I once tried IE7Pro and for some reason, it made IE very unstable because it caused IE to constantly crash.
It did for me too, until I disabled some of the other features
it thought I needed - and it crashed with IE8 for me, until I disabled IE7Pro's crash recovery.
Plus, I find the spell checker to be distracting at times.
Hmmm, I find that a bit odd as the spell checker works in the background and is totally invisible, until you misspell a word - then it simply underlines it in red so that it
does get your attention. A simple right click on the word provides a short list of suggested correctly spelled words, or you can add the word to the custom dictionary. You can add pre-built dictionaries (legal or medical dictionaries, for example). It seems totally intuitive to me. I REALLY like that it does "real-time" checking as opposed to my previous favorite, IESpell which I had to remember to run manually on my posts before clicking the submit button.
Perhaps it depends on how concerned one is about correct spelling and the use of grammar. To me,
any writing with misspellings is a distraction, and a detraction from (1) quality and accuracy of the piece, and (2) the
apparent professionalism and integrity of the writer -
fair or not! No one said life was fair.
I used to do a lot of technical writing and editing of technical documents and there's no doubt that a reader's perception of the quality, accuracy, AND understanding of the work is affected by simple spelling and grammar errors. It raises questions as to whether the writer really cares, double-checked his facts, or knows his topic if he can't take the time to pay attention to details, or simply cross the "T"s and dot the "I"s.
Having a real-time spell checker do much of that detail work, for me anyway, is hugely important. Not only does it find most of my mistakes (or my fingers' mistakes - since they sometimes have their own agenda!
), but I think immediate feedback makes me a better speller in the long run.
I recommend anyone using IE8 give
IE7Pro a try. It does uninstall nicely if you don't like it - just be sure to disable Crash Recovery and anything else you don't need. I also disable User Scripts, and the only plug-in I use is AccuWeather which tells me it is now is 32°F and Sunny outside.
Am no fanboi nor zealot. LOL
I'm not either. I have my preferences, but I don't buy into there is only one and all the others suck! And while I generally like MS products, including IE8, I make no bones about bashing MS,
when due. But I also will defend MS, with
zeal, when they are slammed unjustly - especially over security where I remind everyone that
badguys put us in this security situation we are in, not Microsoft. And I remind folks that XP and IE6 came about when security was not much of an issue because the Internet was still in its infancy, most users were not networked, and customers (primarily the huge existing corporate user-base) DEMANDED legacy (read: unsecured old stuff) support of their DOS era (and expensive) hardware and software. MS certainly deserves some of the blame, but not the blunt of it.
For me, speed isn't really an issue.
If you have a half-way decent machine (average CPU, ample amount of RAM, enough free disk space for Windows to play in, something better than entry level on-board graphics), and a fast Internet connection, speed should not be an issue, regardless the browser of choice. If it is, there's probably something else wrong with the computer, or resources are being bogged down by too many other things.
Instead, it's more about the browser's features.
Hmmm. Now that's an interesting point. Rather than drive this topic off on another tangent, please see:
http://www.sevenforums.com/browsers-mail/43409-what-function-feature-should-browser-support.html
