Over the years, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Browsers have been besieged with problems. Internet Explorer 8 is no exception. When it was released in March of 2009, it did not take long before users noticed glitches, bugs, and errors.
People who had tried the Beta versions had reported many of these same issues, and one would have hoped that Microsoft would have fixed them, but apparently not.
At first glance, Internet Explorer 8 did not look much different from Internet Explorer 7. It does come with some features that make it attractive to use. At least it would if the browser itself would stay up.
Features like Web Slices, which are designed to work like RSS feeds. You go to a site that is Web Slices enabled, like Facebook, or eBay, and click on Web Slices to add it to your Favorites Bar.
Accelerators enable you to do everyday things like email, getting street directions and the like with just a few mouse clicks.
Privacy Mode allows you to browse without your private information being seen on the internet.
Search Suggestions. When you go to a search box, you get exactly what it sounds like. Suggestions appear for you to click on if you agree.
These are just a few of the new features for Internet Explorer 8. As stated, they are great ideas, and when the browser is functional, they work fine for the most part. The problem is getting the browser to stay up and running.
There is nothing worse than being in the middle of an email, or filling out a form, or being in an online class, and have your browser fail for no good reason. Yet this happens repeatedly with Internet Explorer 8.
One of the biggest problems with Microsoft’s browser is Microsoft. Like its previous browsers, Internet Explorer 8 was designed and tested on Microsoft servers, and equipment. It wasn’t designed to adhere to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards.
Microsoft has fairly cornered the PC market with its Windows Operating System. (Anyone remember IBM OS2?) So it would appear that it feels that as a corporation, the World Wide Web and the W3C should conform to Microsoft standards, not the other way around.
Many people have learned to give the new browser a try, (in this case Internet Explorer 8) but to keep another browser, either Firefox, Safari or even the new Google Chrome around. This way, when the inevitable crash of Internet Explorer 8 comes, (and it will) you can start another browser and keep going.
What is sad is that Microsoft never seems to learn how to build a better browser. The design teams can come up with these great new features, but when they are adding them on top of a flawed basic architecture, it is a case of putting lipstick on a pig.
What is the point of creating great new features when the browser they are attached to crashes five times an hour?
Certainly, there are some people who are able to use Internet Explorer 8 without any problems. However it is likely these are people using the browser in a lab environment, on a Microsoft server.
