IE8 Inconsistent Rendering when Reloading

Answer 1

Highly possible it's a bug. Have you reported it?

I'm guessing it's not possible to just change the web-page so it works in both browsers?

Answer 2

Kinda weird that a refresh it what screws it up. I have no idea what that problem is or how to fix it. I wonder what it does to my site then. o_o Didn't notice any problems when I first tested it on IE8 Beta.

It seems that divs are overlapping each other (for whatever reason, even if the math is right, sometimes IE will yell at you if divs come shoulder to shoulder with each other). You could try setting the header container div (and all the container divs, for that matter) to overflow:hidden; That usually fixes this problem. You could also try editing your navigation list (the ul, not the li-s) by putting a width or setting its display to inline. I doubt that will change anything, the container divs is probably the issue, but its worth a try if all else fails.

Good luck!

Answer 3

Not an answer, but since I can't comment yet...

I can confirm this behaviour using IE8 on an internal site I maintain. The site was always targeted for Firefox but now they are asking me to fix up some of more glaring IE issues. At first I added the IE7 compat meta key, but kept seeing weird rendering when I refreshed the page. Thought it might be the meta key so I took that out and I still get the issue.

When the page is loaded fresh (enter in the address bar) everything looks great. Hit refresh and several issues crop up, including box model sizing and float/clear ordering issues.

I just confirmed this on another site of mine - renders perfect on first load - hit refresh and it all goes to hell.

The fact that I cannot find other mentions of this behaviour causes me some worry that I am doing something wrong - but my sites all work in Firefox/Chrome/Safari across windows and mac, and previously worked well enough in IE7.

Answer 4

fwiw, I have seen FF render inconsistently, typically on strict xhtml docs - check your doctypes, and see if degrading to transitional removes the inconsistency (even if it brings other problems, it gives you a pointer)

Answer 5

I have almost the reverse problem - pages that render fine in everything else bork in IE8 and IE6...sometimes. Once they are fine, they stay fine so it also appears to be a caching issue, eg: the browser is guessing the sizes of some items before they have been loaded, but using actual sizes once the items are in the cache.

In my case, it's guessing wrong before the cache, and getting it right afterwards. With your problem, it maybe guessing right (how you want it to be) before caching, but borking when using the cached files on reload.

Just a thought. I may be barking up the wrong tree with this, but I thought I'd mention it while I saw your post.

Answer 6

I'm having the same problem. My page loads perfectly if I hit enter in the address bar. If I hit refresh, it's screwed up. I can then hit enter in the address bar and it looks great again. This is ridiculous... why would it load two different ways? No-cache headers make no difference.

Answer 7

CompanionJS was the problem for me as well. Thanks for the solution to this unbelievable problem!

Answer 8

It's not just CompanionJS. I've never had that add-on installed for IE8. But I am still having these issues too, most prominently random broken Javascript errors due to scripts that didn't load.

I had some NuSphere PHPEd toolbar add-on, but removed it. Problems persist. Only other add-ons include Adobe PDF Reader Link Helper, Google Toolbar Notifier BHO, Java(tm) Plug-In 2 SSV Helper, JQSIEStartDetectorImpl Class.

Answer 9

I have this issue in IE8 too: on first load things are screwed up, on second load everything is fine. I don't have that toolbar installed. Only toolbar I have more than mentioned is the MSN toolbar (don't use it, but MS insists on installing it).