Why is Internet Explorer 8 messing up my website look and feel?

Question

My website look and feel is not 100% the same in Internet Explorer 8 as it use to be with Internet Explorer 7. My site is created with VS 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0.

How can I fix this?
Is there a way to fix this?

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Edit:

For those who want to see my website, it is Located Here - Some borders are diff. and the Email/Username text box in the Login Control in WAY at the top and actual Login Control width is less now.

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Edit:

Those who view my site from now on will not see what I am talking about from now on since I made some changes to the site and fixed the problems.

Answer 1

Short-term: put this in your HTML.

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />

It's a horrid hack and Microsoft should be kicked in the nether regions for it, but it works.

Long-term: fix whatever's breaking to work in IE8. Without seeing the page itself we can't give you all that many suggestions on what specifically to focus on.

Answer 2

Add the IE7 meta tag: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/readiness/developers-new.aspx#versioning

Answer 3

Internet Explorer 7 had some rendering flaws that have been corrected in Internet Explorer 8. It is impossible to answer this question without knowing more details. I am quite positive that this question is not related to c# or .net, but rather with html and css.

Please describe in detail some of the problems you're having, and I'm sure a lot of us will be able to help you out with them.

Answer 4

I just want to add some reference material, since the other answers are the same: use the IE7emulate tag.

Check the IE Blog about IE8 compatibility and the EmulateIE7 tag itself.

Answer 5

The safest way to do this is by adding an HTTP header to your site:

X-UA-Compatible: IE=EmulateIE7

not with the meta tag as mentioned in most answers. Note that the http header is set on a per-site basis rather than a per-page basis.

This is because the meta tag does not alter the browser user-agent (which is obvious if you think about it - the user-agent has already been read by the time IE8 reaches the meta tag), which can cause browser sniffing to be incorrect. For example, the browser detection in YUI 2.7 incorrectly treats IE8 with the IE7 meta-tag as IE8, which causes problems. You can read more about the differences between the header and meta-tag approaches here

Answer 6

Long term answer: you may want to validate the XHTML/HTML output of your site by going to the W3 Validator website.

As of this writing, your default page has 36 errors and 3 warnings. The validator also provided hints and tips over how to solve the errors. If you're stuck, you can always ask for more information on specific issues here.

Answer 7

Long term strategy - when you are constructing your HTML/CSS, do so in Firefox and then adapt your CSS for IE and others. IE8 and FF are nearly identical in terms of standards compliancy at this point, so you could use IE8 as well (but still check in FF!).

Also, STOP SUPPORTING IE6!! IT NEEDS TO DIIEEEE

Answer 8

Doesn't look right in Chrome/Safari/Firefox either, so this really isn't an IE8 problem.

The problem is that you designed a site to look good in one outdated browser rather than developing to the standards and testing in multiple browsers.

In the future, design your site to look good in IE8, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. Then, add specific work-arounds for IE6 and IE7, if your audience is still using those browsers.

If you can make something look right in three of the above browsers, you'll probably be fine when any of those browsers upgrades in the future (IE9, Firefox 4, etc.).

Answer 9

You could also in the future - build your apps in Silverligt 3 (RTM Tomarrow 7/10) and not worry about the browser at all :)

Answer 10

My website look and feel is not 100% the same in Internet Explorer 8 as it use to be with Internet Explorer 7. My site is created with VS 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0.

How can I fix this? Is there a way to fix this?

Nothing new. Microsoft does this with every major release of IE. Abide by standards, and hope IE becomes standards compliant one day. Additional to standards, provide IE browser specific tweaks to ensure it is rendered correctly with that release.