Internet Explorer 8, Thumbs Down - Do not use!

Celtic Radio highly recommends against using Internet Explorer 8.

Microsoft has released their new browser and it is one bloated piece of software. We've done some tests with the new browser and it runs as much as 33% slower than IE7.

Unless you have a brand new dual core computer, plenty of RAM and a very fast DSL line, you will be very disappointed with your browsing experience.

Our suggestion is to disable the automatic download of IE8 until Microsoft fixes the terrible performance of this new browser.

A quick review of the lastest tech blogs and news article confirms our belief that users should stick with IE7 or go with an alternative solution such as Mozilla or Firefox.

In the meantime, do yourself a favor and stick with IE7.

I use Firefox for most of my browsing, and IE8, for one item at a time. I find Mozilla has the extra's that work for what I need, and Microsoft usually lags in the ad-dons. I'll check and see how much physical memory 8 uses, and see if there is a IE7 that I could download.

Using Firefox 3 on my Ubuntu Linux-powered system. I am going to give Google Chrome a try when the Linux version is available. Just about all Microsoft-made software blows.

Thanks for the warning, Paul. I just told everyone in the office not to download IE8. Our computers run way slow the way it is. Have tried to get the boss to buy new computers, yea right!!!!

Val

Paul,

My son is the one who has the problem logging in the game and he has that IE8,well he was here at my house and what the heck let's see if I can can log in the game. He was not happy with me because I could get in the game on his laptop when he can't. Too make a long story short he has moved and now lives in the same town as my brother who just happens to be a computer geek so he will be visiting him he hopes he will be able to figure out this mess he misses playing!

We will see what the issue is with IE8 and Medieval Kingdom and see if we can resolve.

I am sure MS will eventually fix the issues, but it is a little scary what they are doing.

Right now the recommended browser for Celtic Radio is IE7; however, we may consider changing that to FireFox/Mozilla if IE8 continues to be a resource hog!

Thanks Paul for checking in to this. My son is going to take his laptop to my brother the geek(thats what I call him) and see what he can do. I just think it's funny that I could get into the game on his laptop and he couldn't. I told him think of the resources he'd have when he can play. So gald he loves his mother.

Been using Mozilla Firefox for quite a few years. I can only remember one time when I had a problem with it. No one that I know have had a good experience with IE 8. Only reason I use IE 7 is that's the only browser to get windows updates, MS office updates, etc. Also, I have my computer set up to notify me when updates are available, thus I have avoided LOTS of problems by not downloading updates that are not productive with my setup. I use windows XP, ( with a few modifications ). Shhhh, don't tell Bill Gates....lol....Not to even mention vista, can't recall how many PC's I have had to "clean" hard drive of vista & lay down fresh copy of XP. Some people have good results with vista, but, most that I deal with have older programs that will NOT operate with vista "improved" drivers.

We are given Firefox Mozilla a try and it seems to load our site alot of faster. There are a few small alignment and font sizes that are off because we have used IE6 and IE7 as the benchmark to develop our site.

In fact, I am surprised our much more Firefox works so much faster. We just may switch our recommended browser from IE7 to Firefox.

Ok, some good news on Microsoft's IE8.

We have done some research and have discovered that we can automatically set our members IE8 to IE7 compatibility mode through a setting in our web server. So all pages rendered in IE8 will be displayed in IE7 compatibility mode when on CelticRadio.net.

This also solves the problem with our online game - Medieval Kingdom. The game now works in IE8.

Still, after using Mozilla Firefox the past few days and fixing some alignment issues with that browser, I am impressed with how much faster Firefox is. They have really increased the performance of Firefox from a few years ago as I do remember IE6/7 being faster - but that is no longer the case.

I'd like to thank the member that told us about this IE7 compatibility mode. Being able to automatically rendered the pages in IE7 compatibility mode just saved us a ton of time. Thank you very much.

So can I upgrade to IE 8 without fear of CelticRadio not working now?

Yes you can. When accessing Celtic Radio under IE8 the site will work the same as it does now under IE7.

Will work fine, if you are using a newer PC w/dual core processor & LOTS of RAM. However, if using older PC, ( such as I am ), would recommend Mozilla Firefox ( Linux based product ) as default browser. Works faster, able to efficiently use multiple applications faster than IE. Also, is more stable than IE. But, see above posts from Paul, he is webmaster & designed this site w/IE as benchmark.