Ie 8. Hmmmmm
Usually when a beta gets released it’s pretty much there. I had IE7 when that went public beta, never really noticed any problems, Firefox? Ok that’s always in beta but nevertheless apart from FF3 annoying the hell out of me for a couple of days because of its reluctance to handle certain bits of Javascript in the same way as FF2 did, and a couple of add ons dropping the ball along the way development has generally been fairly smooth.
Smoothness is certainly not the case with Ie8. . Ok yes it’s labelled beta I hear you but really…I don’t think it should be. Why? Well to put it mildly it’s quirky. Like very quirky. Think Luna Lovegood…now add a dash of Cassie from Skins…Yep there we go mad as a bicycle…I seriously had problems surfing with it because of the constant warnings it kept throwing at me for what it saw as various misdemeanours on the parts of the surfees…is that a word?? Well it is now. Don’t get me wrong I’m not slating the product itself, in fact on the sites it did work on it was quite frankly superb. Fast, and I’m not saying it’s a couple of nanoseconds faster than so and so browser because some benchmark test program says so either You can actually really tell just by browsing. Innovative too, plenty of new toys on the right click menu, including a developer suite much like the Mozilla camps Firebug... Web slices, accelerators, the latest must haves and crowd pleasers like
The problem I suppose here is that it is trying to change too much and with typical Microsoft arrogance is expecting everyone else to just accept it and change to suit. Much like the Vista outlook on the world, don’t have a driver? Well tough that’s not our problem its up to the company that sold you the usb novelty frat party condom inflator and decorator. I did read somewhere that they had graciously allowed you to add some obscure metatag to your webpages so it automatically behaves as IE7 umm yeah right thanks for that… . Backwards compatibility obviously somewhere on page 3 of 4 on the development meeting agendas, in a 2 minute slot just before the afternoon coffee and piss break. A bit of messing around does allow it to run in a sort of compatibility mode as Ie7, but as far as I could tell this seems to be primarily for guarding against dodgy css. Quirks mode is there as well, whether it does anything is anyones guess
Now then. It can suggest other sites based on your history, good idea in theory but for years we have been warned against stuff spying on our surfing habits, we must delete cookies, delete files, clear history etc etc. and now Ie (and Firefox for that matter) seem to think its ok, even helpful for them to use the stuff all the antivirus and spyware programs throw fits about and banish to the their virus vaults, virtual jails and death rows on your c: drive.
And then on the other hand it seems to want to tighten security in other areas, noticeably where I was trying to figure out why it refused to load a js file. Same domain check, works in ff3—check, opera—check, chrome—check, Ie7—check. It appears to want it in the same subdirectory as well? Or does it baulk because it’s reading it as a full path…or does it have something to do with the security zones or or or or what???? Nope sorry I just can’t be bothered to test any further.
If you are a strictly amateur web site tinkerer and blogger type like myself believe me you are not going to want to run IE8 beta as a main browser yet. Yahoo mail doesn’t know what it is for instance, neither do some online banking sites etc. and seeing as it overwrites IE7 on install if you do want to try it out use a spare box, or dual boot or something unless you want to keep going through the lengthy uninstall reinstall rigmarole to switch between the two. This in itself is a pain, what does Microsoft have here that they think is so special? Why not allow parallel installs, sorry but to me with the rise of open source, particularly in the browser ‘market’ the more hurdles there are in the way (including classing this as a windows update with all the checks that entails for a start) the less likely the Redmond camp are to attract the kind of people willing to make an early beta work with sites and addons…they can’t have their web slice and eat it.
I have just returned to the Microsoft download page, and they are now touting Beta as Rc1... How much difference that makes now is probably a reasonable question. However right now I am not about to answer it..on account of me only just finding this post on my hard drive after writing it a month or more ago and forgetting all about it.
