If, like me, you rushed out and installed Internet Explorer 8 last week, then you may, like me again, be regretting it.
IE8 has been slow, unstable and ugly. By ugly I mean that most of the sites I viewed looked really bad (or didn't render at all). The price of progress you may say? After all, the push is on for better standards compliance right? Unfortunately, the IE8 Beta 1 release seems to have been rushed out the door without proper testing, and more importantly, without the proper user preparation - users need to be informed of the potential issues and in effect, properly change managed.
When is a Beta a Beta?
Short answer: it's never a beta anymore.
Ever since Microsoft (and others) started pushing out Beta versions of products to everyone (think Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 and onwards) we've all grown accustomed to using Beta software in production settings. Previously the domain of die-hard testers only, now everyone runs them. They are not Betas anymore. The real Betas are now called CTPs and come with explicit this-may-not-work doco (sometimes that is their only doco) - although many people still end up putting CTPs on production machines as well (example :-).
So when IE8 was announced with such fanfare at MIX last week - it was pretty much a public event (I mean why else would you have it noted on the Microsoft home page?). Everyone was being invited to download and uninstall it.
It's a shame really
I've had nothing but nice words to say about Microsoft over the last few months. Their releases have been continuous, innovative and of high quality. But this IE8 release is an unwelcome exception. Now, it may turn out to be my machine that's playing up given I have so much junk installed on it (it's due for a reformat actually), but even in that state it runs Safari Betas, Firefox Betas and a host of other Beta software fine. IE8 is the only thing I've had problems with.
The real shame for me is that I won't be getting to play with all the new features any time soon. And there's a stack of them.
I gave it my best shot. I spent Thursday in IE8 mode, and then on Friday when I couldn't stand it anymore I shifted to IE7 compatibility mode. That didn't change things (although sites did look fine again). It crashed repeatedly and was slow. Slow to start, slow to open a new tab, slow to render a page. Slow. Saturday morning was the end. Off it came.
The sad part about this - Microsoft had a chance to win over a lot of people with this release. And they definitely need to in the browser game, with so many people favouring non IE options. But if others have suffered the way I have (and from my Twitter reading many have), then Microsoft has a lot of work to do to win them back.
Back to the uninstall
Oh yes, so how do you uninstall IE8? If you are on XP it is in the same place - Add and Remove programs. But on Vista it is hidden away in the View Installed Updates section. You still get to it via Control Panel -> Uninstall a program. But then it is sitting over on the left panel.
Click on View installed updates.
Find IE8 in the list and click Uninstall from the top bar.
In fairness to Microsoft I have to say the uninstall process was very smooth and after rebooting I had IE7 back and working fine. I've had no problems with missing links, components or saved settings. So at least they got the uninstall part right.
I'm looking forward to Beta 2.
Am I over-reacting? What's been your experience with IE8?
22 comments:
I've been running IE 8 for the last week although I have to admit I've been using the emulate IE 7 option quite a bit.
What I've run into is that IE 8 is much more finicky with CSS based properties (in script and markup alike - except in script it bombs) and that will cause some grief. Incidentally some of these issues manifest even in IE 7 mode.
But as I looked at the problems more closely the reality is that these things SHOULDN'T work. Most were downright bugs in my own code and a few others should have been done in other ways.
Also, IE betas are notorious for using funky defaults for CSS styles which is why a lot of sites look a little odd with spacing off. I expect that this sort of thing will be fixed, but for now it'll look a bit wonky. But IE 7 emulation mode should clear that up.
One reason I'm sticking with it is because of the developer toolbar and debugger which is sweet and makes JavaScript debugging much easier even compared to the excellent FireBug...
My experience with IE8 has been pretty good. You should definitely grab the patch that Glenn Slaven posted about here:
http://blog.slaven.net.au/archives/2008/03/06/internet-explorer-8-public-beta-available/
Hi Rick,
Thanks for the note.
I agree with your point about CSS and standards - yes, the sites probably shouldn't work. But, the problem of course is that developers in general have been working with lack of standard support for so long, that any change to proper compliance is going to take time to achieve. Working with an early beta is a good way to start ensuring your own sites are compliant. My point is that most of the fanfare around IE8 has been to do with new features and how great it is that standards are being enforced. What is missing is the proper promotion from MS on how to best manage the process of changing over. For example, we aren't seeing huge long posts from Scott Guthrie covering his experiences with converting an old non-compliant site to be compliant. Sure, there's obscure readiness whitepapers available, but in general the change management process hasn't been properly promoted in my opinion.
With regards to stability, most of my work colleagues are not having the troubles I experienced, so it may come down to my machine needing a reformat. I'm looking forward to playing with it further.
Cheers,
Craig
Thanks Mark and thanks for the link.
I'm using Vista though, and the patch is for XP systems :-(
I'll reformat my machine over Easter and give it another go - hopefully my experience with it will improve.
Cheers,
Craig
Thanks for the heads up Craig.
I will hold out giving it a go till there have been a few improvements, which I hope will happen quickly.
Cheers,
Josh
When I installed IE8 I was actually mildly impressed. As a fairly new web developer/designer I've come to loathe IE with a passion but was actually pleasantly suprised when I downloaded and installed it...
But...despite some initial moments where I saw it's passing mark of the Acid2 test I found it paused whilst trying to type a blog and recently it stopped rendering anything, giving me nothing but a background colour for the website I was making. So I'm back to my original feelings. And I'm thinking that Microsoft needs to actually READ the blogs about it's software if they really want to know why people are leaving them in droves for browsers such as the lovely firefox, safari and opera. Can't we just kiss IE goodbye for the last time?
It doesnt uninstall on XP add and remove programs,you think it does but it is still there and when you try to load ir7 it says a more recent version is there-i have read all the tps,blogs and bull sh*t.It cannot be removed
I've been using IE8 since beta came out but I never have used it after the first night in anything but IE7 emulation mode. Honestly I use FF more so until recently I hadn't gotten annoyed enough to try and uninstall. Then I wasn't easily able to find how to do so in Vista.
Even in IE7 emulation mode Google maps was all screwed up. Thats when I really decided I wanted my true IE7 back.
Thanks for the heads up on how to uninstall.
Lasted just two hours on IE8 before becomming fed up with it and rolling back to IE7, running XP with SP3 and there were numerous problems, most notably severe issues with some sites where, when using the wheel scroll function the page was jumping all over the place and the "copy n paste" function was as good as non existant. I agree with your comments regarding Beta versions. Beta is most definately not better in this case. Sometimes less is more :-) Nice site btw.
Just posted a comment at 7:25, neglecting to mention that when using IE8 my Gmail account would only load in HTML view, just thought it was worth mentioning.
Ever since IE8 was installed on my comp. it has been nothing but one big dilema. It is the message hated among all IE users, "Internet Explorer cannot display the web page" every time I opened it. This was happening for weeks. Untill I read this I had problems using A LOT of programs because of this. Here is the real problem though, I, kind of deleted IE7 because I thought 8 would be better but I guess not. By the way I'm using Vista so any one know where I can download IE7. It will be greatly appreciated.
i cant uninstall it in xp
ther's no button for remove
even if there is the name
Late to the party. I installed IE8 this morning and immediately ran into trouble with the Google Bar. Running it with no add-ons doesn't help. Trying to google anything is met with
error messages.
I tried to uninstall it, couldn't find it in Add/Remove. So I reinstalled it. Tested it, had the same problems. I uninstalled it from Add/Remove. When I brought IE up after a restart, it was still reading as IE8 with all the same errors.
I'm now trying it using third party software.
well i installed ie8 and ever since i have had the dreaded THIS PAGE CAN NOT BE DISPLAYED I have tried everything. There is no way to uninstall IE8. It does not show up on the remove programs list. It has taken out my computers ability to connect with anything other than this old starwars online game I play. So the worst part is that I know I actually have an internet connection that works. My net adapter works, everything works except anything to do with the world wide web. I am going to try the unthinkable.. reinstalling IE6 or 7 over top of IE* for lack of anything else to try. I don't want to have to reformat as I'm sure it is just a setting or file somewhere that is askew! To date this has been my longest lasting and most stable install of XP I have ever had! needless to say i have acumulated a lot of things to make it run just right.. and now this!! Thanks microsoft! Anyone with a solution please let us others know what you had to do to get things back. Oh ya of course my System restore was turned off...
I've been using IE8 for several weeks now and have found it to be extraordingaly flakey. Toolbars come and go seemingly at will. I tried to uninstall it but it does not show up in my Control Panel/Add Remove programs. How the heck can you uninstall it if it does not show up in there?
Uninstall is the most difficult I've had yet to deal with...In my case their is no uninstall for IE8 beta 1 in add/remove and none in installed updates. I expect betas to crash, even to require a restore previous known good...but I don't expect them to be uninstallable. This wouldn't be a problem if beta 2 simply removed beta 1 or updated beta 1, but for some mysterious reason, beta 2 simply refuses to install with beta 1 installed. Here is where microsoft really screwed up.
A manual uninstallation procedure would really be nice. And why doesn't microsoft ever release removal tools for its applications? All of the other big software companies do... I installed IE8 beta 1 on my testing machine because I'm a Web Developer...looks like my testing machine is going to need a hard drive format thanks to beta 1.
It is mis-rendering the pages and it is slow, slow SLOW!!!!
So I too got the prompt to install IE8 and ever since my computer is on the fritz!!! I cannot scroll in yahoo mail and I thought it was due to opening a malicious e-mail inadvertantly and for a short time I was able to scroll without it flipping back to the top of the page in the new yahoo but its hardly user friendly as compared to classic yahoo mail and now the problem persists in both applications. My computer has many errors and wants to debug etc all the time now. I cannot copy and paste anywhere as it skips all around and jumps to copy whatever it wants to usually from bottom to top, how weird. I tried to find IE8 and uninstall it but this was no easy feat; now it shows only IE7 but it says its last use was too long ago for it to be currently running it yet its updates are very rescent. I hate my system now and its hardly worth going on-line anymore I wish I was computer saavy enough to rid of this problem. oh, and the arrows on the scroll bar are oversized and therefore pixeled, I hate this is there any other solutions? How can I find out if I am realy only running with IE7, maybe I should try Firefox...hmmm.
IE8 Beta 2 is just as rubbish. I wish I'd read up on this before installing. I want rid of it but it isn't in the Add/remove programs - its too late for system restore - meanwhile I've gone over to Firefox, because at least it works. However developing web apps in Visual Studio is a real pain now - I now test them from a virtual machine with IE7 - not ideal. :-( :-( :-(
IE8 just sucks big time.
After much searching this seems to work
Start -> Run
%windir%\ie8\spuninst\spuninst.exe
runs the IE8 uninstaller
In case anyone else wants to trash IE8 from their system.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957700/#ALTWin5
Alternative steps for Windows XP or for Windows Server 2003
To uninstall Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 in Windows XP or in Windows Server 2002, follow these steps:
1. Carefully select and then copy the following command:
%windir%\ie8\spuninst\spuninst.exe
2. Click Start, click Run, type cmd.exe, and then press ENTER.
3. Right-click inside the cmd.exe window, and then click Paste to paste the command that you copied in step 1.
4. Press ENTER to uninstall Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2. When the uninstall program is finished, restart your computer.
It worked for me. I'm now back on IE6 and much happier :-)
i gave it a good week but i can't anymore either. too many crashes. i read some interesting articles about some of the changes and was quite looking forward to it, but alas, i'll have to wait some more. i also battled uninstalling (xp), but managed to from the command line:
%windir%\ie8\spuninst\spuninst.exe
i really hope they do get these issues sorted out.
Post a Comment