News IE8 due "later this year"

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/07/25/ie8-due-later-this-year/1

Internet Explorer 8, with its strict standards compliance, is due to ship to end users by the end of the year according to Microsoft. A second beta is also scheduled for next month.

 

Something very special. I just don't find IE7 fast enough for a start. It never feels snappy to me compared to FF3. Then there's the case of me being used to FF3 now and my natural resistance to change. Still, if MS make something awesome enough to warrant a change, I'll happily do it. Could always use more awesome, good luck to them.

 

I might try this. Ie7 has been ok for me, I also use Firefox but it doesn't really grab me as being miles better.

 

gotta admit this is my main gripe with IE7 too. sluggish. also it's skin (i know it's probably changeable) is too distracting and clunky and chunky. IE8 might be better and i'm happy they're aiming for better interoperability.

BTW, does anyone know how to have a drop down "back" menu in FF3? i swear FF2 used to have it, but it went with FF3...

 

I think its the drop down forward menu thats gone, back is the little down arrow next to the forward button.

 

Yeah its attached to the forward button. but it is for going back.

 

totally agree... after a fresh install of my OS, i really could tell the speed difference between IE7 & FF3 (C2D@2.8GHz, 2GB-RAM)

 

I love FF3 and never use IE at all. Not even for testing websites. I have FF3 with 'IE tab' so you can view the page using the IE engine.

The plugins and speed do it for me.

The back menu is still there, like you said its right of the forward button, or right click on the back button and it will show the list.

Death to IE!!! Long live FF!

 

Grown-ups don't take Firefox seriously...

 

LOL Emma! Supported browsers are IE6 and FF1.5?!? How far behind the times are they??

Andy

 

i love IE for the same reason Drexial above... it runs fine at my Q6600-4GbRAM-powered Vista at home. same snappy as FF even for long usage (open 10+ tabs then leave it overnight). ANY features on ANY websites work. i cant say the same with FF. seamlessly. install Flash and Java perhaps, then POW! works like a charm. just make sure u dont install any stupid toolbar. ever.

but in the office on my Dell P4 machine, if i open a couple tabs on IE7 and leave it overnight, it'll eat half of my 1Gb memory EASY.


thats why i use FF3 or Opera in the office.

 

This is one of my gripes as a web developer. The starting point for any website should be the production of a standards compliant site. You then have to spend the same amount of time working through all the bits that IE7 ****s up, only to find that it has now destroyed any level of compliance you had, and broken the site in FF/Opera/Safari.

Thing is though, IE8 might end up compliant, but it is kind of irrelevant when you consider that most large corporations are still running IE6, and that is even worse to code for than IE7. So until all the corporates catch up, you still have to break your site right, left and centre.

Microsoft need to pull out some serious atonement to compensate for the utter **** they have produced up to now as far as browsing is concerned.

 

Yay, yet another version of IE to support. Joy of joys

 

I totally agree, FireFox is by far a batter browser than any version of Internet Explorer, the Mozilla team are just more dedicated and driven to make it better.

 

Its great to hear MS are going to comply to the standards, but I will more than likely continue to use Opera.

 

Indeed. I'm contracting at a large investment bank and we're stuck with IE6. Their problem is that there are a frigtening number of internal web apps that need to be retested with any change to the browser platform. Chances are they'll wait until they roll out a big desktop update - XP SP3 or Vista and Office 2007. No sign of any of that at the moment.

 

And you know this because you've met them all? Please...

 

Firefox has always been slow to start up compared to IE but the actual browsing is MUCH faster. Gmail loads in a fraction of the time on FF3 and even on regular sites, scrolling on FF seems smoother to me. But now using Upx Frontend I compress the firefox files and it is even faster (google it).

 

I don't know if anyone has said this yet, but right click. Right click on the back button brings up a nice menu.

 

I've found FF3 to be insanely fast with Javascript, whereas IE7 is slow in comparison - for example, intensive AJAX sites (GMail). Hopefully IE8 will resolve many of 7's issues, giving us Windows users a native browser to be proud of.