Internet Explorer 8 is 6,000x better than IE6,... - Robert Scoble

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Robert Scoble

Internet Explorer 8 is 6,000x better than IE6, but it still bugs me. Google Chrome is the future. Here's why:

January 11, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

ivanandersson, Palak Mathur, /sg and 70 other people liked this

1. Google Chrome is way faster. - Robert Scoble

2. Google Chrome is a rethink. IE8 is a bug fix. - Robert Scoble

3. Google Chrome has one box. IE 8 has two. - Robert Scoble

4. Google Chrome works better with Google Reader and other AJAX sites. - Robert Scoble

5. IE8 has too many menus and icons. Gives a real cluttered feel. - Robert Scoble

IE's been a glorified bug fix since MS relabeled it from Mosaic, Robert - no secret there. :) I'm loving Chrome. - teleken

WebKit is a really good rendering engine. I've always secretly wished IE8 would use WebKit as their rendering engine and scrap IE rendering, and somehow incorporate ActiveX and all of the IE features into it, since WebKit is open-source, not tied to a specific competitor (as opposed to Gecko and Firefox) and is fast and stable. – Have to agree about Google Chrome as well. It's a great browser. As much as I love Safari, I wish Chrome would come to Mac sooner :) - Mark Bao

6. Google Chrome's search integration is magic. Start typing something and it figures out what you want. IE8 waits for you to finish, then brings up a boring web page. - Robert Scoble

Any others? - Robert Scoble

When it finally works on a Mac, perhaps I'll believe you ;) - Jeff

If it didn't bug someone it wouldn't still be Internet Explorer. - Josh Sharp

Google Chrome and FLASH don't get along! - paul mooney

Now I just wish Chrome worked better with Flash, or Flash worked better with Chrome. - Dennis Jackson

Google Chrome is focused on internet. IE seems to mix to much other junk in - Mike Scott

By the way, I wrote this whole item in IE8 running on Windows 7. If you are still going to use IE, please do get IE8. It is much better than previous versions. - Robert Scoble

Not a big fan of IE or Chrome... I'll stick with FireFox. - Steven Sanders

Google Chrome is slick...but I still like the simplicity of FireFox. - Charlie Flowers

I love Google Chrome, I just wish the addon's started rolling out. - Michael Fidler

Because the browser is a commodity... Connecting (correction - Deep Integration) with Google's cloud based services is the secret sauce. - Brian Roy

Charlie: simplicity of Firefox? You've gotta be kidding, right? I love Firefox because of its complexity! (Plugins keep me there a lot of the time). - Robert Scoble

I still need to play with Chrome in order to form an educated opinion. I'm just too hung up on Firefox still. :P - Korey

Timely thread. I literally installed Google Chrome on my home computer within the last half hour (hey, I'm slow at these things - I'm not trendy). Just poking around a bit now, liking the speed. StumbleUpon support is an issue, but I'm reading up on it and other stuff. Just read Sarah Perez's post on privacy. - Ontario Emperor

I h ave never been a fan of ActiveX. The fact that several websites still rely on it versus better technologies irks me and I refuse to use them. - Jason Shultz from twhirl

Paul: Google Chrome gets along fine with Flash here. What are you experiencing? - Robert Scoble

Yeah, I have to admit, IE8 is a pretty good browser, relatively speaking (relative to IE7 and IE6.) Renders my pages a ton better than previous versions. - Mark Bao

Flash slows down Chrome for me pretty significantly, sometimes to where it's not even usable. Maybe it's just my computer. - Dennis Jackson

How is IE6 a basis for comparison to anything anymore? Totally agree about Chrome. - Bob Starr

loved chrome until I found out it wasn't compatible with my Roboform. I'm lazy and not too security conscious. - BEX

Amen on the 'IE mixing other junk in' thought. I hate typing a hostname into it & it tries to hit a UNC or whatever the heck it's doing... - Steven Byrnes

Chrome has a whole list of niggling problems and has had since day one -- they just never seem to get fixed. I like the speed and simplicity but Chrome will become the next IE unless Google starts paying attention to detail. - Brian Sullivan

Chrome lets you create 'desktop applications' that don't get lost in all of those tabs and don't waste space with the address bar! - Jon Issler

I use Chrome from time to time, but it just feels wrong when I do, I think I'll be sticking with Firefox. - Randy

I am with Vaibhav on "webkit is the future as well" - Peter Finn

Val: Privacy is dead. I really don't care. - Robert Scoble

Chrome's biggest shortcomings right now are password security and the lack of plugins/extensions... Have to give Firefox a nod for having those two nailed! - Jon Issler

I think Chrome is Google's paid service platform... http://www.johnworthington.me/... - Johnny

Google Chrome is like FireFox back when it was Phoenix: Sleek, sexy and satisfying. Beta 2 adds autocomplete, profiles and a Greasemonkey style scripting. - John Rubier

@Dennis check your fans. If your on a laptop the fans and/or exhaust may be blocked with dust. that happened to me on my laptop, any flash video slowed my laptop down. realized one day (after reinstalling windows and still having the problem) that my fans had a lot of dust. used compressed air to clean them out, problem solved. happy laptop! - Jason Shultz from twhirl

One thing I know I liked about Chrome: The web-comic! http://tiny.cc/9Ck9L - Korey

I'm amazed at how many flash/chrome issues there are. Ive never had any? - Mike Scott

I still see that firefox is the future! unless google chrome will be a 100% organic software http://snipr.com/9u3ld - Mark Guadalupe

I love firefox and plug-ins, but does Chrome need plug-ins? I thought their deal was to run current and next-gen online applications better, which will likely preclude the need for the plug-ins we firefox users can't live without now. - Bill Garrett

Robert, I really like Chrome too. The universal address/search/history bar is the future of browsing. There are only a small % of sites that do not work with Chrome... usually old school corporations, such as ones that I have to pay bills online at. Grr. Works 99.8% of the time for me otherwise. - Brian

I just installed the Windows 7 beta. I fired up IE 8 and it didn't correctly render a nonprofit's Web site I administer as a volunteer (www.spauldingcenter.org). IE 8 didn't correctly render some of the CSS. I installed Chrome and Chrome got it right. IE 8 is obviously not yet ready for release. - Rod Bauer from twhirl

I love Chrome and it is my default browser now. In fact all my flash problems in Firefox and IE went away in Chrome (video paused many times during playback, audio kept going). They are both memory hoars. Maybe a problem with too much Flash on websites? The lack of plugin support is very troubling. - Chris Mayer

I'm keen for getting mac version of chrome too, though its going to be interesting to see how they're gonna handle interface - Mike Scott from IM

Re: 6. The search bar autofill? Err FF has that too for recently visited sites. If you get an Add-On it'll do the potential sites too. - Adam

Google Chrome may be nice, but there was an "Epic Fail" on my system when Chrome decided that it was the default browser (out of four browsers) and would not directly allow me to un-check the Default-Browser checkbox. It was quickly removed. - Robert Miller

Love Chrome. Use it whenever I can. It does have problems with some sites, and I'm always having problems with flash crashing in it. - cjmart

Kind of ironic that Chrome and Firefox and both performing much better for me under Windows 7. The beta Chrome release is really sweet. - Charlie Anzman

@Pat: I use live mesh to sync my bookmarks between machines all the time. Add your favorites folder to mesh and you are good to go. Mesh for mac is available too. - Chris Johnson

Google Chrome doesn't know what's RSS!!! FAIL - carrotmadman6

I feel like people are debating the relative merits of tn3270 emulators... - Brian Roy

I like the speed/lightness of Chrome, however i dont think it will be big anytime soon with anyone other than techies. Doesnt run many addins/plugins etc... Unlikely any enterprise will adopt it either. Its a great reference app. - Chris Johnson

Chrome certainly is clean and renders fast, but until the experience can be customized via extensions like Firefox, there is no one way I can make it my primary. I just loaded Win. 7 on my laptop and the only thing I ported over from any of my other machines was my FEBE. - George Rogers

Important point for me is that Chrome opens more of the monitor for the content on the page, not for toolbars that i do not need while browsing a page. no loss of functionality without the toolbar. - Jeff DiStanlo

I wonder how many people even know what tn3270 is used for :) I know I do all too well. - Patrick Allmond

+++ on this. FoxMarks is awesome. Just wish FoxMarks had an iPhone browser sync also :( - Patrick Allmond

Any Flock 2.0 users here? If Chrome comes out for the Mac, I may take a look as well - but Firefox/Flock has been great for me for now. - Erich Miller

@Robert: Maybe simplicity wasn't the right word..."ease of use" might be a better term. I think that FF's layout is not as radically different from the browsers I grew up with (IE & Netscape), as Chrome seems to be...maybe that's why I find it simpler to use. Having said that, Chrome is by no means complex, just not as intuitive as FF. As you mentioned, the plug-ins add to the ease of use. It seems you can get a FireFox plug-in for anything. - Charlie Flowers

BTW, have you tried FF's AutoPager plug-in. That thing is amazing! It "automatically loads the next page of a site inline when you reach the end of the current page for infinite scrolling of content"...it's perfect for things like Twitter, Google, and yes it works for FriendFeed too. :D - Charlie Flowers

I'm using Flock 2.0 on both Mac and Windows. I've uninstalled Chrome -- didn't care for it much since Flock does everything I need it to. - Victor Solanoy

:hits the Googles to figure out what the Flock you guys are talking about: - teleken

IE8 (and Firefox) offer a lot of tools to supplement your browsing experience. Chrome just gets out of the way. I'm not sure one or the other is a fundamentally superior approach. - Toph Tucker

Installed Flock for all of 5 minutes. Sticking with Chrome, thanks. - teleken

ctrl+t takes forever on IE8, and for what? A blank tab. I like Chrome's approach - Andrew Smith

Firefox's is simple and extendable. Firefox' strength comes from its pluggability and ease of developing new plugins. Chrome needs to beat that. - Angsuman Chakraborty

Chrome needs to support Linux before it can even think of replacing Firefox. Chromium port of Chrome on Linux isn't very stable. - Angsuman Chakraborty

firefox plugins are the new activeX. there's too much functionality i use for me to shift *now*. i *do* like chrome, though. - moogs

I like moving tabs into new windows, but does crashes alot w/ Flash - Da

7. If one tab crashes, all the other tabs are unaffected. Let's see ANY other browser do that. - Nathan Chase

i think i'll stick with firefox. so much more you can do with it.. - Terry O'Fee

Chrome is fast (unlike IE), has a very minimal UI (also unlike IE), and you can move tabs to other windows. I have never been able to get Firefox to open new tabs next to the tab they're opened from, instead of at the far right, plus I don't really care about extensions. Plus, I've never had any issues with Flash. The only problem is that my school email won't work in Chrome (but that's minor). Chrome wins for me. - imperator3733 from twhirl

Robert - how is the performance of IE8 compared to Chrome and Firefox? Personally, I'd be using Chrome if I had my add-ons and greasemonkey scripts. I love Chrome's mult-tasking / memory management - very nice - Susan Beebe

@Imperator, Firefox's UI can be slimmed down, and you can fix the tab issue with Tab Mix Plus. Also, Firefox 3.1 is faster than Chrome. - Tanath

how bout: Chrome is CSS compliant? IE8 isn't, I know this by experience - Duncan Riley

@Nathan -- as far as I know, IE8 separated tabs into different processes first.... - Toph Tucker

I think FriendFeed should put a comment button at the bottom of the comments... that said, Opera is the fastest, but it has a few shortcomings. I use FireFox or Chrome depending on what PC I'm at. Some sites only work in IE. - Gus

Google Chrome uses your screen real estate more efficiently - Aad 't Hart

Chrome focuses on the web and not on the browser and that's what a browser's supposed to do. - Rohit

May be when there are basic extensions available for Chrome then it will be fair to compare with Firefox. For now, I don't see Chrome that useful, even though it's clean, a bit faster and provides more screen space. After a couple of days of using Chrome, I switched to Firefox as I felt less productive without the powerful extensions in Firefox. - Amar Shah

When Chrome has an extension like Better GReader, TabMixPlus, and NoScript, then I'll switch, but FF has everything I need with the extensions. NoScript is about the ONLY addon I absolutely need to use for security of my computer. - Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ

You can install extensions on the Chromium Builds! Go for it! - Will Higgins™

love chrome as much as the next guy, but it does crash sometimes over simplest things, like downloading sth from gmail or greader. & it's not just one tab that goes - it all goes & only one comes back, either gmail or greader... - siggimus

Chrome also crashes when importing Firefox Bookmarks, which makes it awkward to switch. But yeah, I would still use Firefox over IE 8. - Todd Brunner from twhirl

my mother understands the search-thingy-box in chrome. - Svensonsan

@scobleizer I think this would have made a good blog post. Would have been easier to read you view points. The discussion could then have happened on friendfeed. Too many comments to read properly - Sidharth Dassani

Chrome and WebKit are the future - just hope there's still room for Firefox. Remember how Firefox became Firefox? - Mona Nomura from fftogo

I agree. Chrome focuses on opening fast, which is critical for impatient people like me. Firefox and IE are way too slow. - Richard Crocker

WebKit can do CSS3 gradients, and I have only seen it in WordPress for creating actual images with gradients. Chrome is the future indeed! Extensions? heh, I use javascript bookmarklets to do my bidding! Chromes bookmark manager is more powerful than I expected. Passwords can be imported from FF but there is no backup option yet. - Web20Critic

If chrome crashes, report it! Make a note of what you were doing and blog it, microshare it, post it on the chromium blog etc. This way all of us can help make it work for us! Nice thread for tech support, Mr Scoble! - Web20Critic

7. Because Chrome has a new and improved version every week/month/quarter (depending upon the distribution channel) whereas IE version comes once in 3 years. - Varun Mahajan

Robert: How did you get IE8 on Windows 7??? The installer refused to run when i tried. - Roberto Bonini

Roberto: it came with Windows 7. Or so I thought. I already had it loaded on this machine before I upgraded. - Robert Scoble