Internet Explorer V8 - due March - impacts

[Kym]

Internet Explorer V8 (IE8) is due for release in March (the beta version has been out for a long time).

Some things to watch out for...

First, AP has not done any testing with IE8 - but we don't expect any problems either as we don't use Microsoft specific code.

Secondly, IE8 is the first version of IE that will *nearly* fully support the W3C standards.
While this is a very good thing it does mean that sites that relied on Microsoft non standard features will break.
Microsoft's own www.microsoft.com breaks under IE8 - so expect Microsoft to be fixing their own sites.
Some banking and financial sites wont work with IE8, in fact any site that only works with IE6 or IE7 is very likely to break under IE8.

Unless you are a technically competent user that fully understands the implications of the IE8 upgrade we recommend that you wait at least six months before upgrading to IE8. In the mean time you should stick with IE7 and make sure all relevant Microsoft patches are applied or even better still use an alternate like Firefox.
See: http://www.ausphotography.net.au/for...ad.php?t=20451


Refer:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2067&tag=nl.e539

[Colinz]

Thanks for that Kym, useful info!

[Jcas]

I was reading a review on it and it said while it has improved, it is still lagging a fair way behind the others ie Firefox and Opera.

[Tannin]

Unless you are a technically competent user that fully understands the implications of the IE8 upgrade we recommend that you wait at least six months before upgrading to IE8. In the mean time you should stick with IE7

Um .... as a matter of defeniition, there is no such thing as a technically competent user still running Internet Explorer.

(Obviously, I'm excluding user-has-no-choice situatons like some corporate intranets, in which case the technical incompetence lies in the upper echelons of the IT department, and has nothing to do with the user.)

But leaving matters of defenition aside, IE 8 does raise interesting issues with regard to web design and coding. Maybe this is my imagination, but I get the sense that there is a marked reluctance on the part of the web design community to rewrite code to suit IE8. (I'm talking real designers/coders here, not the jumped-up Frontpage users that do IE-only sites and wouldn't know a web standard if it bit them on the joy button.)

Last time I looked, IE8 was breaking on quite a lot of 100% standards compliant sites. Either Microsoft have fixed a lot of stuff since then, or else IE 8 is going to have quite a struggle gaining mind share and market share. Or maybe the web coding fraternity will do a bit of patching at the last minute after all. wait and see, I guess.

[wanelad]

Hmmm yes i made comment sometime back that this IE8 was a bit sus, unfortunately i have had it on my system for some time now. Normally i do not update for a year or two not sure why I changed for this update anyway stuck with it now.

Yes Westpac broking is a bit of a challenge to open some of the links, Google searches do not give the full page of results and so on and so on but just have to work with it now until they remedy, of course could switch to another browser, I have Firefox on my other computer

[Kym]

Um .... as a matter of definition, there is no such thing as a technically competent user still running Internet Explorer. <snip>

My friend Tony! You are to the point as usual. I was trying to be polite and as you said - some are stuck with a silly SOE they cannot change.
Also, some do not feel comfortable moving away from their commercially supplied product, so its just a warning that this upgrade maybe very unpleasant.

[Seesee]

Thanks for that tip Kym, wouldn't of known about any of that unless you informed us

[Harves]

I think I'll be staying with Firefox, it works OK for me.

[pgbphotographytas]

I can see no reason to not use Firefox or something other then IE unless you have no choice in the matter.

Paul

[Kym]

I can see no reason to not use Firefox or something other then IE unless you have no choice in the matter.
Paul

Only a bit less than 1/2 of AP members of us do! (Our site stats - Feb 09)

[oldfart]

Um .... as a matter of defeniition, there is no such thing as a technically competent user still running Internet Explorer.

Interestingly, I've been using IE8 on a home workstation by choice since first Beta, I'm posting this reply from IE7, and use Google Chrome on my workstation at work. I no longer use Safari or Firefox, neither did it for me. (I've never experienced any issue with IE8 and Ausphoto as an aside.)

Lucky for me I've got all these pieces of paper lieing around the place to convinve my clients that I might still know what I'm doing.

So just for interest sake, how many Ausphotography users are MCITP's or have CCNA / CCIE ?

[pgbphotographytas]

Only a bit less than 1/2 of AP members of us do! (Our site stats - Feb 09)

Interesting stat's there, I think in the next year or so that will change quite a bit.

Paul

[pgbphotographytas]

So just for interest sake, how many Ausphotography users are MCITP's or have CCNA / CCIE ?

I never sat the final CCNA exam (as work would not pay for it) but I did the whole CCNA course and got very good marks across the 4 semesters, that was back in 2000/2001

Some of what I learnt has helped me in my job but as I don't get to do much on the comms side of things alot of it I have never used.

Paul

[Roof]

I'm going to stick with Opera..................

[farmer_rob]

Interesting stats - there are still people using Netscape? (Or is it some form of browser faking?)

[Tannin]

Very, very rare these days, Rob, but once a year or so we see a computer come in that's using Netscape - pretty much always one of the Netscape-branded rebadges of Mozilla (which is now known as Seamonkey) though, essentially Mozilla + ads + bugs. I can't remember seeing an actual Netscape 4.x in use for quite a few years now.

My guess is that would mostly be some kind of web crawler robot identifying itself incorrectly - many of them do.

[Kym]

Interesting stat's there, I think in the next year or so that will change quite a bit.
Paul

Feb 2008 - IE 64.3% and Firefox 30.1%. So the trend is away from IE (Safari and Opera up a little as well).