I am running plain old XP SP3 Media Center Edition and I just got a notice to install IE 8 RC1. It took almost 20 minutes to install on a fairly modern laptop. I actually thought it was crashed. It does seem a little snappier, but in the 4 sites I’ve visited, 2 didn’t work and 1 had display issues. I hope they do RC2, RC3, RC4 and RC5 before FC1, FC2, GM1, GM2, Release.

Being a developer myself I can tell I surf with FF and Chrome — IE is what I use to test my work (along with the other browsers). I used to be a total IE proponent — they lost me around the 3rd year of IE 6 LOL. I hope they come back strong.

They say they’ve fixed it, and they were pretty darn good about getting after it. Mind you, I tried to make as much noise as humanly possible about the issue in the hope of calling attention to it. :D

They say they’re jumping from RC1 to final though. I strongly disagree with that idea, as I believe the difference between the final release candidate and the final release should be as trivial as possible. I hope I’m proven wrong.

In previous beta releases, IE would show a blank page. In RC1, we flip into compatibility view to try to show you the content. If you participate in the Customer Experience Improvement Program (http://www.microsoft.com/products/ceip/en-us/default.mspx) for IE8 then this will send us information about what caused the problem so that we can fix it. There are some issues that caused this problem that we have fixed since we released RC1.

Only Vista users with a beta of IE8 installed will be offered the RC1 release through Windows Update.

The built-in developer tools including the Javascript debugger should help to figure out some of these issues. By default, when you enable the debugger, the engine will be set to break when an error occurs so you can investigate the current variables, etc. and debug the problem from there.

This does not excuse IE8 from sucking, or breaking established behaviors. Just that the site used reeks of “I don’t care how tough this is – technically, I should be able to do it in CSS!”-ism.

If IE8 is crappy enough, and breaks even regular popular websites, more people will start switching to alternative browsers. In fact, we should all stop submitting bugs and make MS think they’ve got the perfect browser on their hands ;)

Why does their browser (IE8 RC1) take almost an hour to install, including two reboots? Why is their browser so entwined into the OS? Haven’t they LEARNED anything?

Goodbye.

There’s also the question of whether they even *need* to be writing their own rendering engine, given the availability and serviceability of the open ones available…. unless it’s simply a point of market pride, or they’re either hedging against or already planning for a time when they will yet again diverge from agreed standards.

I would love to be proven wrong. I would love for the release of IE 8 to be what Microsoft has sold it as: a browser with suitably advanced standards support and the marking of a turning point towards a day where developers don’t have to dump hours into multiple workarounds for shoddy implementations.

But as I see these reports come out, it seems more likely to me that all that talk was basically a “take me back, honey, I’ve changed” that’s more or less parallel to the kinds of gifts and promises that flow from an abusive spouse when their partner decides to leave.