So the question basically says it all -- I've got a site that looks one way when I run it locally through the visual studio web server (http://localhost:3452/) and on IIS7 (http://server/myproject/).
At first I thought there was something wrong with my CSS that was not resolving properly, but I believe I've checked all of those things and they appear to be working.
I'm using IE8, (same funkyness happens in FF and IE7) and running locally I see the "compatibility" button in the address bar, but when I access the site thats published to a server, the "compatibility" icon goes away.
I'm using <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
The behavior/display I see locally is the desired behavior/display.
Any help, pointers, and advice is greatly appreciated!
update
After checking the links provided, I believe that I'm running under "intranet" settings -- is there a way to force the IE8 to run in Standards Mode even on an intranet?
update 2
The issue turned out to be my less than awesome CSS that only manifested itself during "intranet" testing. I had not started making my CSS multi-browser compliant, and didn't realize IE8 was running in IE7 mode when hitting "intranet" sites. I fixed my CSS and its all good now.