Mixed response on Internet Explorer 8 launch day
With today’s launch of Internet Explorer 8, media response has been a mixed bag. The new features have generally been well-received, but problems with the user interface and implementation of web standards have earned criticism.
As you may remember, I tested out Internet Explorer 8′s new features in the beta edition back in January. I concluded that they were all useful to some degree, but the benefits weren’t strong enough to be the only reason to switch browsers. Today Dave Jeyes has summarized the pros and cons of the final edition.
ComputerWorld’s Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols gives a clear thumbs up, noting that he’s found it not only works better than Internet Explorer 7 (a point few would disagree with) but that it’s also superior to the latest release of Mozilla’s Firefox.
He points to the benefits of a simple private browsing mode (which is only available as a third-party plug-in with Firefox) and the intuitive colored tab system where every tab you open from a link has the same colour as the original, thus making it easier to keep track of multiple tabs. That said, he’ll be sticking with Firefox on his machine as he prefers the wide range of add-on features available.
Rob Pegoraro of the Washington Post is less enthusiastic, noting that he’s disappointed with changes made since the beta edition. One of these is that the user interface is now more complicated with some items either duplicated or difficult to locate.
The other is that the compatibility view feature, designed to cope with sites which had been specifically designed to work with previous versions of Internet Explorer at the expense of web standards, now seems to be working too vigorously and labeling too many sites as effectively broken.
The Register notes that many leading sites, including the BBC and Facebook, don’t support Internet Explorer 8. That’s not to say they don’t work, rather that they may not look as intended. To Microsoft, there’s a simple solution: website developers should add a tag to their coding to make sure their site appears properly in IE8.
To the developers, even that minor task is an unnecessary hassle given that web standards already exist to make sure sites work in all browsers, and they shouldn’t have to suffer if Microsoft ignores those standards.
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March 20th, 2009
“To Microsoft, there’s a simple solution: website developers should add a tag to their coding to make sure their site appears properly in IE8.”
To the rest of the world there’s a simple solution: Microsoft should go out of business, and then we wouldn’t have to put up with their nonsense any more.
March 20th, 2009
@Hugh
You don’t like IE? Don’t use it. Its what I do.