ie8

I found a great list on the blog/news section for the ocPortal CMS, 10 IE compatibility problems that you might not have realised. While the post is related to ocPortal, the Internet Explorer compatibility issues likely will apply to any CMS viewed by the browser.

Over the year's ocProducts has maintained a private list of issues in different web browsers, and if there's one thing that is consistent it is that Internet Explorer has the majority of the problems. Sometimes they are bugs, but as you'll see from this list sometimes other browsers just do things better. I am writing this blog post not to bash Microsoft, but hopefully to provide some useful information to other web developers. Thankfully IE8 fixed a ton of problems, and I can't wait until we can ditch IE6 and IE7, but unfortunately this will inevitably be years away; never-the-less, as far as I am aware every problem here applies to IE8 as well as older versions.

I wouldn't be surprised if IE8 fixes some of the incompatibility issues that the author lists. I've been using IE8 at both home and work and have found the browser to be an improvement over IE6 and IE7. Nevertheless, I still prefer Firefox over Internet Explorer.

Now, the following rant isn't directed toward ocPortal but something that has hit a sore spot with me.

Although Firefox is my choice for Internet browsers, I do use Microsoft's Internet Explorer from time to time.  Yesterday, I installed the release candidate of Internet Explorer 8.

I can't say I'm a big fan of their "Web slice" approach as it feels like I'm ramming Google Desktop via RSS feeds down the browser's favorites bar.  Who know though, perhaps the slice approach will grow on me.  However, I am a big fan of Microsoft creating a more compliant and less buggy browser and IE8 seems to fit the bill.  If IE7 was a good step in the right direction then IE8 gets Microsoft's users pretty close to the destination.

Meanwhile, my rant to all the IE6 users.  I can't believe that about a third of Microsoft Windows users are still using IE6.  Shame on you if you are still using that insecure, buggy, and non-compliant browser.  Microsoft doesn't even want you to use that browser...and yet you're still stuck in the stone ages.  I have a theory that IE6 is symbolic of the problems of complacency at Microsoft and those companies/users that are still on that browser.  IE8 arriving on a modern Windows desktop near you and you're still on IE6?  Give me a break!

The single reason enterprises with Windows networks prefer Internet Explorer over Firefox and other browsers: Group Policy.

For those of you who might be new to Group Policy, here is a quick background. Let’s first assume you use an Active Directory environment to administer the computers in your corporate network. If that is the case, Group Policy provides a wide set of policy settings to manage IE8 after you have deployed it to your users' computers. These settings are locked down and cannot be changed by users, as they are always written to a secure tree in the registry.

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