Silicon Shecky

So Chrome updates itself silently, which can be a good thing, unless the patches require a restart of the browser. If this does happen you all of a sudden get a notice saying, “Changes have been made, you need to restart for them to take effect, ” or something along those lines. I get it with Firefox also. IE doesn’t do that, which is why it can’t be as secure.

Anyway, I digress. It seems that in the pas month Chrome has had to do some major patching quite often. People talk about how secure Chrome is, and while I haven’t tried it yet, I do have to wonder if it is being heavily targeted, or did the developers just make that many misses on bug testing?

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=3324#more-3324

So with all the browser choices out there, how many do you think have more problems than they know because of security through obscurity?

IE8, still not ready for everyone to use due to compatibility issues with many websites out there. Microsoft says, “We are not pushing IE8 out there yet.” Everyone breaths a sigh of relief.

At least until today. If you run updates, you should take a close look at the high priority updates. Yeah the ones that get pushed down through Automatic Updates. You will see IE8 there. Sounds like a push to me. Yet Microsoft is still claiming that they are not pushing it out.

Now I don’t know about you, but if I saw it in the Optional Software updates, I would believe them, but with it in High Priority? Come on, we all know that usually we just let the high priority updates get installed, because they are usually the most critical of the updates, and if you are set up to autoupdate, it will get pushed down and installed unless you are set up to check what updates have been downloaded for install.

To use a phrase from a segment on a sports show I listen to.. Microsoft, Who Ya Crappin?

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.