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Internet Explorer 8

Posted on 6 Nov 2008 at 15:41

Jon Honeyball casts a critical eye over the latest version of ie, and discovers if ashampoo core tuner can boost his processor power.

Finally, Microsoft has been crowing that it's now standards-based, and that it does a better job of page rendering than anyone else. I'll have to leave that to my tame HTML Hairdressers to confirm or deny: they get particularly agitated about some of the frankly weird nonsense behaviour that Microsoft has slipped into IE in its previous incarnations, and I'll wait to see what they think before I take any position on IE8 being any better. As the old saying has it: there's Standards, Web Standards, and Microsoft Web Standards. I do hope that Redmond hasn't just restricted its view to a few that it knows it can pass, and ignored the rest. How this will play out with some websites that have made arguably stupid conditional coding decisions in the past is anyone's guess. Time will tell.

Overall, you might be able to tell that I'm a bit underwhelmed by IE8. Lots of mom 'n' pop usability stuff, for sure, and promises of better behaviour are welcome. However, I left the Microsoft IE8 team with one thought to chew on: the day that someone writes a browser add-on or extension or other nasty bit of spyware that causes IE8 to choke is the day that Microsoft has failed in its mission.

I accept that IE8 has a special "safe mode" for startup whereby nothing, but nothing (it claims), gets added in as an extension. I'd like to see a /cleanout switch that does a total reset of IE8 back to shrinkwrap state, too, and keeps it there until I tell it that I think the coast is clear. It really is time that IE had a reputation for being something other than a cesspit of nasty viruses, keyloggers and add-ons. IE7 made a start, but IE8 has to make things nuclear bombproof.

Hi-def musicI have to mention those fine people up at Linn Records, the recording company division of Linn Products, purveyors of high-quality hi-fi kit to the gentry. The chap who runs Linn Records, Phil Hobbs, and I were at university together some (mumble, mumble) years ago, and he was a fine chap and a talented recording engineer even then. Over the years, Linn Records has built up a large library of very high-quality recordings. The collection is a little quirky and eclectic in its choices - you might not feel much of a longing for, say, the collected best songs of Robert Burns volumes 1 to 12 (and beyond, no doubt) - but I challenge you to find any better recordings of Thomas Tallis.

Anyway, why am I rambling about Linn Records? Because it's decided to make its output available on both external USB hard disks and Network Attached Storage boxes. You can buy the entire catalogue of some 275 albums, in formats that range all the way up to 24-bit FLAC at a high sampling rate on a pre-built NAS box, for several grand, or you can download a few tracks for a few pounds. What's clear is that those vendors interested in high-definition audio are now bringing such material to market through their own specialist e-shops. If you're interested in sound quality and high-definition audio, then get some of this beautifully recorded material to listen to and you'll realise just how much of a compromise CD format is for the new millennium, to say nothing of MP3.

A Sham Poo?

For some reason, I appear to have got myself onto the mailing list for some rather weird software companies. When you attend conferences as a member of the press, your details get handed out to other companies that are attending. Some are quite persistent and keep emailing me with details of their products. I guess I shouldn't complain, as they have something to sell, so I've randomly picked one this month that piqued my interest.