I hate to be constantly beating a dead browser, but news about Internet Explorer 8 keeps coming up, kind of like a day-old fish taco at Earl's House of Chowder.
It seems Microsoft will stop at nothing to get people to try IE8. First, they published a "get the facts" comparison chart showing how -- surprise! -- IE8 bests Firefox and Chrome in virtually every way. (Note: Whenever anyone from Microsoft says "get the facts," the first thing you should get is your hip boots and waders, because it's going to pile up deep and fast.) I'm still scratching my head over the "Performance" blurb in that chart:
Knowing the top speed of a car doesn't tell you how fast you can drive in rush hour. To actually see the difference in page loads between all three browsers, you need slow-motion video. This one's also a tie.
Right. If anyone out there can explain that one to me, please send me a note.
[ Cringely isn't joking, either -- Microsoft's IE8 "get the facts" campaign does get it wrong. | For the real facts, check out IE8 vs. Firefox 3.5: The browser wars continue. ]
But that's not all. They're dangling $10K cash prizes to Aussies willing to go spelunking down undah using only their browser. They've offered to donate eight (count 'em, eight) meals to a food bank for every download of IE8. And they've launched a series of "funny" video ads starring Superman-turned-pitchman Dean Cain.
This is where things get dicey.
As first noted by The Technologizer's Harry McCracken (and quickly followed up by virtually everybody else with a blog), there's one ad in particular that's gotten a fair amount of attention. It involves an ordinary looking housewife who borrows her husband's laptop, looks at his browser history, and suddenly starts spewing projectile vomit all over the kitchen in full living technicolor, like Ozzy Osbourne after three days of nothing but beer and bat heads.
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I used IE8 a few times at my local Public Library, and also report no problems. If I hadn't looked at the Title Bar, I might never have noticed that it was not IE7. Once I did notice, I switched to InPrivate Browsing Mode, as this was a Public Computer after all.
At home and on my laptop, I use Firefox 3.5. Not really much faster than 3.0, but I like to customize (with Add-ons and Personas), and NoScript beats the pants off of trying to lock down IE's ActiveX Controls. I also usually use the Private Browsing feature in Firefox 3.5, but the Infoworld.com web site doesn't work very well without cookies enabled, so here I am InPublic, as it were.
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