RSSIE8 now being delivered as 'Important Update' for Vista, 'High Priority' for XP
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published April 28, 2009, 2:39 PM
A few weeks ago, Microsoft made indications that it would be delivering Office 2007 Service Pack 2 and Internet Explorer 8 as important automatic updates to Windows users on the same day. That day ended up being today, and now many Windows users are being prompted for the first time to install IE8 as an update to their operating system. Since the product's release last month, upgrades have only been voluntary.
Though two-thirds of the world's Web traffic is attributable to browsers identifying themselves as Internet Explorer, according to the latest up-to-the-minute data from analytics firm NetApplications, under 5% of that traffic comes from IE8. In fact, only in the last week has IE8 traffic by NetApplications' measure eclipsed HTTP requests hailing from Apple Safari version 3.2, which runs on Mac, iPod Touch, and iPhone. Requests from Mozilla Firefox 3 accounts for nearly one-fifth of analyzed traffic; but now, with IE8 becoming an "in-your-face" update for the very first time, Internet Explorer traffic in total may experience a bump.
I just finished un-installing IE8 because of issues I kept having. Like opening some web sites... just would not happen. Every other time I'd open IE8 I'd have problems getting my Hotmail to function. I've been a fan of IE for a long long time.... (since 95), and yet this week I finally said enough is enough and now my default Browser is Mozilla Firefox. Oh and one other thing I am a web master as well and even I was getting fed up with IE 8.
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|We have a few business web applications (supplied by a 3rd party vendor) that do NOT work well with IE8, much like when IE7 first came out. Unfortunately there are clients out there who won't think twice about taking IE8 NOW and then b**** about their web application no longer working even though we TOLD them to NOT take it just yet until the vendor fixes the compatability problems.
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|A good day for web developers across the land.
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|i don't care if you use Firefox as your primary browser, if you have IE on your system you may as well update
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|i'm curious how your logic brought you that conclusion
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|@dracodos: sooner or later IE7 will stop being supported by Microsoft, so indeed you may as well update, unless you plan on moving to OS X or *nix any time soon.
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|Agreed. Anyone who does not update will be at risk of security flaws in those components used by the Windows OS from IE7 and applications developed using the IE7 controls. Not updating is only sensible in a corporate environment until complete testing can be performed. Other than that, I see no reason NOT to update especially if you do not use it. Update for the sake of the components which utilize the IE8 core.
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|Paul: Yeah eventually IE7 will no longer be supported. It was more of, If people are gonna say 'might as well upgrade' at least give a bit more reason why then just 'because'. Fixxer's response above at least explains the benefits :) To upgrade just for the sake of upgrading is not always a good direction.
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|Upgrading for the sake of upgrading is usually my primary motivation, on my own personal computers at least. Though that has bitten me in the a** once or twice (Windows ME comes to mind).
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