I have been running Internet Explorer 8 (release candidate 1) for about a month, and am now running the final release version. It definitely includes some noteworthy upgrades, and some noteworthy incompatibilities. Should you upgrade? Right now, I would say “no.”

I’ll start out with the major “con” before getting into the “pros.”

• Many web sites simply do not work in Internet Explorer 8′s new rendering engine (the thing that displays the page once it’s been downloaded to your computer). While IE8 does include a “compatibility mode” to use the older Internet Explorer 7 rendering engine, I suspect most users will not know to turn this on when they encounter problems. (more…)