Microsoft’s latest iteration of the World’s most popular web browser only went live out of Beta phase last Thursday but it’s already attracting masses of complaints from disgruntled users.
Internet Explorer has been around for a long time now, and whilst we’re not surprised that there are still issues to be resolved - after all it has only just come out of Beta- but,
it has actually come out of Beta, meaning that it should be ready to rock and roll rather than be riddled by simple problems.
Judging from the list of complaints on Microsoft’s feedback pages users seem to feel that IE8 wasn’t ready for mass distribution and some of the most frequently reported problems seem to sound very straight forward, for example, the inability to print from websites, web search (mal)function and extended boot-up times have all been reported, as has up to 4GB extra hard drive space being used up after the browser’s installation.
This news doesn’t come at a good time for the Redmond based company with revelation that the IE8 is already losing ground in the popularity stakes to its arch rivals Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome both of which have seen increased usage among computer enthusiasts since January.
W3CSchools conducted the research on "web enthusiasts" and concede however that most people do, and will continue to use Internet Explorer simply because it is what comes pre-installed on virtually every PC but the figures indicate that those who are interested tend to shy away from Internet Explorer.
Last Thursday’s release of IE8 saw Microsoft’s share price sustain a modest increase, whether or not this will be affected by the current complaints and the company’s response to them is yet to be seen, however, it is undeniably even if not unpredictably a thorn in its side once again.
Last week Safari, Firefox and IE8 all failed to resist hack attempts at Pwn2Own with Safari performing the worst out of the bunch. Interestingly the only browser that wasn’t cracked over the course of a few hours (Safari gave up in minutes!) was Google Chrome, although vulnerablities were found to be present.
If you’d like to download IE8 and check it out for yourself then what are you waiting for!
2 thoughts on “IE 8: Losing ground and attracting complaints”
Well I downloaded IE8 yesterday and found that certain website’s I could not access at all, but eh worst experience I had from it was in the morning when I wnet to do some work on my Cubecart, every time I hit the compatibility button on the browser it logged me out of my admin, it was that bad I had to uninstall IE8 and go back to IE7.
I’ve put posts on the Cubecart forum about this issue, and most peeps are recommending Firefox. I myself have always used the IE and up until the release of the IE8 have never really had any problems to be honest. What put me off Firefox so much is the fact that about 80% of peoples PC’s I’ve fixed for people had Firefox on them, and put Firefox down to more than likely the biggest problems with the crap that peeps get on there PC’s. But in all honesty these days peeps ask for half of the viruses they get with some of the sites they are using, so I cannot put the blame simply on Firefox.
I myself have never even tried Firefox and have never had any reason to do so. when looking at comparisons on them on the net, I can honestly say that they are perhaps as bad and as good as each other on that score, there’s nothing really solid to support anyone of them to be better than the other.
But must admit that the new IE8 as deeply disappointed me and as set my mind thinking into downloading Firefox even if just to give it a whirl.
Thanks for your thoughts, personally, I tend to favour Firefox, it’s not really loyalty on my part – it just seems to work well for me and I like the customisable nature of all the add-ons that are available.
I’ve also tried a lot of the other big ones out there such as Safari, Opera and Flock but always seem to find myself coming back to Firefox, perhaps it’s just routine or perhaps it is the “best” browser for me.
Either way, IE8 in its current form isn’t enough to sway me away from Mozilla just yet.