Internet Exporer 8 - total rubbish

I must be one of the few people left in the World who writes a heading like that. To normal people it is abbreviated to 'IE8', but there you go. Whatever to call it, I am far from impressed. This latest incarnation of Explorer has left me completely dumbfounded.

I downloaded IE8 a couple of weeks ago, and for one reason mainly: it's current. I have a longstanding fear of anything Microsoft not being bang 'up to the minute' for security vunerability reasons. Download went fine, and so did installation.

The problems began when I started using it. It will not start up without crashing once, and man, it truly crawls when it does decide to work. Microsoft have added one signifigant new feature too: when selecting something from the drop - down list of visited web addresses, you accidentally delete it off the list.

This seems to happen readily with everything except - strangely - Microsoft's own Hotmail. It's like MS took a good look at IE and went "so what can we do to improve it? - I know, let's disimprove it!". Explorer 7 was ( mostly ) fine, but this is a landfill incarnation of the browser.

I find myself using Firefox more and more these days, and suddenly Google Chrome - which I have to admit I liked already - is beginning to look a whole lot better. From my experience of the whole 'MSN Live' thing, I think Microsoft have given up altogether.

The future is Chrome?

I finally gave in to temptation and downloaded the Google Chrome browser a few days ago. So far ... hmm ... so good. The one thing I really like about Chrome is the interface: a bit like 'Facebook' meets 'Firefox', or something like that. What amazes me most is that Microsoft never thought of it!

Think Windows XP, and the way it stacks recently used programs in order of use. Chrome does the same thing, except with a preview of each homepage. These previews dominate the screen.

How clever, and how "right under the noses" of Microsoft! As a V.1 Chrome is excellent, though the only glitch I did find was that the 'back' button was a bit slow, needing a second click. For a first attempt though it's awesome: the cleanest interface I've ever seen. Onward and upward for Google I think!