IE8 released....?

Well, its RC1.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7852340.stm

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/beta/default.aspx

With just this site open:

Firefox uses 34MB
IE8 uses 20MB

Seems quite nice on the whole and it has a Chrome-a-like 'incognito' mode so you (not me) can look at mucky websites without anybody knowing. Also there's a 'compatibility view' option - handy if you're into web dev as it display the site as it'd look in IE7.

Ive been using the Beta since the 1st release, and the features are quite handy. The accelerator options, whilst not something I really go for, seem to understand the majority needs of Internet users, and the security seems much easier to configure which is perhaps the biggest plus.

Unfortunately, though, there's still way too many of the big bugs that are still present, such as: lockups, menu getting all screwy on opening new WINDOW if you're in tabbed mode, and some issues with the adress bar when typing in or copy/pasting a URL directly.

Yeah as with Malice I had the same problems but another one was if I would click on text it wouldn't highlight or allow me to highlight it to copy and paste it. Also in the address bar or any textbox where I would type a search term i.e google, youtube etc the text would dissapear and sort if shift entirely to the left but for the last letter. The text was there but it was left aligned as out of the text box.

I reported this as I was using the beta and it was a known problem. It's still there with RC1.

Just uninstalled and rolled back to IE7. It does everything I need it to. I've never had a hijack of the browser or ever had any malicious software downloaded via it. It crashes sometimes. Other browsers do that also but some seem to leave the process running Ala Firefox sometimes.

I think I'll wait till it's fully tested. I don't consider this RC1 standards especially when readign that MS are saying there's not much to change.

its slow as molasses IE always sucked and this is no different

I quite liked beta 2, except for the frequent lock-ups. I hope this is a bit more stable.

No thanks. If and as soon as windows drops IE as part of windows (EU court now says they have to) i will never install it on anything but my works web-dev machine.

Firefox and opera etc have been 0.5 of a version ahead of IE since their inception.

IE has been the bane of my working life (web developer).

I hope that this is much improved without the inanity of them copying bugs because it would 'break' older sites not to. I doubt this will be the case, but I will at least give it a chance (on a virtual machine)

I found IE8 nice but buggy when I tried the betas. Preferred it to FF3, it was faster than FF and used fewer resources even in beta form, I use Iron (chrome variant) for quick non secure browsing.

The reason I stopped using the beta was that some forms could not be used, occasionaly login/pass ones. Which meant I had to use two browsers. If that is fixed I'd probably dump FF.

Are you working for Microsoft ? ;)

Darkheart

It was nice that MS included a list of sites that will actually work with IE8 in the latest release.

I like this comment left on the comments section of the article Darkheart linked to. :)

It crashed on the first run, but now that it's working fine, I like it.

I actually miss the IE integration with windows explorer most of all. Was nice to be able to type whatever in the address bar anywhere in the OS and be instantly at the web URL, drive path or having the app load. Without that there isn't a great deal of incentive to stick with any particular browser, they all pretty much seem the same.