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Rollo

I already have a new Screen 19inch LED Benq Seneye 3... 1440 / 900 ...IT is fabulous much better than my old one.

I did not know you could make FireFox look like IE that is what I will miss...it sounds like a better way to go than going to Windows 8 and cheaper to boot .

I am in Western Australia bottom South West, you have probably heard of all our Shark attacks by now.

You are a wealth of knowledge again thankyou very much.

sue :-D

IE8 is so far outside of the box by now that for developers the only practical way of dealing with it is either (a) keep the site very simple and make it look good with nice graphics and such or or (b) code the site again for IE8. (b) is what many big sites with loads of people do. Genes does not have a boat load of people and simply cannot afford to devote resources to a basically dead browser and obsolete OS when there are free browser alternatives available.

Asking for GRU to sort out the problems with IE8 ( especially relating to the tree) is the same as asking members using other browsers ( inc IE9 ) to do without other improvements ... obviously unfair. The old GRU in ITV days used Flash for the tree but that is no longer an option, hence GRU use of html5 which IE8 cannot do very well.

There is a Windows 8 theme for Firefox. So install Firefox and then the IE8 theme and you will have a working browser looking the same as IE8.

I have noticed that a lot of IE8 users dislike the now universal method of "tabbed browsing" with tabbed windows. They prefer to have a bunch of distinct browser windows open ... Well most people found this approach a right mess hence the shift to tabbed browsing. If you must have each url open it its own window (an approach certain to slow older computers down) then Firefox can be set to do that.

Xp users will get better results with these two ez adjustments:
(1) right click on the desktop, choose Properties / Effects then choose "ClearType" instead of "Standard" for font rendering. ClearType is on by default with Vista/Win7.
(2) for the taskbar select "view with large icons"

Another way in which IE8 / XP users can help themselves is to get a better monitor. It is possible to get a widescreen LCD monitor 1440x900 for instance on eBay for around £20. Save shipping by looking for items nearby. I recently bought 2x19in displays for £ 10 ... computing does not have to cost a fortune. Most notebooks can be connected to an external screen. Of course it might be tad harder in the outback of NSW.


good luck

Rollo

Thankyou for your help...I really appreciate it :-)

AS far as I can see it is W XP IE8 that seems to be having most of the problems on here ...I still think they should make the site work for all of us not just the ones with the most up to date Browsers.

I don't know when W 8 is being lauched here in OZ :-S

An AMD SEMPRON 3000 will run Win8 Upgrade just fine. It would be a very good idea to upgrade the memory to 2 GB though. If you are lucky you will have 1 GB RAM and one or more empty slots. More likely you will have 2 x 512 and only 2 slots so you will need to buy new RAM. Use the old RAM as a reference for buying new - 2 GB will cost about $40 US. Kingston Value RAM is best value though it is not so pretty. See Youtube on how to fit - it takes a couple of minutes once the case is off. Do not buy (much cheaper) secondhand or Chinese sourced RAM unless you know what you are doing.

SATA2 drives are as cheap as chips these days and with 250GB should be around $ 50-100 US.

It is not possible to have both a fully patched xp/sp3 installation and IE6 as some elements of Microsoft updates require IE7 or better. It is quite impossible to have different versions of IE on the same machine. Due to the way GRU deals with running on IE it would not very much surprise me if it was ok on IE6 for the boards, be a tad surprised if IE6 ran the tree though.

Some people are finding that this site works better with IE 6 :)

Rollo

Thank You for that info on Windows 8......I am at this time looking into getting Windows 8 but here in OZ I am told it is going to cost me a lot of money to change from XP.

I only have I Gig of Ram...is this enough to have Windows 8 on my computer

I have AMD Sempron 3000+64bit S754....what ever that means.
ASUS K8V Mainboard.......80 GB SATA Hard Drive..
IS my computer OK to get Windows 8 installed.

I hope you do not mind me asking you this info but you seem to know what you are talking about re; Computer ...i do not have a clue.

sue :-S

Not really as it depends on the patch (and many others) being installed. As it is an OOB update the initiative relies on the user downloading and installing the update. In any case this is just the latest in a very long run of serious IE security failings.

Taking home users first there are a great many who do not have Microsoft Updates enabled in any case for various reasons - distrust of Microsoft, non valid licence etc etc, system "ok as it is it works don't change anything" ..... These users will not download the patch now nor will they in future.

A lot of organisations are still using XP and tend to rely on corporate firewalls and somewhat moth eaten update policies which are very slow to get urgent patches installed. Another security hole.

Chrome just auto updates as and when required. Firefox, Opera ditto.

Given the generally poor performance of IE8, its increasing inability to render modern web pages correctly and the long long history of security holes and the availability of free alternatives using an alternative browser is a bit of a no brainer.

Windows8 aka Metro will be released later this month. Upgrades for XP / VISTA genuine owners will be about £ 25. Win8 will run on most of the machines currently using XP. It also comes with IE10.

I haven't used IE on any sort or regular basis for over 8 years, preferring Firefox over everything else I have tried.

However I do keep up to date copies - IE8 on my XP and IE9 on my W7 PC - as backup browsers and for the rare occasion when you have to use IE.

Looks like it may have been "fixed"

http://www.zdnet.com/internet-explorer-safe-to-use-again-after-zero-day-patch-germany-decides-7000004794/#loop

That's a worry.

I will email friends in Germany, ask what they know.

hi

Apart from all these versions of IE being bottom of the heap when it comes to rendering web pages they also have terrible security problems. Some of these problems are built in, a lot more are due to the tendency of IE users to pick up "toolbars" both on purpose and unwanted and unknown. These tool bars often slow performance and sometimes host malware.

The German Federal Govt has advised its citizens not to use IE on account of security issues - any version.

Here is one of the most recent hacks which applies to all versions.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/17/yet_another_explorer_zero_day/

Get another browser. Do it today.