comment.

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.

phreaks

fabian said:

IE 8 is far away from prime time...

Maybe, but you know what's not?

Jack Bauer.

intelman

In reply to littleguru

#Jan 13th @ 3:16 PM

Idea that is in Firefox already. Plus Firefox doesn't crash as much.

IE has the best zoom still, I think that is where they lead. Speed, they lose, stability, they lose, UI, they lose....

It will take a lot for me to use IE8. If the stability is improved (which I am sure it will be) that will help a lot. But even then, what am I gaining by using IE instead of Firefox or Chrome.

warren
atom heart mother

In reply to vesuvius

#Jan 13th @ 11:47 AM

I meant to quote the original poster, not you... sorry, friend. Smiley

joechung

Accessing the IE-proprietary filters collection in JavaScript fails; CSS repeating background image fail to cover the whole element, often leaving one transparent pixel uncovered on edges; setting CSS height and width in scripted animations leaves dirty artifacts due to incorrect redraw optimizations; and -- most disturbing -- IE8's CSS 2.1 standards implementation seems to have regressed. Pages that worked in Firefox, Safari/Chrome, Opera, and IE 8 Beta 2 fail in IE 8 RC1.

sushovande
Smiley Face Sharp

Just my 2 cents: I love IE8 and have been using it quite a bit.. I know it crashes a few times, but I like the fav bar, the in private mode, in private blocking, nice set of dev tools and search suggestions. Those are enough for me to stick around, so no IE7 for me Smiley

elmer
I'm on my very last life.

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