Oh my. For the first time in I don’t know how long, I tried to use Internet Explorer 8 (32 bit) on my Windows 7 machine. What a travesty. I see why IE is losing market share: it bloody well does not work. It acts like it WANTS to work, it just does not render a damned thing. What in the world was Microsoft thinking when they released this steaming pile of poo? It makes IE 6 look like gold. At least IE 6 RENDERS THE BLOODY PAGE when you want it to. More than can be said for IE 8. Microsoft says they stopped looking for the rendering problem because no one complained. I cannot believe that.
The sad thing is that, when it works, IE 8 is a pretty good browser. It certainly renders-when it renders, that is-pages much nicer than previous versions and it is fairly quick too. And IE 8-64 bit works very well and renders ALL OF THE TIME. Problem with is that there are few plug ins that work with it. Which reminds me…ADOBE, instead of spending time making Flash work on underpowered smart phones, how about a 64 bit plug in for IE? Is that too damned much to ask?
I hate to rant on about browsers again, especially this one, but holy hell! Can someone, PLEASE, make a freaking browser that just works and does what it is supposed to do?
in case you missed my previous rants, I will boil down the current – and, may I add LOUSY – state of the browser:
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Internet Explorer 7 – it works, but Microsoft saw fit to replace it with IE 8 which…
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Internet Explorer 8 – 32 bit … does not work.
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Internet Explorer 8 – 64 bit – works great, but no plug ins, especially FLASH
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Mozilla Firefox 2.x – memory leak, like a dam with a big hole in the middle
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Mozilla Firefox 3.x – another hog, slow, like the proverbial pig with lipstick
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Apple Safari 4.x for Windows – worked well until Apple messed with it, now…it freezes, eats up system resources like a starving man in a McDonalds. Safari is, currently, my default browser. Go figure.
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Chrome, any version – where to start…memory issues, does not render pages correctly, BUTT UGLY, usability nightmare, etc.
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Opera, any version – the browser is OK, renders some pages correctly…I won’t use it because of the whining they love to do
Wow. Oddly enough, the only browser that works like I expect it to (and that is because I don’t expect much from it) is the browser on my Pre. It has yet to freeze on me, it renders pages better than I would expect, and it starts up in the same amount of time that any other Pre app does…not fast, but I won’t grow a beard waiting either.
Lest I forget, the browser in the Kindle is a joke and deserves it’s ‘experimental’ moniker. BUT, the Kindle is NOT a web browsing device anyway. It will suffice if it is the only access I have at the moment and need to check something on the web. It, too, has yet to fail me (well, other than the occasional device lock up when it tries to load a busy page. ) OK, so it has failed me. Hey, at least it TRIES to render the page, unlike IE 8.
Man, there’s just no pleasing me, huh?
UPDATE: OCT 19, 2009:
I, at the suggestion of a commenter (thanks) I tweeted the new @MicrosoftHelps and, finally, got a response. While not really helpful, they did respond so I have to give them props for that. The response was:
@geogray Have you tried the following search for more detail? http://bit.ly/2ulVf0 ^AA
And, no, the search did not yield any helpful information. I suppose Microsoft is just burying its head in the sand here.
ye old Half Byte blog 
I have had no issues with IE8 32 (the mode that runs by default) or 64bit. Maybe I don’t explore the web enough? but quite frankly I have to run them all for work (because of java not by choice) and IE seems adequate and I stick with it because its cleaner.
I would prefer IE 8, but the unresponsive tabs absolutely drive me insane. I went Safari because of them. Sad thing is that Microsoft was, initially, investigating the issue and then stopped. They claimed no one was sending feedback-from Win 7-anymore so they stopped. What they failed to mention was that they had removed the very convenient ‘send feedback’ link that used to inhabit all of the windows in Windows 7 after the RC came out. Well, you take the mechanism away and, of course, no one will send that feed back. I’m not alone with this problem. I see it written about quite often and I know several people who also have the problem. They all run Vista/Windows 7 64 bit, so I am guessing it is a problem only in that kind of environment. Still, they need to fix it.
ya i love internet explorer too but it cant just work , always freezing , i just cant do a thing with it but it s still my default , i hope microsoft will do something soon
Ceon…yeah, that is my problem…it is unresponsive more than it works. I would really like to switch back, but can’t until they fix it.JK…I’m really surprised you haven’t seen the problem, but I know at least one person where I work that uses it on Vista Home Premuim (32 bit) who has never had a problem either. I still think it is a problem with the 32 bit version under the 64 bit OS. No, I have not tried the twitter approach. I just saw that yesterday, so maybe I will give it a try. At the very least, it could be entertaining to see their answer.
JK…tried the Microsoft Helps twitter and got absolutely ZERO responses.
Well, I may have put the blame on Microsoft and IE 8 when it did not deserve it. Since upgrading the the released Windows 7, IE 8 has been working just fine on the three computers that I upgraded so far. Still, it is has issues on the one Vista Ultimate machine-and I’m not going to upgrade that one. Looks like it’s Firefox and Safari on that one, but, that’s OK as it is my Media Center PC anyway.
Oh, I’m going to update the article.