TheChrisD - Rant Central

To IE8 or not?

You may remember that I have bitched before about a few annoyances about Firefox and integrating with other programs on my computer. Well, the annoyances are no more, but I’m wondering whether it was the best course of action or not…

You might be wondering what the “succesor” for Firefox 3 is. Might I say beforehand, that under no circumstances are you to go anywhere near me after I say this: IE8.

Yes, I did just say the letter I, followed by the letter E, and finally the number 8 - all in the same acronym.

Anyway, you may be wondering why I would choose IE8, given it’s part of the highly criticized Internet Explorer family. There are a few reasons for this, most of which relate to ease of functionality with everything else on my computer:

1. Shares feeds list with Windows Live Mail
   Now this is actually quite a major thing. Previously, when using Firefox and I wanted to subscribe to a new feed, I had to open the feed, copy the URL, then go open Windows Live Mail -> Manage Feeds -> Add Feed and then it was done. A lot of work. In IE, I click the Feed button, select the type of feed, and I’m done.
   Yes, I am that lazy.
2. Syncs favourites with Windows Live Favourites
   Not that I really plan on using Favourites all that much, but it’s helpful to have an online backup.
3. Uses the computer’s default Internet Options
   Yea, this is the big one. Firefox always had a seperate batch of connection settings, which meant that whenever I moved from behind the DCU proxy to outside it etc., I had to change both my computer’s settings and Firefox’s settings. No-one ever came out with a plugin to make Firefox adapt the computer’s settings. It was one of the most annoying things about it that I could never fix…

One of the things I wasn’t looking forward to was losing Firebug. That plugin was extremely helpful to me in my designing, and was invaluable. It can’t be used on IE8, but at least they have a native replacement - Developer Tools. Press F12 and there’s a nice Firebug-esque interface, where I can do what I used to do
Its not the same, but in fairness I have to give props for it being in as standard in this beta. They just better not remove it when IE8 proper comes out!

However, now I’m going to have to deal with sites being laid out completely differently now. I’ve already had to set a couple of sites to use Compatibilty Mode and show like they did in IE7. It’s not all that bad, but it is annoying because I can’t set the WordPress backend to use compatibility, and the frontend to not use it. A few sites I have to use compatibility on, or have several layout issues:

• Twitter: Several tabs look out of place. Using compatiblity mode.
• YouTube: Layout completely out of place. Using compatiblity mode.
• phpBB3 forums: Post textarea ends up floating below the right-hand side options.
• WordPress: Title input box stretches down as far as the stuff on the right-hand side goes. The drop-down arrows in the Visual Editor appear twice for some reason.

And I’m sure there other things somewhere that I just haven’t seen yet. Oh well, I guess I’ll have to get used to it - or at least until Firefox/Chrome can do what I want them to do…