IE 8 for WinXP available on the windows update site.

[snowhiker]

IE 8 for WinXP now available on the "Windows Update" site.

Let the flames begin................

 

[Tea]

Been running it for a few weeks now. Well, running Opera and Seamonkey same as usual, but I installed it a few weeks ago. Greatly to my surprise, it didn't break on any of Tannin's sites, which I didn't expect. MS browsers always break and the early beta IE8 version I had a very quick play with did break, easily.

But IE 8 not only doesn't break on Tannin's sites, it actually get a few minor things right that IE 7 gets wrong - in other words, from a correct-rendering point of view, it seems to be the equal of Opera and very, very nearly the equal of Seamonkey and Firefox.

I can't see why any rational human would want to run it when there is not just one but three different modern browsers which are superior in every way - speed, interface design, reliability, security, you name it - but there you go. It does work, which is more than you can say for the excremental products which preceeded it.

By the way, I can't actually tell you what Safari does on our sites. The way I see it, anyone daft enough to run Apple software of their own free will has problems enough already; I doubt that they would notice their browser breaking if it flashed red and sent up smoke signals.

As for Google Chrome, why would anyone want to bother? I haven't tried it, but what would be the point? It apparently has security problems of the same order of magnitude as Safari's (that is to say red-alert level, as compared with the permanent, rusted-on-for-life red-alert-with-lights-and-sirens level IE makes its very own), and while I doubt that they could make an interface as poor as that of Firefox or IE, I'd be astonished to discover that it was half as good as Opera, and mildly surprised to see it surpass the elderly Seamonkey, so why even download it? If it ever gets any market share worth talking about, maybe we will test with it. Or maybe we won't.

In the meantime, Tannin has officially announced that he will no longer support IE 6 on any of his sites. If you are too stupid to upgrade to a decent browser after all these years, then you probably couldn't read any of the longer words anyway, so who cares if your user experience is sub-normal? So are you.

 

[Fushigi]

Greatly to my surprise, it didn't break on any of Tannin's sites, which I didn't expect. MS browsers always break and the early beta IE8 version I had a very quick play with did break, easily.

IE8 was designed to actually adhere to web standards, at least mostly. It should do a far better job at rendering accurately v. prior versions.

By the way, I can't actually tell you what Safari does on our sites. The way I see it, anyone daft enough to run Apple software of their own free will has problems enough already; I doubt that they would notice their browser breaking if it flashed red and sent up smoke signals.

Fair enough but you should test at least one WebKit browser against your site. It's popularity as an engine is on the rise. The smartphone I'm looking to buy shortly, for instance, has it wedded to the OS. Chrome uses WebKit. So maybe run that. It's actually a very lightweight browser; you might like it. If you're concerned about security issues, run it in a VM.

In the meantime, Tannin has officially announced that he will no longer support IE 6 on any of his sites. If you are too stupid to upgrade to a decent browser after all these years, then you probably couldn't read any of the longer words anyway, so who cares if your user experience is sub-normal? So are you.

The problem with this is that many people who use their PCs for work cannot upgrade from IE6 due to application compatibility reasons. There are still plenty of apps in production that simply break on IE7 or newer and the PCs are forbidden from installing alternative browsers. Sure, this is an app design issue that should never have occurred, but it has and there's not much to be done about it until the apps can be upgraded or replaced.

Now, for your site dropping IE6-compatibility may be OK. Your target audience might not be affected by the IE6 limitation. But my employer (who does have several hundred if not a thousand + people in Oz, BTW) has thus far been unable to move to IE7. In a couple of weeks, one of our enterprise applications will finally be upgraded to make it IE7-compatible, but I'm fairly sure other apps remain that prohibit us from allowing IE7 to be deployed.

As to IE8, now that it is no longer beta, we will have to run app tests & get vendor support statements before we can allow our desktops to download it. We may well wind up skipping IE7 for 8.

 

[CougTek]

As for Google Chrome, why would anyone want to bother? I haven't tried it, but what would be the point? It apparently has security problems of the same order of magnitude as Safari's...

During the last hacker congress (which I forgot the name), several among them pointed out that Chrome was by far the hardest to hack due to its design. It installs in the user's profile, not in program files, so it isn't granted a high-enough priority level to compromise the system. That doesn't mean it's bullet proof, but no matter the security issue it has/will have, the amount of damage that can be done through it is more limited than any other browser. From a security point of view, it is the most efficiently designed. You can skip Chrome for many reasons, but security is the least of them.

 

[Mercutio]

Chrome will also have a useful plug-in architecture in version 2, something that Opera and Safari sadly lack.

IE8 has content blocking support and seems decent for page rendering, but the only reason I have to use Opera is if I need three simultaneous shopping carts on Newegg. Which, sadly, does happen from time to time. And the goddamned thing still goes down more often than any other modern web browser.

The interesting thing about IE8 is that it's marked as a Critical Update, which means a whole bunch of people are going to get it installed automatically. Frankly I don't blame Microsoft for that. The sooner IE6 vanishes from the face of the earth the better the world will be.

I'm shocked by the number of home users who have figured out how to avoid installing IE updates for so long. Maybe one in 10 home PCs with XP I look at will have IE7 on it.

 

[Tea]

IE8 was designed to actually adhere to web standards, at least mostly. It should do a far better job at rendering accurately v. prior versions.

But that's what they said about IE7. And what they said about IE6. And they probably said it about IE 5 too, but I'm not sure that I was born when IE 5 came out. I only sort-of believed them. And the beta I tried was dreadful. So it was as pleasat surprise to see IE8 more-or-less work properly.

Fair enough but you should test at least one WebKit browser against your site.

You are probably right. But I don't do the virtual machine thing. It's just too much mucking about for too little gain - there is essentially nothing else in the way of software that I want to run that requires a VM, so it's pointless. (Obviously not so for many people, pointless for me unless/until some killer app comes along that it makes sense to run in a VM.)

Coug, I hear you, but I also remember reading some horrible security stuff about Chrome when it first came out - on the Reg, maybe. But, in reality, I'd only be using it on sites I coded myself for testing, and I'll even run IE on them, so ... er .. you are right .... what security issue?

The problem with this is that many people who use their PCs for work cannot upgrade from IE6 due to application compatibility reasons. There are still plenty of apps in production that simply break on IE7 or newer and the PCs are forbidden from installing alternative browsers. Sure, this is an app design issue that should never have occurred, but it has and there's not much to be done about it until the apps can be upgraded or replaced.

As you would guess, I'm aware of that. And also aware that there is absolutely nothing except brain-dead IT managers stopping those very same sites from using any of the modern, safe browsers instead of IE, and retaining IE only for those god-forsaken apps that need IE 6 .... but now I'm wishing for the moon.

But in any case, IE6 is down to less than 10% in my usage logs now, and still dropping steadily, and the time required to re-code for it is substantial. Right now, all of Tannin's sites are usable in IE6 and most (not all) pages render correctly. But as of now, any new code we do won't be tested for, and may or may not work in IE6.

I've had a gutfull of wasting days of my life because of their crap browser. Dummy spit time. I'm just not doing it anymore.

(Except, maybe, for one particular site, but that one is done now and won't need any major layout changes for some years, by which time it will be a non-issue. Took me bloody ages to get IE 6 working on it. Everything else, even IE 7, worked pretty much as designed pretty much right away.)

 

[Tea]

I have to use Opera ..... And the goddamned thing still goes down more often than any other modern web browser.

What the hell are you doing to Opera? Unbelievable! Opera is the only browser I have that never goes down. Seriously, I mean never. Last time Opera crashed out on me was ... er ... probably on my previous Thinkpad, and I've had this one for more than a year now, and run Opera essentially 24.7.

Right now I have .. er ... 18 + 16 + 1 + 9 + 1 + 25 + 4 + 4 + 6 + 3 + 4 + 22 = 113 tabs open in 12 windows. That's about average.

(Plus 5 + 8 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 4 = 23 Seamonkey tabs in 7 windows, which is a bit more than average, and 6 + 3 = 9 Firefox tabs in two windows, which is about as much Firefox as I ever use - often I have none at all because the interface sucks a bit. Unfortunately, Tannin won't let me use Opera for posting here, so I make do with Firefox.)

 

[Tea]

Chrome will also have a useful plug-in architecture in version 2, something that Opera and Safari sadly lack.

That maybe so, but then I wouldn't know because there is only one thing I want or use that Opera doesn't already have as standard (detailed EXIF viewer), and (of course) I have an Opera plug-in for that. With Firefox, you need plug-ins to make the damn thing usable, which is a dumb way to design a browser. I can't be bothered mucking about with all that add-on junk, I just like stuff that works without needing me to hand roll it.

The sooner IE6 vanishes from the face of the earth the better the world will be.

And ain't dat da truff, Brother!

 

[udaman]

That maybe so, but then I wouldn't know because there is only one thing I want or use that Opera doesn't already have as standard (detailed EXIF viewer), and (of course) I have an Opera plug-in for that. With Firefox, you need plug-ins to make the damn thing usable, which is a dumb way to design a browser. I can't be bothered mucking about with all that add-on junk, I just like stuff that works without needing me to hand roll it.

Agree, but if they do *everything* to start, then you end up with massive bloatware. Been using Safari 4.0 beta on my OS X 10.5.6 partition, it does run a bit faster with my pokey dialup...however, all that iCandy stuff (and my old laptop doesn't even have a GPU that allows some of the iCandy to work under more current OSX's) gobbles up some serious RAM, and I'm limited by max 1GB RAM.

What Op PI does exif? link please.

TIA

Btw, you're currently running a total of how many tabs? On a desktop or laptop...that laptop must have 4GB RAM or all those tabs would slow down the system, requiring reboots to free up memory usage problems.

 

[udaman]

Chrome will also have a useful plug-in architecture in version 2, something that Opera and Safari sadly lack.

IE8 has content blocking support and seems decent for page rendering, but the only reason I have to use Opera is if I need three simultaneous shopping carts on Newegg. Which, sadly, does happen from time to time. And the goddamned thing still goes down more often than any other modern web browser.

Lots of browsers have add blocking, but the ad spammers have found their ways around that on many. Current version of Camino, they keep updating it ever 3mo or so, with supposed improved ad blocking, but those pesky ads keep popping up.

How do you know what "will" show up in something that hasn't been released yet? How do you know what will or will not be available on either Opera or Sarfari 4.0 beta when that's done and ready for the more secure OS X 10.6 due to be released later this summer?

Got a Mac...Merc?

If you don't mind an unstable beta which you might have to reboot a lot on...try a Chrome alternative (FWIR, Chrome for OS X will only be released for Intel Mac's ) called 'Stainless'

http://www.applelinks.com/index.php/more/checking_out_the_stainless_01_multi_purpose_web_browser/

Stainless now has features you won't find in Chrome or in any other browser.

A prime example is parallel sessions, which allow you to log into a site using different credentials in separate tabs at the same time. This new technology is woven throughout Stainless, from the private cookie [COLOR=blue ! important][COLOR=blue ! important]storage [COLOR=blue ! important]system[/COLOR][/COLOR], to session-aware bookmarks that remember the session in which they were saved. We're excited to showcase what we believe is a true browser innovation.[/COLOR]

 

[Tea]

Hi Uda,

Opera (does everything right out of the box): 4.8k
Firefox (needs a zillion plugins to be tolerable): 7.2k

I think we can see which one has the bloat!

I'm just running a dual core Thinkpad with 2.4GHz and 3MB RAM. Also running at present is Quattro Pro, an FTP program, EditPlus, 4 PMView image viewer windows, Photoshop CS3, a utility I use to watermark photographs (easier than doing it in Photoslug), a big PDF file in Foxit Pro, and of particular interest to you, the EXIF viewer PhotoMe, running stand-alone at present but configurable to work with Opera. Freeware from http://www.photome.de/

The Thinkpad runs just fine 24/7 with this sort of workload (sometimes more), but it's a lean, mean configuration with practically nothing in the startup. That helps.

 

[udaman]

During the last hacker congress (which I forgot the name), several among them pointed out that Chrome was by far the hardest to hack due to its design.... From a security point of view, it is the most efficiently designed. You can skip Chrome for many reasons, but security is the least of them.

Pwn2own is what I think you're referring to.

If you're interested in security, the more vunerable in theory Mac/Safari is recommended by the guy who won the competition.

For those who missed it, we discussed this to a degree on jtr's help thread:

Regedit, cmd not working in XP
http://www.storageforum.net/forum/showthread.php?t=7528


Can do a Google search on "Chrome vulnerabilities" to find latest hacks on that browser.

Security researcher Charlie Miller would recommend Macs over Windows PCs because there are fewer malware threats. However, that doesn't mean Mac OS X couldn't be made more secure.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2...ays-macs-are-more-safe-though-less-secure.ars

Full article ^^^ linked from above:

Behind Pwn2Own: Exclusive Interview With Charlie Miller


http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pwn2own-mac-hack,2254.html

[*QUOTE]

• 3 – An Intro To Sandboxing
• 4 – The NX Bit And ASLR

[*/QUOTE]








^^^Ah crap, my text window (must be the browser's fault ) is not letting me put quotes correctly/delete

 

[Mercutio]

Tannin, it takes me all of maybe 90 seconds including the download time to install all the Firefox extensions that I need. If I really cared I'd just package them all up in a .MSI file or use the Firefox Extension Backup addon to make a single-source install, but even that's not a big deal, because the Add-on Project IDs are static and I can just stick links to the ones I want on a web page someplace.

The extensions I need are the extensions *I* need, not the one-size-fits-all crap that Opera does. You don't want FoxMarks or Greasemonkey or Adblock, you don't have to install them.

And yes, Opera crashes. Opera crashed on me last time I used it, which was a couple days ago. Literally the only things I might do with it are visit commerce sites where I need more than one shopping cart, and a couple days ago it crashed with one tab open, on Newegg.com. This has been my consistent experience with all versions of Opera.

Dealing with urlfilter.ini is incredibly crufty, too. I'm glad Opera has SOMETHING to do content blocking, but locating a block list, finding the file, closing Opera and then manually updating it is a royal PITA.

 

[timwhit]

Opera also has the worst options when it comes to tab behavior.

Why is it that hard to open a new background tab when I enter a new URL in the address bar and hit enter? Granted I need an add-on to do this in Firefox, but at least that add-on exists (Tab Mix Plus).

 

[timwhit]

I just played with this in Opera to make sure I wasn't spouting crap. To open a new tab, it appears that I either have click a button with my mouse or hit CTRL-T, not the easiest combination to hit.

 

[Tea]

F***ING Firefox just ate my post!!!!!

 

[LunarMist]

Firefox is far too complicated for me. It seems to need updates frequently and everything important is done by the extenders. I don't understand how typical users would want to keep up with the hassle.

 

[Mercutio]

You install an extension. Every time you start Firefox, it checks the extensions you have installed for updates. It's really painless.

IE updates with Windows Updates, which happen less often and are less visible, but the flip side of that is that the Firefox people are very, very on top of their updates.

This is not a bad thing in a web browser.

 

[timwhit]

My dad is barely able to use a computer and he has little trouble using Firefox.

 

[P5-133XL]

I've been running it for a while, and generally I like it. However, It really does not like the quick reply boxes for forums. When the box gets full and there is a need to scroll it starts acting peculiar. However in compatability mode those boxes work fine but if you have a message in that box and ie8 is starting to go funky, pressing the compatability button looses the content that is already there so I have to redo it and I don't like that (it never comes out the way I originally wrote it).

 

[ddrueding]

...pressing the compatibility button looses the content that is already there so I have to redo it and I don't like that (it never comes out the way I originally wrote it).

Copying to the clipboard first doesn't work for you? FWIW I have never had this issue (I use the quick reply unless quoting someone).

 

[Handruin]

I personally like that firefox downloads update/fixes/etc automatically and then tells me very simply that they are ready to be installed whenever I'm ready. The only time it gets applied is whenever I close or restart. Rather than me having to go download a new file, install, reboot, etc, firefox is pretty hands-off with managing updates. I'm curious why it would be considered too complicated. I haven't spent any time with Opera, so I can't comment.

A few things I would like to see improved with firefox is idle CPU usage, tab change responsiveness, and memory usage. I find that when a web page is open doing little to nothing, firefox CPU is jumping all around. I also have a tendency to be impatient when loading pages so I'll open new tabs while the first page is trying to load. There must be some blocking UI calls/threads (or lack there of) because firefox as a whole pauses while trying to open new tabs when prior pages are in the process of rendering. I find this frustrating, but it could just be my lack of attention span while waiting for a page. Last, firefox seems to use the most memory of anything I'm doing on my computer on a normal day. Like right now it's easily consuming 5x as much memory as the second closest processes running. I have all of two browsers open with three total tabs...nothing elaborate. My only firefox ad on is ad block plus. Why is it consuming 165MB of memory? If I open IE 7 with the same configuration as firefox, it consumes 42MB...

 

[timwhit]

I think a lot of the problem with Firefox is that the UI is single threaded. Hopefully this will be fixed in a future release.

Chrome sets the benchmark for this. Too bad it doesn't support add-ons yet. For a browser straight out the box Chrome is really nice.

 

[P5-133XL]

Copying to the clipboard first doesn't work for you? FWIW I have never had this issue (I use the quick reply unless quoting someone).

Copying it to the clipboard works fine, but I shouldn't have to do that. Rather that problem is me remembering to do that before pressing the compatability button. The ie8 problem definately occurs in the quick reply box (here and elsewhere) shortly after the scroll bars appear.

 

[ddrueding]

Installing IE8 via Windows Update caused me to have to re-activate my windows install on reboot. Weird.

 

[Mercutio]

Lesson learned: Only use versions of Windows that don't have activation.

 

[ddrueding]

The last VLK that I had ended up on the "Not Genuine" list.

 

[P5-133XL]

Installing IE8 via Windows Update caused me to have to re-activate my windows install on reboot. Weird.

Mine didn't but I DL'ed ie8 rather than using the update. That is unacceptable to some (those clients that are paranoid about the technical max activation limit of twice) that I've run into before.

 

[Mercutio]

Actually it's borderline terrifying. At least one of my customers can't believe anything that's not a retail copy of windows or the OEM preload on a Dell or Lenovo is a valid copy of Windows. I can give him CoAs all day long but I get bitchy calls about the completely normal WGA updates every time someone in his office sees one.

 

[ddrueding]

That is why I get the OEM copies and put the little stickers on the chassis. And why I tend to re-use chassis

 

[Stereodude]

Lesson learned: Only use versions of Windows that don't have activation.

Nah, it should be don't install IE8.

 

[ddrueding]

Nah, it should be don't install IE8.

But it's a critical update! The world will end unless everyone has it, like, now! How else can we count on Microsoft to guarantee our safety?

 

[Stereodude]

But it's a critical update! The world will end unless everyone has it, like, now! How else can we count on Microsoft to guarantee our safety?

I'm trusting Obama to take care of me, not MS.

 

[Mercutio]

He'll do a damned sight better than that other group of fundie retards.

 

[ddrueding]

I had this vision of Obama going around my office, machine to machine, installing IE8...

 

[Stereodude]

He'll do a damned sight better than that other group of fundie retards.

We'll check back with you in a few years and see if you still have that opinion.

 

[mubs]

I read somewhere that IE8 broke things and it's better to stay away from it for now. Is everybody else saying the opposite here?

 

[P5-133XL]

I read somewhere that IE8 broke things and it's better to stay away from it for now. Is everybody else saying the opposite here?

No -- It broke things.

 

[timwhit]

It all depends on what you mean by "broke." IE8 is the most standards compliant version of IE yet.

However, existing websites that were coded to work in IE6/7 might not display correctly in IE8. All the sites I work on work perfectly in IE8. This is because I code to the standard and then target fixes for IE6/7.

The faster people adopt IE8 the faster websites that don't work right in it will get fixed. It's one of those chicken vs egg things.

If you mean it breaks anything in Windows, I haven't had a problem.

 

[Stereodude]

IE8 is the most standards compliant version of IE yet.

But that's not really saying much.