Internet Explorer 8

[Nick29]

Hi Gooddog,

  

#in regards to av programmes. i have just done "a google " Search and it gave the best 7 of these

  Can you tell us who it is that says these are the best?

  I can't believe that Nod 32 is worse than the others that you have quoted.

  I haven't checked for a while but I was lead to believe that it was probably

   one of the best. This was from people who do very extensive testing.

     Tomkin

   ( In fact I was so impressed by it's results compared to all the others, that

     I nearly bought it. Then I thought...., am I happy with all my freebies and the

     answer was yes. so I didn't bother.)

Well, last year I was using Kaspersky Internet Security, which was OK, but the computer noticeably slowed down when it was doing in-depth scanning.  So, I changed over to Eset Smart Security 4, which was supposed to be faster because the code is pre-compiled, which basically means that the computer doesn't have to work so hard to run the program.  I have noticed that the computer is a lot less sluggish when Eset is doing in-depth scans than it was when it was doing the same with Kaspersky.

I want the following things from an AV program and firewall.....

• It needs to be effective and secure
• It should place minimum loading on the host computer
• It should keep me informed about what it is doing, and warn me of firewall intrusions
• It shouldn't interfere with other programs that I'm using
• It should be easy to install, and easy to un-install

Eset seems to tick all those boxes.  Norton failed miserably on the last two, and it did slow the computer down.  Kaspersky loaded the computer down a little less than Norton, but it was still noticeable.

[GrahamH]

I don't use Ancestry but I can't see how anyone can say that it is their fault that their web site does not work on IE8.

Ancestry have a web site which was developed well before the specification for IE8 was written. The site works perfectly well on other browsers.

Microsoft have made a deliberate decision to specify/design a new product which they know is incompatible with some existing web sites.

Why should any company redevelop their web sites to work with Microsoft's new standards when there are plenty of perfectly adequate alternative browsers available?

It is similar to saying that it is OK for a company like Shell to bring out a new fuel and tell all car manufacturers that they must change their vehicles to use that fuel rather than petrol/diesel from other suppliers.

Graham

[Nick29]

No amount of tweeking will make IE8 work properly on Ancestry - apparently.   

Sorry, but that's just not true !  

I have been using IE8 since the Beta 2 version, and the only thing that didn't work properly in Ancestry was the editing of profiles (which used a Java script which didn't run properly on IE8), but this was more of an annoyance, because it would work if you persisted.  This has now been fixed by Ancestry.

There were also a few page presentation issues, which made the pages look a little odd sometimes, but these were fixed by running in compatability mode.  These issues have also now been completely fixed.

I have tried to use Firefox on Ancestry, but always found that pages looked worse than they did in IE, especially the timeline in the profile view.  I also could not find a way to make the Ancestry enhanced image viewer work, and I did try very hard to make it work.

Now I can honestly say that I have no issues with IE8 and Ancestry, even with the compatability mode off.  I think this may be as a result of millions of Americans switching to IE8, and complaining about the issues they had.  Ancestry didn't want to know when I was Beta testing, although I did try to warn them that IE8 would be a popular browser within a few months.

[mothball]

Just telling you what the man said!

I'm no expert.

I'm off this post.

Now to find a way of not being informed when someone else posts.

Steven

[Nick29]

I don't use Ancestry but I can't see how anyone can say that it is their fault that their web site does not work on IE8.

Ancestry have a web site which was developed well before the specification for IE8 was written. The site works perfectly well on other browsers.

Microsoft have made a deliberate decision to specify/design a new product which they know is incompatible with some existing web sites.

Why should any company redevelop their web sites to work with Microsoft's new standards when there are plenty of perfectly adequate alternative browsers available?

It is similar to saying that it is OK for a company like Shell to bring out a new fuel and tell all car manufacturers that they must change their vehicles to use that fuel rather than petrol/diesel from other suppliers.

Graham

Oh come on, Graham, you know that simply is not true !  Try running Ancestry on Opera - it simply will not work (or at least it didn't when I tried), because Opera does not fully support Java.   One of the reasons that I could not get on with Firefox was that it never displayed the Ancestry time-line properly on the profile pages, and (as I said in another post) getting the enhanced viewer to work in Firefox was practically impossible.  

Ancestry now works perfectly with IE8, and I always knew it would eventually, when millions of Americans upgraded to IE8 as part of the Windows update process.

[GrahamH]

Oh come on, Graham, you know that simply is not true !  Try running Ancestry on Opera - it simply will not work (or at least it didn't when I tried), because Opera does not fully support Java.   One of the reasons that I could not get on with Firefox was that it never displayed the Ancestry time-line properly on the profile pages, and (as I said in another post) getting the enhanced viewer to work in Firefox was practically impossible.  

Ancestry now works perfectly with IE8, and I always knew it would eventually, when millions of Americans upgraded to IE8 as part of the Windows update process.

I did say I didn't use Ancestry - but the company would not have achieved the success it has if its web pages did not work adequately on a number of browsers.

According to Opera Help the browser does work with Java - but "uses the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) on your system directly instead of using the plug-in to run Java applets". With Java being so widespread these days I should have thought keeping the JRE up to date would be part of one's normal maintenance.

You mention that you find IE8 fine for Ancestry but have difficulty with Firefox - which is apparently the opposite experience to Steven's. This appears to be another indication - as other previous posts (and plenty of references turned up by Google) have already mentioned - that IE8 simply does not work properly in some environments. That, in turn, points to inadequate testing, deliberate design or both.

I am minded of the standardisation of COBOL about 40 years ago under the auspices of ANSI. IBM signed up to that but then created their own version of ANSI COBOL which had "extensions" - which meant that a program written in IBM's version of the language could not necessarily easily be re-complied to run on non-IBM machines.

Is that sort of thing really how we want development to continue in the future?

Graham

[tomkin]

Hi steven,

 

Now to find a way of not being informed when someone else posts.

Steven

  It's quite easy mate. On the e-mail informing you of a posting

  there is a link for you to unsubscribe to the topic. Just click on

   it and you shouldn't get any more notifications.

  Tomkin

[Redroger]

The real cause of the problems with IE8 and other things has been touched on."Problems would be fixed when millions of Americans upgraded their computers" That's where Microsoft profits come from, the rest of the world are added extras for decoration only.

[robbo43]

Millions of Americans may be upgrading to IE8 but across the rest of the world millions of people are turning their back on IE completely.  In the UK almost as many people use Firefox as IE7&8, in the rest of Europe and Asia more people use Firefox than IE.

I have no problems with Ancestry using Firefox, but then I have JRE which is needed for a variety of programmes and is kept up to date.

OK, I confess, when I started on the internet I used Netscape, which at that time was at version 0.81 and I have always loathed Internet Explorer in all its versions, so I am biased.

Robert