IIS7 & IE8 - Pages rendering differently on same versions of IE8?

Question

I have an ASP.NET (framework 2.0) web app running under IIS7. When I run the app on the server, using IE8, localhost the app runs the way it is supposed to. When I run the app in Visual Studio 2008 (framework 2.0) it runs the way it is supposed to. But when I try to run the app from another computer it renders incorrectly. Same versions of IE8.

What would cause the serving of an ASP.NET application to render correctly on the server, but incorrectly when serving to another computer, when the Internet Explorer versions are the same?

Can anyone help?

Answer 1

You can force IE to work in a specific compatability mode with one of the following meta tags in the head:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=4">   <!-- IE5 mode -->
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7.5" > <!-- IE7 mode -->
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=100" > <!-- IE8 mode -->
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=a" >   <!-- IE5 mode --> 

Here is a link to more information regarding the compatibility meta tag:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288325(VS.85).aspx

One other thing you could try is to save the output source on each system and then compare to see if they are the same. If they are identical then it comes down to the rending on the client which is a compatibility setting.