Can Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) Win This Battle?

By | November 16, 2008 | 10 Comments

While Internet Explorer 7 had only one good feature (are you curious now?), the upcoming Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is slowly becoming a real web browser. But is it enough?

Standards Support

Web developers doomed IE7. Hours of wasted time, checking… Yes, it still breaks a web. Let’s do more coding… It took a while for Microsoft to realize that it’s a good thing for any web browser to support web standards. Internet Explorer 8 is their 1st correct step in building friendly relationships with web developers. Hope it will not break the web (again).

Is IE8 Really Different?

The upcoming Internet Explorer 8 browser is probably one of the most awaited releases. And it’s not only because of some great features such as search suggestions, visual search, tab grouping, web slices and many more… (most of them were already integrated to Firefox, Safari, Opera long time ago) but due to web standards support and the way Microsoft thinks now on what IE should really be.

Conclusion?

Microsoft learned from Windows Vista release (one of the worst releases ever?) and began Windows 7 development which will fix what makes Vista so bad. Performance, annoying messages, compatibility (Windows 7 will use same core), etc.

Same for Internet Explorer, 7th release was bad. They have realized that and started to develop IE8. Is it any good? It supports web standards, it is much faster and more user friendly (in terms of web experience) and it’s finally a web browser. So to answer this topic question… It’s too early for any final conclusions, but I do believe that IE8 is going to be a really pleasant web browser and can drastically slow down Internet Explorer market share losing. It can’t win this battle because it’s the 1st release only. However, Microsoft made a first right step and it’s a good thing.

There is 1 more thing which MS should learn… It’s a development cycle. With the budget like that it makes you wonder why they are developing IE so slowly. It’s not Windows and neither Office where users can wait few years for the next release. There are some strong competitors out there. Fix this and you are ready to go.

Internet Explorer 7 Good Feature?

So what about that good Internet Explorer 7 feature? It is market share losing.

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About (Author Profile)


Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism carrier back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

  • http://www.puresimple.net Bernardo

    It’s still slow though… They finally support standards, but it’s still the same old slow piece of crap, sadly :/
    Even on a good system, it doesn’t perform fast at all. It takes half a second to open a new tab alone.

  • xErath

    IE8′s DOM support is still the same shit as IE5.5′s, and all the bugs they have since IE4 in their ecmascript implementation still persist.. DOM+ecmascript are the areas where developers struggle, and why one always needs two code branches, one for IE, and the other for the real world.

  • http://myopera.com/fatal FataL

    BTW, IE6 is still alive and kicking with 30% or so…
    So the best IE 8 feature for me is IE 6 marketshare loosing. IE 7 not so bad in comparison with IE 6. ;)

  • http://nocontinues.net Tiago Sá

    As an amateur webdesigner with my own site and stuff, I now design exclusively for Firefox, Safari and IE7. Of course, I need to create hacks for IE most of the time, but it doesn’t bother me that much (for now). As for IE6 users, who are still a legion, sure, I explicitly tell them (when I can’t support their browser in my site) that they are using an outdated browser without support for newer technologies.

    Oh, and by the way, Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 DOES NOT support standards. Acid2 is irrelevant, Acid3 is much more important (now and always). You just look at old browsers (like Firefox 1) and see them going way higher than IE8b2 in Acid3. I’m redesigning my site (much more complex and all that) and I can’t support IE6 (so I don’t) and I won’t bother supporting IE8 (even though I can), because when my redesign is effective, IE8 will still be a long way from home, and when it does come out, people will see how it “doesn’t work” ;)

  • http://msn.com George Lynn

    IE 8 is pure JUNK!!! I downloaded it and took it off in lest than 5 minutes. It slowed down my PC and IE 8 took off my favs, it also kept closing the window? I think microsoft is going down hill vista and IE 8 — maybe they are somking dope or something???????????

  • http://www.favbrowser.com Vygantas Lipskas

    George,

    It’s still in beta. Yes, it’s slower than Firefox, Safari, Opera but IE users are not so needy. Most of them don’t care about performance or even the existence of other browsers.

  • http://nocontinues.net Tiago Sá

    They care if their browser (whatever it is) doesn’t work with ‘their internet’, as they say…

  • http://creatingdrew.com Drew

    I am most worried about the css3 features IE8 will (or should I say wont) support, as it looks as if Firefox, Opera, and Safari are all going to (or already are supporting) some awesome css3 features. Take the border-radius property that it looks like IE8 wont support. Another 10 years of making rounded corners ourselves to support IE it seems.

    So can it win this battle? No way. Can it make vast improvments from IE7? Sure.

  • http://www.ladysparadise.net utalice

    I had IE8 installed for about a month or so. Today, I opened my laptop and my system was running slow as hell. I thought my hard drive was failing. IE8 wouldn’t start up. I had no problems with Mozilla. I tried restoring it to the previous day before (before I had any problems) and that still didn’t help any. After installing PerfectDisk and getting things cleaned up, IE8 still wouldn’t start up.

    Finally, I decided to uninstall IE8, now my system runs great again. I know there was a Windows Update yesterday morning when I booted up my laptop. I believe that probably had something to do with it. =(

    I like the features in IE8, but something really screwed it up.

  • Mike

    Microsoft must have it’s head in the sand putting Version IE8 into the market place.

    The browsing response times are abysmal – it’s little wonder they need so many updates – I wonder if they will ever be capable of getting things right first time.

    My personal view is they are rapidly heading towards a huge loss in market share unless they pull their finger out!!

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