Internet Explorer 8 - First Impressions

This blog entry was prepared using internet explorer 8 which has just downloaded as part of the latest set of updates. I had seen it arrive at work on Thursday. I had decided NOT to download it at work. So this morning on Vista the download began - and immediately failed. The error code said I should restart a service but that was just caused by the update site being too busy I expect. The 'try again' button did the trick.

From here, the blog entry is prepared using Firefox. Firefox is a browser, it is reasonably fast and reasonably stable. When I try to save pictures it does not usually disappear from my computer screen. This is what happened:
I switched to the IE tab to read the "What's new", and decided the IE8 picture might look quite nice on the blog. I right clicked and selected "save pictures as ..." The save menu appeared, it stayed there long enough for me to register that it is a GIF then IE8 and the save as menu disappeared.

I'll load it from Firefox, I thought, but on Firefox it is an animated GIF. Oh well, back to the good old faithful 'screen print' and "The Gimp". Caught the image, edited and saved it. Back to Firefox and blogger to upload the image - BANG! No Firefox. Windows Explorer does the same.

I re-boot the machine for the second time. Now all appears OK. So what did the last stage of the IE8 install do to my Windows Explorer?

IE8 install first impression -9/10 (that's minus 9 out of plus 10)

Now back to IE8 for the remainder:

So, lets compare and comment on a few of the regular browsing features:

This being Vista, I had to download a clock first, its slow enough without the desktop gadgets.

1) New Tab

IE - 6 seconds, 3 seconds, 10 seconds, 3 seconds

FF - 1 second, instantaneous, instantaneous, instantaneous, instantaneous

2) www.google.com

IE - 1 second (including an avert for google chrome)

FF - 1 second (no chrome advert)

3) Initial sign-on to facebook (not times)

IE - started

FF - started

FF - finished

IE - finished

4) reload of facebook home page, by clicking HOME

IE - 3 seconds

FF - 3 seconds

5) Google Mail, 100 items to page, a re-load

FF - 6 seconds

IE - 10 seconds

Hardly a scientific test, but enough for me to be staying with Firefox.

New Features

The only one that attracted me was the InPrivate feature. If it really does stop the storing of loads of data then it is a very good idea indeed.

Look and Feel

Its a browser. and its fairly intuitive. Some strange things though:

The Windows Update link is on the Safety Menu, not the Tools Menu

the tabs are coloured to pair them together when you do 'open link in a new tab' That is quite clever. They are also kept together. That's also an improvement on IE7.

Of course, it doesn't have FF's adins - like ADBlok Plus, which means some things have a different look and feel, and may explain a little (not all) of the load delays.

Overall impression - its OK, but its still quite slow.