Differences in IE8 behavior between XP, Vista, Win7?

Question

Is there any significant difference in behavior (HTML, CSS, Javascript, ...) with Internet Explorer 8 on different operating systems?

In other words, will a web page work the same way across IE8+XP, IE8+Vista and IE8+Win7, or are there some significant differences?

(I'm aware that installed plugins and fonts will have an impact, but that's a bit outside my scope at the moment; assuming compatibility mode X-UA-Compatible: IE=8 or edge)

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Although The IEBlog contains very useful information, I haven't found this data there - so I'm assuming that there should not be any difference. However, search has turned up this (vague) question: "IE8 on XP: looks great! IE8 on Vista: looks terrible". Will have to check IE8+{XP,V,7} in VM in the meantime.

Answer 1

No. Yes.

To clarify:

• No, there aren't any differences in rendering between operating systems.
• Yes, a web page will in fact work the same on different operating systems.

The whole point of a browser is to be the platform for web sites. Regardless of the underlying operating system.

You may see some differences regarding ActiveX, though. Especially in the number of prompts that are needed to install something.

Answer 2

There are some differences regarding css. When I used two divs, the first floated left and the second overflow:hidden; width:auto; IE8 on windows 7 rendered it correctly whereas IE8 on xp sp2 rendered the second div giving it incorrect width. Wierd!

Answer 3

I have had significant problems on IE8, working from a windows 7 machine I tested the site in IE8 using the standard mode the quirks mode and the IE7 standards mode and had no issues, however my client was using IE8 on an XP machine and told me that there were issues with the layout. I checked the site and it had displayed with significantly different styles.

So yes, there is a difference between IE8 on XP and IE8 on Windows 7.... though I have yet to find out how these differences are happening and how to solve them.

Answer 4

I am interested in differences in behavior between IE8 on Vista and IE8 on Windows 7. The IE8 build numbers are different - which suggests that potentially there could be some differences.

What is Microsoft's official position on this? Do they claim to have no differences between Windows Vista and Windows 7?

Answer 5

There must be any difference, I'm working out what's happening in a page where different computers with windows XP & IE8 one renders it OK but another there is some style fucking arround, it's something about margins....

Answer 6

I also found an other rather stunning difference between IE8 on Vista(64) and IE8 on XP(sp3). The way the value attribute on the button tag is treated. When you use <button value='10'>calculate 10%</button> the value submitted or extracted with javascript comes up with "calculate 10%" instead of 10 (the result on other major browsers) on older IE browsers (known issue) but also on IE8 on Vista. IE8 on XP on the other hand seems to comply to the standard behaviour the other browsers already embraced. Meaning it actually returns 10. Weird

Answer 7

Absolutely diffrent rendering is possible. My project has diffrents view in IE8+xp and IE8+seven. In IE8xp css rendering has significant different with seven

Answer 8

There are at least 6 versions of MSIE 8 and there are likely differences in layout due to bug fixes in the latter releases. A list of versions is available on Microsoft's support site:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969393

MSIE8 on Windows XP is version 8.00.6001.18702 and on Windows 7 is version 8.00.7600.16385.