Website issues with Internet Explorer 8

Lanny Dean

Lanny Dean

EF5
Joined
Dec 21, 2007
Messages
537
Location
Springfield, Missouri
After a very long and painful phone call with my website hosting company, it appears that there are some major issues with the new IE 8.
I know many of us have our own weather websites and even blog sites so I felt compelled to post this info with the hopes and recommendations that no one upgrade to Internet Explorer 8. This also includes those that do not have a website as well.

I recieved a phone call this evening from a client informing me that my website was "jacked" and after inspection I realized it was messed up really bad. I attempted to fix this myself a few times by shifting text and or code and then by trying to re-write the code for a few options... all to no avail.

At that point I decided to contact my hosting company and as I mentioned above, after a long and painful conversation and realizing that I had upgraded both the desktop and laptop to IE 8 we finally found the problem.
It appears that with the new Microsoft IE update there are many many issues with HTML code parameters. This includes Dreamweaver, Frontpage as well as many of the parameters used by some of the other hosting companies such as GoDaddy, Website Tonight and many other smaller type hosting companies using that type of HTML editors and parameters.

I understand that the new IE8 was built for security due to the issues with IE6 and with the new update Microsoft is holding steady regarding their proprietary software and or ALL HTML coding or parameters....in other words they are not willing to help figure out what issues and fixes need to be addressed for ANY WEB HOSTING COMPANY per Microsoft.

For those that do have hosting companies such as GoDaddy or the like,
you WILL HAVE ISSUES....even if you yourself do not make the upgrade,
people that have upgraded and who are trying to view your website will also have HTML issues.
This could/would cause issues such as pictures or video misplaced, "running text", video not displayed or not playing, missing text, incorrect alignment and many other issues.

Currently via Microsoft and my hosting company there is no fix....understanding that I could roll back my version of Internet Explorer or even go with another browser, this does not help for those that have already upgraded and try to view a webpage that might have those type of parameters.

Might be a good idea to check with your hosting company especially if they have or offer those types of HTML editors and simple code writers.
 
You might advise your clients using IE8 to run using compatability mode for your web pages until this problem is rectified.
 
Seems to me that if IE8 was really that bad then there woould have been numerous comments made about this incompatability. I just checked your web site and it looks / functions all right on my end using IE8. What exactly is "jacked up"?
 
This is sort of unrelated but I have installed IE8 twice only to revert back both times. Keep in mind that I am pretty much computer-illiterate but every time I would open IE8, the computer would slow way down. So, I would check in task manager, and there would be two instances of IE8 running--one hidden in the background. I thought virus, but I ran every scan that I could think of to no avail. When I would revert back to IE6, no more problem.
 
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Google the words IE8 and "disaster" and see how many hits you get. :p

Running IE version-anything with Firefox available (free) is like driving a Yugo when there is a perfectly good Lexus in your garage.

In any event, Microsoft has a standards-breaking "fix" for this (surprise, surprise). It looks like you (or your web guy) have/has tried it, but you aren't doing it according to the directions.
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/06/10/introducing-ie-emulateie7.aspx
  • On a per-page basis, add a special HTML tag to each document, right after the <head> tag
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />
​
Click to expand...
Yours isn't right after the head tag on your home page. (Didn't check any others). No idea as to whether this "fix" will make any difference... and you may be trading one problem for potentially others because the page above also says:
NOTE: The X-UA-Compatible tag and header override any existing DOCTYPE.
Click to expand...
Sheesh. Google "IE8" and "rant" and see how many hits you get. :cool:

By the way, doing that will get you a better fix for the problem, assuming you have a PHP site (or want to convert your pages to PHP). It's better because you are in effect changing the DOCTYPE for only IE8 users, rather than everyone (targeting the fix).
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Greg Higgins said:
Seems to me that if IE8 was really that bad then there woould have been numerous comments made about this incompatability. I just checked your web site and it looks / functions all right on my end using IE8. What exactly is "jacked up"?
Click to expand...

I agree -- it looks fine to me in IE8 right now. Maybe he changed something?

Lanny, did you make a screenshot of what "jacked up" looked like? If you designed your website in IE7 or older versions of IE, just realize that you probably didn't build it to WC3 standards since IE hasn't ever really been good at standards compliance (which is why some sites would look different in Firefox and Opera than they did/do in IE). IE8, apparently, is considerably better in terms of standards compliance, but this means that IE8 may 'break' some websites that were designed for IE. If only every web browser were in full compliance with the WC3 standards...

FWIW, I primarily do my 'website checking' in Firefox, though I check any changes of my website in IE as well. I haven't really made any major changes to the layout of my site in 4 years now, but it's always a good idea to make sure your site looks okay in several of the major web browsers (in the least, Firefox and IE, and you probably want to make sure the layout is as desired in Apple's Safari as well).
 
I use almost exclusively Google Chrome, it is very very fast,
and occasionnally I use Firefox too. There are a few sites or functions which don't work with Chrome, in those rare cases I look at Firefox.



I think having I.E. on my computer is like having a flat spare tire....
 
I hear you guys, but the problem is not what browser we use, but what our audience uses. IE usage is shrinking, but it is still far-and-away the #1 browser by the masses so as a web site owner/designer you really can't deny it and have to make sure it looks good in it.

That normally involves separate CSS stylesheets for IE, or at the very least your CSS generally has to include IE "hacks".

A couple of sites to help you check your site, as it appears in different browsers:
http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/index.php
http://browsershots.org/
 
Darren Addy said:
I hear you guys, but the problem is not what browser we use, but what our audience uses. IE usage is shrinking, but it is still far-and-away the #1 browser by the masses so as a web site owner/designer you really can't deny it and have to make sure it looks good in it.
Click to expand...


true...
hey, remember how a few years ago a lot of websites wrote on the top a line such as " best seen at 800x600 pixel resolution " or more ? well maybe nowadays one should write on top of one's website a line like this :

"Plan B : if this site is showing poorly on your computer you should try another browser ... it doesn't hurt to widen your horizons ... " and then put a link to download firefox , chrome, safari.
 
Darren Addy said:
I hear you guys, but the problem is not what browser we use, but what our audience uses. IE usage is shrinking, but it is still far-and-away the #1 browser by the masses so as a web site owner/designer you really can't deny it and have to make sure it looks good in it.

That normally involves separate CSS stylesheets for IE, or at the very least your CSS generally has to include IE "hacks".

A couple of sites to help you check your site, as it appears in different browsers:
http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/index.php
http://browsershots.org/
Click to expand...


Darren certainly drives the point home regarding what our audience is using. This is exactly what I meant but obviously didn't word it that well (sorry)
For those interested, Microsoft does know about the issues and problems....they just don't care and that makes this really very frustrating.

Just an update, WE (my hosting comapny and I) did change some code parameters and are trying to use WC3 as a whole. These standards are supposed to work but....while it does appear that this has fixed a few of the issues I still am having trouble with others.

This seems to be a daily battle one which may take a long while.

BTW, Jeff Snyder thanks for your input.....I took that information directly to my hosting service and it certainly helped.
 
Besides CSS, you'll also want to keep in mind that IE uses their own proprietary JavaScript rendering engine which can sometime handle things differently when compared to V8 (Chrome), WebKit (Apple/Safari) and TraceMonkey (Firefox) rendering engines.
 
Hi Lanny, I just check your website out and only noticed 1 picture that wasnt aligned properly, everything else appears to be where it should be.

I also checked out your html code from the w3c validator http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.extremechasetours.com%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0

I dont know if these errors or codes are the problem but you might want to fix everything just to be sure.

As for my website, it appears that IE8 didnt make my site look different or jacked and I wonder if that is because my site passes the w3c validation.

If you need help with getting your html w3c complaint I wouldnt mind helping.

-gerrit
 
One of the primary reasons for the release of IE8 was so that the Microsoft browser would be HTML compliant – this was not the case with IE7 and before. In many cases this has exposed coding errors on sites that appeared to render OK on IE7 (hence the IE8 compatibility switch back to IE7) but now appear broken in IE8.

As Gerret has mentioned – getting your web site code WC3 compliant first is the way forward.

Regarding browser stats try ~ http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Most corporates run IE, while most home users run FF.

Not only do you have to make sure that your renders correctly on each browser platform – you also have to consider different display sizes as well.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp

1024 x 768 used to be the standard, but now you want to be aiming for 1280 x 1024 – this can leave a lot of “white space” ether side of your site if you are not careful.
 
Stuart Robinson said:
1024 x 768 used to be the standard, but now you want to be aiming for 1280 x 1024 – this can leave a lot of “white space” ether side of your site if you are not careful.
Click to expand...

People can choose their own approaches, but I would respectfully disagree with this. The fact that I'm reading this page, over my morning coffee, on an old but serviceable laptop that has a maximum screen resolution of 1024 x 768 may have something to do with that :eek: but it also has an underlying false premise that higher resolution monitors = browser windows of the same width. The idea of higher resolution is often to have more windows/applications on screen at the same time - not to have a web page running "wall to wall". I have higher resolution 24" monitors on my desk at work, but I don't open my windows to the full width of my screen real estate and would resent it if people designed pages so that I would have to.

As a web developer, I personally favor designs that have a fixed 960 pixel wide multi-column "page" that floats centered on the screen, with background showing on either side. There are a number of flexible 960 grid systems out there (YAML, 960 Grid System, Fluid 960 Grid System, Yahoo UI Grids System or Blueprint CSS, for example) that provide a place to start. I'm very anti-reinventing-the-wheel and the grid systems give you a real head start over a blank page.

There are differences in the various ways that javascript rendering engines process code, but I'm not aware of any browser/engine-specific coding problems (hacks) that need to be done for any of the modern ones. I could be wrong. Also, Webkit is also used by Google's Chrome now (a highly optimized version is used in Chrome and Safari 4.0) called Squirrelfish Extreme, which beats the pants off other engines and in particular IE8 beta (getting back to the original subject) which is in distant last place. So much for Microsoft innovation.
 
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