I don't remember how long it's been...
but I got involved during the public beta because I began having trouble with some of the more secure sites (such as my bank!). The beta solved those problems.
I have not noticed any change in download speeds.

everyone I know (work, family, etc) who has 8 didn't like it & went back to 7.

Odds are if it's accelerating it's making multiple connections to some place to download. some sites don't like that & you can get your IP temp blocked.

No no, the accelerators are nothing to do with download speed.

They just mean that if you highlight a word or phrase you get a little thingy next to the cursor that you can click on. Then it allows you to directly do stuff with the phrase you've highlighted. Mine shows "Google Translate", "Map with Google Maps", "Google Search" etc.. Then for example your Google Search of the highlighted phrase will pop up in a new tab. However I keep forgetting to use it and just do it the long way.

Been using IE8 for a bit now and it's OK. Pretty much indistinguishable from IE7 really. There is some intelligence in the tab groupings, so if you right click a link and choose "open in new tab", the new tab will open at the end of a coloured group of related tabs rather than right at the end.

I can't see any advantage of V7 or V8 over FireFox - Oh yeah, thought of one! I can Download Flash Videos in FireFox - Haven't been able to do this in IE since 6.

Grazie

I honestly can't imagine why anyone would want to use Internet Exploder by choice. Firefox is far superior IMHO.

"They just mean that if you highlight a word or phrase you get a little thingy next to the cursor that you can click on. Then it allows you to directly do stuff with the phrase you've highlighted. Mine shows "Google Translate", "Map with Google Maps", "Google Search" etc.. Then for example your Google Search of the highlighted phrase will pop up in a new tab."

Ah, so that's what the icons are when I highlight something in IE 8 - pretty nice feature - I do googles on things inside pages all the time. Will try that out.

Nahhh, Firefox is too limited. Go with Seamonkey. It's what Firefox wanted to be but didn't quite make it.

Nahhh, Firefox is too limited. Go with Seamonkey. It's what Firefox wanted to be but didn't quite make it.
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Kelly,

I downloaded and installed Seamonkey. The only thing I didn't like about it was that you don't have an option to automatically Clear Private Data when you exit or even a button to do it manually. Firefox does.

Have you tried Opera? I kind of like it.

John

all a browser needs to do is read/display HTML. Anything else is crash prone annoyances. :/

Hmmmm. If all you could do was read/display HTML, then some of the things you wouldn't be able to do are post messages, use menus, display images, or download files. I think you might like to do at least some of those things! ;)

not true! IRC, FTP, telnet & others were designed for that stuff! A link to those opens up the appropriate app. HTML does more then text too, you can display images, tables, etc. Browsers aren't really browsers any more, they're more like a database reading app now a days (in use/function, not design), but not in a good way imho. Google, MS, Mozilla, etc. are all trying to make browsers that can do anything but they all still have basic issues in actual browsing. Example: I can't right click on any piece of website & say save. There's java script to stop you from that. Or Flash. Etc. Functions that used to be part of a browser were crippled because that was part of getting the new tech to work. Can't browse a flash site, you're just playing an interactive movie for all intents & purposes.

EDIT: we're spoiled here because most things are HTML. Like the menu up top (no scripting, just HTML)

I think you're confusing HTML with HTTP. HTML itself is just a tiny subset of what is normally communicated over an HTTP connection. The menu on this page is composed of HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Try turning off style sheets and scripting sometime and see what the menu would be like in HTML only.

Images are not HTML, and can't be fetched or displayed in HTML. HTML can tell the browser to fetch an image and display it, but how the browser does that is outside of HTML.

I was writing media=print CSS for a site the other day, and used Opera's preview to check how things were going. Opera stores the previews and they do not get deleted when I empty the disk buffer. Very annoying when you rely on the preview for checking things and it doesn't refresh properly. IE 7 did the same thing, but Firefox saved me.

Kelly, What's SeaMonkey's Composer like? Not much info to be had on their website. I use NoteTab Pro with Tidy and TopStyle Pro (for CSS). The both cost a small sum but they are great to work with, especially NoteTab (which even comes in a free - Lite - version).

Tor

TorS, press <F5> in IE7 or IE8 to "hard refresh" the page which will flush out the cache. In older browsers <CTRL> + <SHIFT> + REFRESH does the same (and I seem to recall will even flush out any possible cache held by your ISP). One of those methods might work for Opera.

Tor, it's pretty much garbage. I suppose if you don't know HTML at all then it's better than trying to write it out longhand in a text editor, but not much. It's way clunky. That being said, back in the dark ages i taught myself HTML by laying out a page in Netscape's Composer then looking at the source it produced. It only took me about a day to get to the point where i wrote better HTML than it did.

The thing i like best about Seamonkey is that it has an integrated email client. Thunderbird does NOT integrate inside of Firefox, not even close. The thing i like second best about it is that it's UI skin is very minimalistic, much like Netscape 4's interface. It doesn't fill up the screen with large glaring icons and wasted space. It just sits out of the way and lets you look at the web pages.

You see Nick, <F5> flushes the page but NOT the print preview! And what's weirder: The behaviour is different when you look at the actual web and when you look at html pages stored on your computer.

Kelly, OK then, no reason for me to look beyond NoteTab Pro. It has everything except wysiwyg. It offers menu choice for "wiew in browser" - in fact for two different browsers - but the stored print preview thing in Opera and IE 7 caught me unprepared.

Found a workaround in Opera though. There's a menu choice for "Load from cache" - under tools - advanced. Illogical as it sounds, it did away with the stored print preview!
Tor

From a security standpoint, Internet Explorer will always be the worst choice. Microsoft refuses to separate it from the operating system. The purpose is to benefit Microsoft and no one else. As a result we get stuck with a million security updates as people get hacked and their personal information is compromised. Microsoft cares about Microsoft's interest, not the public interest. And they can't even compromise a little bit by separating Internet Explorer from the OS. Not even that much can they do for us to minimize the hacking. That is why I will never use Internet Explorer ever again. I don't care how many bells and whistles they drape on that pig.

John