Well then now. I have seen all the pushing and prodding about how “IE8 is now available! Download it now!” and it got me to thinking, should you really be downloading it now? Is it that important to move to it right this exact moment, while people are still writing reviews of it? What advantage do I get from it? What about headaches?

The problem I have is that I am seeing all the usual suspects come out of the woodwork and praise Microsoft again. Now IE8 works ok, but it does have some major flaws still in it. The most major of them is the best thing about it. IE8 adopted open standards. Yep the same standards that Firefox, Chrome, Opera, etc… have been using for years, not the Microsoft proprietary versions of theses standards, but the real deal. The problem is that there are a lot of web sites that were optimized for IE7 and earlier, and do not render properly in IE8. Heck, I heard from a friend who got IE8 and all of a sudden the Microsoft web site wasn’t showing properly.

Yes, IE8 is going to be a fantastic browser, but it needs the sites to catch up to it. This is what happens when you force a bastardized standard on people for so long, and then switch away from it. Growing pains. I would suggest waiting 6 months to a year to get IE8 and make sure you get the instructions on how to uninstall it, just in case.

Are you using IE8, and what are your thoughts on it? Leave a comment and let me know.