A Long Way to Go to Release
I installed the latest Beta of Internet Explorer on my work laptop yesterday. In part, I was hoping to find out whether the last two applications I built which embed an Internet Explorer browser as the user interface (which is a _great_ way to build an application’s UI quickly) would work for our customers that upgrade their browser. Unfortunately, I never did find out.
I patiently wated through the annoyingly long download and mandatory reboot — especially annoying because long before the install completed, Windows started nagging me about needing to reboot before the Windows updates would be installed. Finally after everything was ready, I clicked on the Internet Explorer icon and was greeted by the distinctive new look: distinctively ugly. Perhaps, if you’re running with the default XP theme (A.K.A. Crayola’s _My First Computer_) the new Internet Explorer chrome might fit in. But when you’re running the legacy Windows theme (especially when you have all UI elements set to a muted warm grey), the new chrome looks really ugly. But I didn’t get to worry about the ugliness for long.
My real worry was that the entire browser was hung and using 99% of the CPU. I couldn’t move the window. I couldn’t close the window. I could barely even use the machine.
I rebooted several times, but the problem persisted: every time I launched Internet Explorer, it hung and consumed the entire processor.
Finally, totally exasperated, I removed the Beta from my computer and reverted back to Internet Explorer 6, which may be buggy, but at least it works.