Image via Wikipedia

IE8 is finally out, well it has been, but it now no longer has the “beta” tag. IE8 has a few upgrades from IE7 in many cases, but it has some major problems that would make it really hard for the masses to sing its praises.

We’ll look at some of the good things first. The look of IE8 doesn’t change much from IE7, so it’s not like you have to learn how to use it all over again or figure out where all the buttons are. The privacy mode is a very helpful tool because it doesn’t store any details of your browsing session, as long as it’s on.

The tab system has a new feature, color-coding. When you open a new tab by following a link on a website, it’s instantly given the same color as the parent tab, helping you keep things in order. As for now, this is where the neat things end.

As for the cons, we’ve found that IE8 is less stable then IE7, and we’re talking more than just crashes. Hang-ups seem to be frequent, to the point where you can’t even close the window. It’s kind of odd considering that IE8 only uses (18MB) of memory upon launching, compared to Firefox (26MB) and Safari 3 at (34MB), so it’s not that it’s gobbling up memory.

You’re also going to see slow page downloads somewhere around 4.3 seconds, compared to 3.4 seconds for IE7, that’s the slowest of the three major browsers. You’re probably thinking “so what? It’s one second”, but when you’re looking at the average user only spending around 9 seconds on a page before he or she bounce’s, that’s not what web designers want to hear.

A new tool that you’ll need a lot is called “Compatibility Mode,” which lets IE8 pretend its IE7. The button is located to the far right of the address bar and the reason is, for years, designers have been making two versions of their site, one that will work in IE and one for everyone else. Now with IE8 finally changing its engine, those “IE” versions wouldn’t look so hot without the use of this feature.

There is also another good reason IE8 is equipped with this feature. Big names like eBay, Apple.com, Facebook, Google, and even their own site, Microsoft.com do not render properly in IE8. Microsoft however has implemented a running table of sites that automatically falls back to “Compatibility Mode” so you won’t even see the icon when you visit these sites.

Are you excited about the new changes IE8 has made to make it more mainstream for designers and viewers? Or has it gone on too long that it just creates more problems trying to fix the existing one?