Internet Explorer 8 in Windows XP

Question

I have witnessed how Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is in Windows XP and how it is in Windows Vista/7. Quite strangely, IE8 seems to be acting like IE7 for certain aspects of CSS and JavaScript (maybe for other elements too). Am I the one who is seeing things? Otherwise, if this is true why is this happening and what are the major differences in IE8 for Windows XP and IE8 for Windows Vista/7?

Answer 1

The difference between IE8 on XP vs. Vista vs. Windows 7 should be minimal.

The majority of the differences are with the chrome (e.g. the styling of the scrollbars or the arrow on a drop down list).

That said, IE8 does have something called Compatibility Mode that when turned on, causes IE8 to render content as if it were IE7. It's the broken page icon at the right of the address bar. When depressed (grayish), it is turned on, and the site is rendering in "IE7 Mode".

Since you have to have at least 2 machines to have made the comparison in the original question, you may want to verify they are both viewing sites in the same mode.

Finally, the visual quality of the site may be different if one of the machines is setup with "Clear Type" turned on. (its a matter of personal taste, but essentially with it turned on, Windows attempts to anti-alias text to "smooth it out" at the sub-pixel level) This is both a Windows setting and an IE setting (both can be changed independently) you may want to confirm that both machines are setup the way you like.

Answer 2

Make sure that your IE8 that's acting like IE7 hasn't been flipped into "Compatibility Mode". There's a switch on the UI that lets the user flip it into a "behave kind-of like IE7" setting. I just found this out today and it really pissed me off. (I knew that IE8 could do that, but I didn't know it was under user control!)

Here's a trick: take a page that you know should put it into IE8 standards mode, bring it up in your weird-acting browser, and then launch the developer tools and see what it says the page mode is at the top of that window.

Answer 3

Sorry, I am unsure how I can add comment yet, so I am doing this as an answer. IE8 will render HTML with compatibility mode when it comes from the intranet zone. I guess what I happen is that, in Vista/7 intranet mode is turn off by default. But it is on in XP. So the browsers could be running in IE8 mode in vista/7 but IE7 mode in XP.

See Controlling Default Rendering section in the following URL. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288325%28VS.85%29.aspx

Also take a look at the Specifying Document Compatibility Modes section to see if you can force the page to run in IE8 mode, it might help to solve your problem.