Should web developers upgrade to Internet Explorer 8?

Question

I am a web application developer working on a Windows machine. Today I received an update notification asking me to upgrade Internet Explorer to version 8. I previously had IE 8 installed during beta testing, but removed due to inconsistencies between it "compatibility mode" and the standalone version of IE 7 (very strange, although "fringe", javascript / css errors).

So my question is: have these inconsistencies been developed? If I test the site in compatibility mode, how confident am I how it will display / work in IE 7? Do you find it safe for a web developer to upgrade to IE 8 at the moment?

Answer 1

Install IE8, you should be able to check pages in IE8 after all. To check with older versions, you can install IETester . This eliminates the need to work with virtual machines.

Answer 2

The best advice I can give is that you keep multiple virtual machines with IE7 and IE6. IE8 was very inconsistent for me, and crashed from time to time. Compatibility mode works, at least on my sites, so part of it looks fine.

Answer 3

I am currently developing websites for IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome on the same machine.

I use IE8 to test the rendering of IE8 and IE7 (using the built-in developer tools, you can switch the browser between the rendering modes of IE8 and IE7 ... not to mention switching between the Quirks and Compatibility modes for each browser).

To get back to IE6, I use the Microsoft SuperPreview beta (if you haven’t seen it, check it out ... they will offer Firefox and Safari rendering the last time I checked)

Answer 4

You can always run different versions of Internet Explorer in Virtual PC to emulate different environments. What we do really works for him.

Microsoft even released it for free (see link above).

Answer 5

After you try IE8 Developer Tools (press F12) and see how good it is, I can say that it needs to be updated, and you have many other ways to test previous versions, as shown in previous versions.

A similar developer toolbar was available for download for IE7.

Answer 6

I had no problems with compatibility mode. I upgraded to IE8, although we still have a test machine with IE7. I also use IETester , which is a FANTASTIC tool.

Answer 7

I went with the IE collection and love it.

http://finalbuilds.edskes.net/iecollection.htm

Answer 8

Another possible solution is to use a multiple IE installation, as indicated here: http://finalbuilds.edskes.net/iecollection.htm .

Answer 9

All others running Windows, and not in a corporate environment that filters such things, also receive the same update notification.

So, if your users mostly use company computers where IT departments control IE updates, using IE7 on your main machine (and testing it in IE8 on a virtual or other machine) is probably the best option.

Otherwise, you should navigate with most of your users and either use the IE7 virtual machine for back testing or use compatibility mode.

Answer 10

You need to develop what browsers are most popular for your audience. If you expect your readers to use IE 8, you should use IE 8.

Obviously, you should test in everything, but you should pay more attention to what your users are most likely to use.

Answer 11

I think it costs the built-in Developer Toolkit. (press F12 to see)

Have you considered installing Virtual PC (free) or VMWare and running IE7 in VM?

Answer 12

If you use the jQuery tool for your client programming, theoretically “all” compatibility testing has already been done for you. They have huge test suites to provide this.

Answer 13

BUT MY GOD YES!

IE8 is a really good product from Micrsoft. Not only fast (not as fast as it should be, but it's good enough), but he ripped off all the Firebug features. It also contains the IE7 rendering engine, so you really don't lose anything, just win.

Press F12, and you can choose how to display the page: IE7, IE8, or some kind of average thing that I never understand. You can also force the web browser to display in IE7 mode by adding this to your HTML code (taken from http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/06/10/introducing-ie-emulateie7.aspx )

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" /> 

I also have to say: the sites that I build usually do not have display problems in IE8 and look just like FF3, Opera, Konqueror, Chrome, etc. This is a really good browser.