Hands on with Internet Explorer 8

Today Microsoft has released the "final" version of Internet Explorer 8, a web browser which feels like it's been available in beta since Internet Explorer 7 shipped in October 2006.

I've been using IE8 since its first beta versions and have upgraded to the final release on both Windows XP and Windows Vista computers. My verdict? It's a glitzy improvement over IE7 in many cases, but it has some major problems that make it virtually impossible to recommend.

Let's think positive and start with the good. IE8 doesn't much change the interface from IE7, so you won't have to learn much new about finding commands or tools you need. But IE8 also subtly upgrades those features. For example, it offers a very capable privacy mode (which stores none of the details of your browsing session as long as you have it activated), and relevant image thumbnails now pop up if you use the embedded search box (alas, these images don't work if you have Google as your default provider, though).

If you're a heavy tabs user, you'll probably also enjoy the automatic color-coding of tabs: When you open a new tab by following a link on a website, it's instantly given the same color as the parent tab, helping you keep things in order. A new "suggested sites" feature (exactly what it sounds like) is arguably handy, too, but only if you're really bored.

All in all, Microsoft has given IE8 a good set of additional features. Many are cosmetic, but progress is progress and they work well. So who can complain?

Well, there's plenty to gripe about as we turn to IE8's dark side.

First up: Contrary to some reviewers, I have found IE8 less stable than IE7, prone not just to crashes but also hang-ups where I can't even close windows, the entire application simply freezing as if in stasis. It's always hard to pinpoint the cause of such issues, but it's not because IE8 is bloated. On the contrary, IE8 uses less memory upon launch (18MB) than its main competitors, Firefox 3 (26MB) and Safari 3 (34MB).

Why then is IE8 so slow? No matter what Microsoft's internal benchmarks and PR department claim, pages simply -- and almost unilaterally -- load more slowly with the browser vs. the competition, and even vs. IE7. Average page load times in my tests, based on a sample of common websites were as follows:

> IE8 - 4.3 seconds
> IE7 - 3.4 seconds
> Firefox 3 - 3.1 seconds
> Safari 3 - 2.8 seconds

IE8 just "feels slow" no matter what you do with it, and the more pages you open, the more bogged down it gets.

Of course, a wasted second here or there is nothing to get too worked up about, but IE8 has a fatal flaw that makes all of its other problems pale in comparison. Microsoft has been notoriously ignorant of web standards for many years, but it's allegedly trying to correct that, starting with IE8. That means for the last decade or so, web designers have been building pages that look right with IE, often having to develop two sites (one for IE, one for everyone else) so that users see the correct design when they visit. Now, Microsoft has changed its engine so those old tricks no longer work, and the upshot is that thousands (millions?) of web sites no longer render correctly with IE8.

The solution: "Compatibility Mode," which lets IE8 pretend it's IE7, if you click a small button (which looks like a piece of paper torn in half) that's to the immediate right of the address bar. Better get used to clicking that button. You'll need it a lot.

The list of websites that don't work with IE8 is enormous (including eBay, Apple.com, Facebook, Google, and even Microsoft.com), so Microsoft issued a running table of sites that automatically fall back to Compatibility Mode when you visit them (you won't even see the Compatibility Mode icon when you hit one of these sites).

But if a site's not on the list (and there's no way to get them all on the list), get ready for headaches. The rendering issues may be as minimal as missing characters or ads appearing in the wrong space, or it may be as awful as the page being completely blank. I've seen just about everything, from major sites to minor ones. If you don't know better -- and the vast majority of users won't -- they'll just assume the website is "broken" and won't realize that clicking that Compatibility Mode icon will make it all better.

I don't have a great solution here. Microsoft is right to take a more standards-oriented approach to the web, but it is about to alienate, anger, and confuse millions of people who don't understand what's happening, and who frankly don't care, either. They just want the web to work, without fuss and without complaint, and for all of those users out there, well, my advice is to use a different browser, one that won't give you so many headaches.

Want to try anyway? It's available here.

Full disclosure: Yahoo! Search Suggestions are available as an option among IE8's search providers.