One whole year of IE 8!

Well, today it has been one whole year since I upgraded to IE 8. Originally I gave it a fortnight to impress me & although it was an improvement on IE 7 in many ways, particularly with security & functionality, it was still the pain in the arse it has always been. On my laptop it still opened links in those silly little windows rather than a tab. I still don't know if you can set it up to open in tabs by default. Either way, compared to Opera, SRWare Iron or SeaMonkey it was painfully slow sometimes. It still has no real download manager & its bookmark manager is sadly lacking in my opinion. At least you can add a spell-checker & an adblocker nowadays! I'd rather use Firefox than IE 8 & that's saying something. Thankfully I only ever use IE rarely in a couple of sites.

My verdict: 5 out of 10 ... could do better (C'mon M$, get your act together with IE 9 & surprise us all!).

What do you think?

 

That's an interesting link Ron. I'd post there but I don't want to rock the boat with M$ just in case they find out where I live & force me to upgrade to Win Seven! LOL

 

I keep wondering why the results for some users & IE8 are so varied. I have placed it on every PC I maintain and it runs fine with no issues. None! Maybe I'm lucky...

 

Once you've driven a Cadillac a Trabant just ain't the same!

 

With my next computer certainly. Vista's working fine for me at the moment & I can't think of a good enough reason to go through all the hassle of upgrading & any attendant problems I may incur. My desktop's in pieces as well at the moment as I try to get it WiFi compatible with Ubuntu. So I'd rather not try it until I have a back-up machine online.

 

If you want IE to open all links in new tabs you should choose to also open pop-ups in new tabs, this doesn't by the way mean IE doesn't block popups anymore. It is kinda strange, but IE sees some links as links to pop-ups not new pages. Go to Internet settings -> General tab -> Tab Settings -> Open pop-ups always in a new tab. That will solve that issue.

 

OK, thanks, I'll give it a go. I knew there must be a way!

 

I thought that was the default settings. Mine was!
And like Han I have no problems with IE 8.

 

I have checked the default setting (Tools-Internet Options-Tabs-Settings) on more than one computer (all Vista) & it is set to ~

'Always Open Pop-Ups in New Window'

Although I find that ~

'Let Internet Explorer Decide How Pop-Ups should Open' works fine for me.

Where do I start? It doesn't support WOT in Hotmail, the GUI is ugly & big, it's sluggish on my laptop compared to Opera or Iron, it has no real download manager, its bookmark manager is not too good, takes its time loading in some sites....

 

Hey Dave, a few things: Why do you need WOT in Hotmail? If you are going to a website linked in an email, WOT will show its findings when you get to the website. As far as GUI, ugly would be Chrome...damned ugly. I don't consider that a "problem" though, merely a personal preference. Download managers, point taken. But unless you have a very slow connection or are having an issue with the server the download is coming from, there isn't much need. That's strictly my opinion though. Bookmarks managing, another of those "decent to have but not needed" things that really aren't a problem, but a preference. I just bookmark a page I want and move on myself.

Website loading issues have so many reasons behind them that it's hard to place the fault on the browser. That being said, I've had far more issues loading websites either at all or at least correctly, with both Opera and Chrome. Chrome, for me, had major issues with pages not looking like they were supposed to. And Opera, well, Opera is "special". Search my name up here and Wilders and look at any posts related to Opera. You'll see either rants of nightmares with Opera completely bombing on every system I ever had, or a week or so of apparent success followed by said bombing soon after. I've often wondered if offering Opera a cookie and some milk would convince it to load a media-heavy website completely, without stalling for a full minute or more or crashing right off the bat. It might be the fastest browser on earth, but that doesn't mean a thing if it only loads a part of a page or crashes and leaves a crater before it even attempts to load it.

Not surprisingly, IE has always loaded properly and quickly, when a websites' server was working properly as well of course. It's good and bad. Good because it never fails when everything else is working as it should, and bad because, at this point in time, websites should not still be coded with IE in mind.

 

I've heard that Trabbies are something of collector items nowadays, just don't have an accident in one.

I run Google Chrome Beta and will never go back to MSIE any version. I find Firefox and Opera slow compared to it, on this laptop. As for safety, Google in Sandboxie, geswall, or Returnil, is about as safe as you can get.

 

Good point, but it works in every other browser I have. It does save you opening the link I suppose though.

Well, De Gustibus... & all that. I love the Zen-like simplicity of Iron & KaiRo's Early Blue is similarly pleasant in SeaMonkey (his LCARS trekkie theme is a bit of a strain on the old eyeballs though...I'd have never made it in Starfleet apparently). Opera's GUI can me minimalised & still be perfectly functional. It is pleasant to look at & you can customise it a bit.

I just like the fact that Firefox, SeaMonkey & Iron download to downloads by default. The FoxMonkey even scans with your AV automatically. Plus it's nice to have a manager. I downloaded Firefox the day after I bought this computer & it has spoiled me a bit. IE has always seemed a bit beta by comparison.

Again I think I just got spoiled with Firefox/SeaMonkeys manager & I like order in my bookmarking files. IE's system just seems to increase my blood pressure.

Iron's adblocker can break pages & Opera is famous (or is it infamous) for odd looking pages. I guess that's what IE was made for. See, it is useful for something.

Yeah, I love Opera...but love is blind...

Maybe it's a laptop thing, I can just about run Vista HP & my AV isn't doing me any favours. I tend to blame British Telecom as well (that's just a hobby though). IE 8 seems a bit better when it's warmed up a bit. Now I can get it to open on tabs by default it has gone up a bit in my estimation. It still doesn't have the speed of Opera, Iron or SeaMonkey though, & IE 8 still has an ugly impractical GUI IMO!

 

I think that they are made out of old baked bean cans!

That's what I like about SRWare Iron, I think Chromium based browsers were 'made' for laptops.

 

I mistook the term "download manager" as meaning of the type that speeds up the download, not defines where a download is saved, my apologies. But, does not IE8 have the option to define where they are saved? I am on Win 7, which puts downloads in the Downloads folder by default period, no matter the browser, with exception to Chrome which seems to have its own downloads folder.

It does sound to me like your laptop may be a bit underpowered and perhaps it's affecting the speed of IE. IE with media-heavy websites isn't exactly light as a feather for sure, and if the OS runs somewhat slow on that unit, I'd imagine that IE 8 isn't going to fare much better.

 

I guess I'm just more used to Firefox as apart from originally actually downloading Firefox itself I tend to use it to download everything else.

Iron, Opera, K-Meleon & SeaMonkey, when I've used them, are all pretty snappy though compared to 'surfing in molasses' IE. Even when I get a more powerful PC & use Win 7 I can't see me being converted to a regular IE user.

 

Some people like IE, some don't At least you won't get hounded for disliking IE like you would if you said you didn't like Opera. God help you in this forum, lol.

 

LOL yeah! It's strange how some apps & browsers can cause so many arguments discussions.

I think some of these 'fanz' should get out a bit more & make some friends outside of cyberspace. It would do them the world of good...