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IE8 is whacked!

IE8 is whacked, they say!!!

And I just wonder if the “Microsoft-Programmers” are just another human-beings like us, delivering buggy releases but on-time? And then providing fixes/patches for the latest release? Well, that’s what I recently was hit upon…

For some reason while browsing a message was popped up asking if I would want to install the “latest-fastest-greatest” Microsoft Internet Explorer 8? Well, I thought for a while and then I clicked on the OK button.

It took around 10 minutes for the application to down and 10 more minutes to get the installation complete; but that not it, because it also requires you to restart your pc.

And since I was in the middle of developing an ASP.NET/AJAX based solution, I decided to restart later on. But poof! My ASP.NET website that was working like charm since last two weeks stopped working!

I was unable to insert text in the text boxes on my website?! … not even in my dreams I thought this has to do with the IE installation; I kept on fixing my code to no avail. Then somehow I was “blessed” with this wild question if IE8 installation is the reason causing this waste-of-time? In order to get the answer to that question, I had to restart.

Restart, worked; I was able to open ASP.NET website. But POOF again!

Menus... gone!
Toolbar... gone!

We both (myself and IE8) stared at each other for a while in despair, and I was completely lost!

Google, my 911 came to rescue with a surprise when I found a “fix” for the “latest(approximately six months old IE8)”, which is called Microsoft Fixit; Dint work!

Then, after more 911 calls, I was able to find the settings. For any website that is not working in IE8, you will have to:
1. Run the Fixit
2. Change the site compatibility view

Well, the less knowledged the less previliged(myself), atlast saved me from the blessings of a brand new compatibility view feature. After all of this effort my ASP.NET website worked fine and looked nice in Internet Explorer 8.

But that’s not the end of the story, not yet!

Fortunately, my Visual Studio 2005 Debug Mode stopped working! (0: Truly blessed IE8 and my lucky day. I came across this peculiar problem with my VS2005 IDE; to debug, when I pressed F5(debug) and ran the application, my webpage was displayed in the browser but IDE was not entering into the debug mode and still the pause/end buttons on the toolbar were disabled, which meant my application is not running.

Everything was perfect just an hour ago without this IE8! Was my very thought at that moment.

And then google asked me, if I installed IE8? With a quick nodds I said "Oh yes, master Draco";

To fix this I followed following steps:

1. Open RegEdit
2. Browse to HKEY_LOCALMACHINE -> SOFTWARE -> Microsoft -> Internet Explorer -> Main
3. Add a DWORD under this key called TabProcGrowth
4. Set TabProcGrowth to 0 (zero)

Happy IE8ing…! (0: