I didn’t think the day would ever come, but it has: as of the RC1 build, Internet Explorer 8 appears to render TR pretty much flawlessly without IE-specific code enabled. That’s quite a radical improvement over the beta 2 release that came out five short months ago.
Regulars will recall my successive rants about the first and second IE8 beta releases, in which the new "standards-compliant" rendering engine tripped and stumbled on every other website (including TR). I dreaded the prospect of having to pull up my sleeves and write workarounds for yet another IE release, and to my frustration, the IE team seemed busier implementing peripheral features than fixing rendering bugs.
Somehow, though, they’ve pulled it off. IE8 RC1 behaves just as well on TR as on CNN, Google Maps, YouTube, and Facebook. What impresses me most is that this release can take the exact same code I feed to Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, and Opera without skipping a beat. In both IE7 and IE6, I’m forced to resort to a handful of browser-specific hacks to sidestep rendering bugs.
That said, IE8 might still be trailing Gecko and WebKit a little bit. While Firefox, Chrome, and IE8 all render the Acid2 test successfully, IE8 scores considerably lower in the Acid3 test. Even performance seems a little lackluster: in my Windows XP virtual machine, Chrome completed the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark almost four times quicker than IE8. I haven’t tested the new release candidate on Vista, however, so I’ll refrain from drawing any hasty conclusions.
What’s important is that the IE team managed to produce a browser that’s reasonably standards-compliant. That might not matter too much now, but it’ll be a big deal in a few years when IE6 and IE7 market shares drop near zero. I expect a decent chunk of IE7 users will make the jump, too, since IE8 has a similar interface and works on the same versions of Windows, but it brings a (vast) number of neat new features. Hopefully, Microsoft will push out IE8 on Windows Update a few months after the browser goes gold.
Does IE8 have what it takes to replace Firefox, Chrome, and Opera in the hearts of enthusiasts? I don’t believe so. However, IE8 now looks like a clear step up from IE7, and that’s a good thing for the next major release of the most popular browser out there.
IE8 is total craaaaaaaaaaaaaaap!!!!!!!!!!!!
I installed it on Vista64bit and XP sp3 and it crashed every time I used, so I throwed it to the BIN.
I’m browser mad guy tried all of the browsers up to date. Google Chrome is the champion, it only need more addons.
As much as I respect Google advertising bots who joined the site 30 minutes ago (literally), I must say you’re talking rubbish.
I’m neither google bot nor anti MS, I’m TR reader quite long, Have use TR system building guide to build my first PC 16 months ago.
My opinion about IE8 based on my experience, I even cant download W7 beta with IE8, when tried FF all done, hassle free.
Curious, because I couldn’t do it with either, so I resorted to the old trusty Pirate Bay, then used the key Microsoft gave me. All the same.
#23,
Yes, Win2K is 9 years old but it’s enough for the computing needs of a sizeable number of users who don’t watch HD videos, play 3D games or create multimedia content. I mean, a used PIII with 256 MB of RAM is fine for checking your Windows Live account, doing a little browsing and using Office 2000
I should have mentioned that I live in a 3rd world country, so people think twice or thrice before upgrading to a newer PC.
#32,
What’s lacking on IE8 is Java*[
I hope you realize IE8 keeps a database of sites that do not display correctly, and will use compatbility mode in the background without any user intervention when it detects it is browsing to these known problematic sites. Doesn’t mean they actually fixed it. 😉
§[<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/27/internet_exporer_8_rc/<]§
Enabling compatibility mode reintroduces an IE7 bug with TR’s “More” menu, so I doubt that’s the case here.
I wonder if IE8 would still let my mother use Citigroup RemoteDesktop on her laptop. It uses Java heavily, so maybe it’s not such a good idea if IE8’s Java performance is lacking.
IE8 looks like it’s goign to make a good mark for Microsoft. Guess it’s time to Make IE8 my new backup browser. Opera still stays #1 though.
#5,
IE7 and IE8 don’t run on Win2K, a very fine OS used by lots of business and homes. Why should people throw their trusty PCs, upgrade to another OS (XP, since installing Vista on most machines running Win2K is a painful experience) or use a non-familiar browser (Opera, Firefox, Chrome)?
By ‘used in lots of business and homes’, I assume you mean ‘like every desktop OS other than XP, Vista, and OSX, it has less than 1% market share’. Win2K is nine years old, and for eight of those years, something newer has been available.
And for at least 4 of those years, a lot of places were clinging on to 98 SE.
Why does Cyril’s virtual xp look like win2k ?
You can disable the Luna theme and choose “Windows Classic” instead.
Which looks twice as good as that plastic s***.
meh… Watercolor xptheme FTW, in my opinion the best theme ever designed for XP, ironically enough heavily influenced by the initial Whistler betas.
Yes, but /[
I answered the “why”. 😉
And here comes what I’ve been waiting for, an IE8 version without the bugs that bothered me in Beta 2 (Beta 1 was unusable). I hereby demote Firefox to secondary browser, in case this release candidate has issues somewhere.
my experience with Javascript in XP with RC1 matches yours, Cyril. If anything, it feels slower on the web app I support than IE7, and both are miles slower than even current releases of Firefox.
What amazes me most is that Cyril has a facebook 😛
*runs to stalk him*
/[<"That might not matter too much now, but it'll be a big deal in a few years when IE6 and IE7 market shares drop near zero."<]/ I don't think they'll get close to zero for 5+ years. There's too much riding on IE6 implementations to just abandon them. §[<http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp<]§ Even with a drop of .5% every month, both browsers will be around for many, many yearsg{<.<}g
Aye. IE6 will never die out entirely. Even ignoring the corporate idiots who require that browser and no other for some custom app, it will take a /long/ time for the clueless/poor people still using Win9x-era computers to finish upgrading to something newer.
Never say never, /[
it’ll take a while but the percentage of users will drop to the point where IE6 users should get nothing more than a page redirect to get something more modern.
Of course expecting a linear rate of decline is not realistic.
Cyril having good things to say about IE??? *Runs out to go buy lottery tickets*
Maybe not entirely. I’m running the RC1 right now, and the comments submit button, and the Google buttons are so freaking tiny I can’t even read the text. Cyril, are you seeing the same?
The comments form and Google Custom Search fields both look fine to me here. Is that what you meant?
Regular Google.com straight page. The two buttons “Search” and “I’m Feeling Lucky” appear at a near microscopic size. The same thing happens to the button below this input form.
I’m not getting what you’re getting, on either TR or Google.
Yeah, I’m not having those problems either.
Doh. Guess I will need to look into whats up with this then. =/
I found it. My custom XP theme to make the system look more like Vista was the culprit. Who would have thunk it?
In case anyone is curious I was using the Razor theme.
Custom themes are a common cause of all kinds of mess, from simple graphical glitching to total application failure.
True enough, but the basic XP Luna theme looks like Fischer Price My First PC. =(
You know, the Windows Classic theme doesn’t. 😉
I have a personal hatred of the old 9x kernel and the Classic look of it makes me want to cringe.
§[<http://www.istartedsomething.com/20061029/royale-noir/<]§ Dent gradients should be shot.
It seems the new ielowutil.exe background process that manages to restart itself no matter how many times I kill it, we get for free too :/.
Like the FF thread that insists on grabbing back all the memory trimmed out of its workingset, no matter how many ways we try to make it not be such a pig.
So why do you insist on killing it? Do you suppose that your low level software management skills are more valuable than that of Microsoft?
When I close my browser, I needs to be gone, not hang around in the background forever.
Give me proof that it’s causing issues or hogging resources.
Give us a good reason for it to exist to begin with. You don’t write a main program and then another persistent supporting program to clean up after it or prepare the system for its launch or whatever ielowutil.exe does – you write the main program well enough that it isn’t required.
If it is sitting around collecting performance or usage data then in my mind that is even less of a reason to let it run when we are not using IE.