IE9 looking good

HFM

Yeah, I also kept IE (beside Safari, Chrome, Opera and Firefox) just to see what it screws up when I am building a website. You always need to be cautious with that (like Martin also quoted something like that)

You don't have to have IE installed to test your site. You can download IEtester http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage which wil test IE from 5.5 [insane if you wan't to optimize your site for this version, but ok] to the latest version which is 8 at this point.

This program illustrates my most hated point about IE, every version handles differently! Unlike Mozilla who started with a good base and build on top of that, Microsoft seems to go a different direction every time a new version comes. Therefore I'm not to happy with the new version, since it probably means you have to build your site for IE 7,8 and 9 [no, no 6 here... If you still use IE6 you should pull the plug from your pc or slap your boss in the face ]

thomthom

Well, in terms of using IE for webdesign - I've found that when working with HTML strict and first making the site against FF/Opera/Webkit, there's often not that much work with IE7 and IE8. Using jQuery I avoid most JS cross compatibility issues.

And with IE9 MS is submitting more tests to W3C to ensure all browser vendors can test their own engine. Good example is the border radius and border style - nearly all the browsers has a different take on this. My impression from the articles was that these new tests would help in filling in the gaps that exists in the current specs.

When you say you don't like the new version - why? You want IE to stop updating again? Have them halt at IE8 as they did with IE6? Haven't we (the webdevelopers) been ranting for years that MS should update IE more frequently?
Have you tried the tech preview they offer? I had a quick look - but did not compare the stuff they features against other browsers.

@hfm said:

If you still use IE6 you should pull the plug from your pc or slap your boss in the face ]

I want the plug to be pulled on IE7 as well. Now that IE development seem to accelerate - I can only wish that the phasing out of older IE versions will occur more often.

HFM

Well yeah, I/we have been ranting about updating IE. But it feels more like the're changing it with every number. Now, I'm sure as hell not a professional web designer, but isn't it strange that with IE we're talking about version 6,7 and 8 as if they were different programs and with Firefox it's just Firefox?

As for IE9, I'm more worried about what they change than happy as to what they will update

MartinRinehart

@hfm said:

Well yeah, I/we have been ranting about updating IE. But it feels more like the're changing it with every number.

If you are a very big, very rich software company you can have team A working on version N, while team B works on version N+1. As a guess, the IE8 team is now on IE10.