IE 8?

[skyfire]

A few months ago, one of my brothers ended up spending the night here; he was in the process of moving in order to start a new job, and had to return back in order to finish closing out his old house.

He needs to have internet access for his new job, and so I left the desktop I use running; this way, if he needed to get online for any reason he could have the system.

While he was here, he apparently noted that I was still running IE 7 as a secondary browser (some sites I go to, like my paid survey sites, work best in Explorer). I'd heard some bad things about IE 8, and so I decided to hold off on downloading it until I could check it all out.

As such, he went and upgraded the system here to IE 8. Not once did he tell me what he was doing; I didn't find out about it until I tried to get online the morning after he left.

Since then, things have been sucking badly. IE 8 refuses to load, meaning that I often waste 10+ minutes trying to fire it up each morning. And when it does fire up, there's a 50% chance it'll simply freeze or otherwise fail to load, forcing me to start all over.

The only thing I can figure is that as my computer is an older system (ca. 2006), it simply can't handle something inherent with IE 8; for example, the system may not have quite enough memory in it to handle everything.

Has anyone else here had trouble with IE 8? If so, what did you do to deal with it?

Thanks.

[Maryland Bear]

I've not had quite the same experience, but a previous job required I used IE 6 to submit time sheets to the customer, and my laptop had IE 7 (8 wasn't out yet.)

There's a tool out there called Multiple Internet Explodrer that will allow to you to have multiple versions of IE on your system. You could download that, and just use it to start up IE 7 whenever you need a browser.

You can find it here: tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE Note that its no longer maintained.

Or, there's the best solution to problems with Internet Explorer: Googe Chrome. Or Firefox. Or Opera. Or Safari...

[Oriet]

From the sounds of it he's already using a different browser for most things, but there are some sites scripted for IE that don't want to run in other browsers.

Sky, if you're using Firefox as your main browser may I suggest you get the Firefox add-on IE Tab? It runs a site using IE so sites scripted to need it run just fine, but you still have the security and features of Firefox with it as well. You can also tell Firefox to always open certain sites in IE Tabs too, which makes it really handy.

[skyfire]

Aug 24, 2009 12:23:08 GMT -5 Oriet said:

From the sounds of it he's already using a different browser for most things, but there are some sites scripted for IE that don't want to run in other browsers.

Sky, if you're using Firefox as your main browser may I suggest you get the Firefox add-on IE Tab? It runs a site using IE so sites scripted to need it run just fine, but you still have the security and features of Firefox with it as well. You can also tell Firefox to always open certain sites in IE Tabs too, which makes it really handy.

The paid survey websites I'm affiliated with tend to have their surveys encoded to where they work best with IE; my guess is that they're doing it because IE is a far more common browser than Firefox or anything else.

In fact, for one group I'm with, surveys that follow a certain format will not work through any browser other than IE. And since they pay a good chunk of change, I can't simply bow out.

Additionally, when I go to look at webcomics & such I use IE since it's easier for me to save pictures.


For everything else, I do Firefox.

[Oriet]

That's why I recommended IE Tab. Back when I played Ragnarök Online the page for paying the membership fee was scripted to run only in IE and didn't work in Firefox, but it worked perfectly fine when I used IE Tab with it and it ran smoothly. If you're having a lot of problems running IE and don't wish/can't use Maryland Bear's suggestion, you should at least try IE Tab to see if it works with more stability.

The only complaint I have about IE Tab is that it doesn't work with Linux, but that's because it simply hijacks IE and runs it in a Firefox tab, and Linux doesn't have IE to hijack.

[Lazuline]

You should be able to just uninstall IE8 through Add/Remove Programs.
Depending on why these sites require IE, though, it may well be that you don't really need it. Spoofing the user-agent string might be all it takes.

[alwimo]

This tells you how to uninstall IE8 and have your previous IE, with all your settings, restored:
support.microsoft.com/kb/957700

[catanon]

I absolutely loathe IE. Microsoft has been making some really horrible stuff recently.

I absolutely LOVE FireFox, though, but my father's a pussy and is constantly being bitchy at it. He keeps going "I hate this 'modzilla' crap! RWAR!!!" Of course, he only does this when he forgets how horrible IE was.

He's still too much of a pussy to actually do something other than complain and actually go back to IE, so he's just being a big baby.

[alwimo]

Aug 24, 2009 18:08:40 GMT -5 @catanon said:

I absolutely loathe IE. Microsoft has been making some really horrible stuff recently.

I absolutely LOVE FireFox, though, but my father's a pussy and is constantly being bitchy at it. He keeps going "I hate this 'modzilla' crap! RWAR!!!" Of course, he only does this when he forgets how horrible IE was.

He's still too much of a pussy to actually do something other than complain and actually go back to IE, so he's just being a big baby.

Try Opera.
www.opera.com/browser/next/

[m52nickerson]

I recently updated to IE 8. Like Sky I use it as a backup. I need it to access work related sites at home. (Tried the FireFox IE tab, does not work.) I have had no problems with 8. The work sites state that 8 is not supported yet, but in compatibility mode they work fine.

I still use FireFox 95% of the time.

[Dan]

M$ won't let me upgrade IE from v6 because I use Windows2000. Fortunately, other browsers are less retarded. Except Google Chrome, of course.

[alwimo]

Awwww yeahz, Opera has reached release candidate stage and is on schedule for the final version to be released on the 1st of September. It's downloadable from here: www.opera.com/browser/next/

www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2351997,00.asp