Quicksand Fans

Hey gang!

I finally had to download IE8, as IE7 was crashing about once an hour. IE8 is better- only crashes once a day.

My "other browser" is currently Apple Safari, which I use when a page won't load or otherwise screws up in IE.

What would you folks recommend instead of IE8?

Without hesitation, Firefox.

I use Opera though I do have to use IE occasionally on sites that require its features such as, of course, Microsoft.

nachtjaeger wrote:Hey gang!

I finally had to download IE8, as IE7 was crashing about once an hour. IE8 is better- only crashes once a day.

My "other browser" is currently Apple Safari, which I use when a page won't load or otherwise screws up in IE.

What would you folks recommend instead of IE8?

If you like to tweak your browser to create something that fits you the best way, then it's Firefox. If you don't want to tweak anything - it's Opera. With Opera you will have a lot of things that you probably don't need. With Firefox you'll have to choose some addons and install them, otherwice it's rather poor. But if you manage to choose a good set of addons, your Firefox will be better than Opera... And maybe best of all.

Still, you'll have to use IE time to time (at least for WindowsUpdate).

You may want to try Google Crome as well.

There is an add-on for Firefox called "IE Tab" that will use the IE engine to display a page when it doesn't work properly in Firefox. Believe it or not, it does with with Windows Update (at least for me). You can toggle between the IE engine and Firefox by right-clicking the tab and selecting "Switch rendering engine".

This works for Vista, XP, and 2000.

Sure it's IE7 and not something related to your computer? Just asking because I've used it ever since it came out and never had a problem.

IE 7 has never failed me that I can recall. I keep all the latest patches, fixes, updates in place. I also keep things up to date for all the plug-ins and Java. I've played with Google Chrome some but I'm not ready to pass judgement on that yet.

SeaMonkey!!!

Yes, it's a real program. It's basically a community-supported continuation of Mozilla Suite, the web browser/email client/web editor program that was the Mozilla flagship product before the Mozilla Firefox web browser and Thunderbird email client were released. I like it, because it installs only one copy of the Gecko engine which is used by Mozilla web browsers to render web pages. If I install both Firefox and Thunderbird, each program installs its own copy of Gecko. Thunderbird needs it to render email messages that use web page code and pictures.

It doesn't work with all of the add-ons designed for Firefox, if you're into that sort of thing. Netscape-standard plugins like Adobe Flash work great, though.

I don't have any of the newer versions of IE installed on my system. SeaMonkey works pretty good for close to all of the web sites I frequent. And the SeaMonkey email client has worked great. I don't use the web editor, but I never knew anybody who does.

With my personal experiences (I have a desktop 32 bit with vista and laptop 64 bit with Vista). I never had any real problems with IE 7. It would crash every once in awhile, but no real problems. IE 8 runs worse. Issues from crashing to playing videos or Java. Its a little faster. But no real improvement at least from what I've seen.

Firefox is what I mainly use. But some websites aren't completely compatible with Firefox. So unfortunately its not the be all end all for browsers. At least for me.

I've heard good things about Google Chrome. Haven't personally tested it yet. But might be an option. The look of it is very simplistic and more "user-friendly".