What would cause this behavior in only one person's IE8?

Question

Stack Overflow won't let me post my whole question because I'm an untrusted new user, so if you're interested in this question please visit http://doctype.com/would-cause-behavior-only-one-persons-ie8

The backgrounds in question are drawn with a single-pixel, xy-repeated, semitransparent PNG.

This person's IE8 is drawing this as a gradient that starts at the top left corner and becomes more transparent to the right and below.

I am unable to reproduce this problem in IE8/WinXP/VMwareFusion/SnowLeopard. Also cannot reproduce with IE7 (IE8 in compatibility mode). Also cannot reproduce with IE6 or any other browser.

we are running the same version -- only the product IDs are different.

I confirmed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_8#Release_history that 18702 is a final release version of IE8.

Even tho I did not think it would help, I asked for a list of addons in IE8 -- nothing unusual.

What could be causing this problem for just this one person? The person mentioned that it is a work computer and the IT people are really strict about things. Could any workplace restrictions cause this weird behavior? Could it be a graphics driver issue?

Again, I know this is not an IE8 problem because I have IE8 and cannot reproduce it.

I want to know how might one alter IE8 -- perhaps for security reasons -- so that this behavior is seen? Or, what would cause one specific computer to display things this way?

Answer 1

Are any files (graphics, js, css) being pulled from a server that might be blocked by their office firewall?

I've had this happen, where just one graphic was from some off-limits site, with bizarre results.

Answer 2

My guess is that you're using jQuery, and this bug will pop-up on mouseover for random IE7 and IE8 users. I found one possible fix in a www.farmcode.org blog post:

Wrap the body of your page with the following conditional:

<!--[if IE]><div id="ieWrap"><![endif]—>

(the rest of the page html goes here)

<!--[if IE]></div><![endif]—> 

and add the following CSS for IE:

#ieWrap .productView .productThumbnail a
{        
  background-image: none;        
  filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader
                 (src='grey_overlay.png',sizingMethod='scale');
  width:100%;
}

You'll need to change the CSS to match your situation, but this should get you started.

Answer 3

I have encountered this problem before and the only solution I found is not to use a 1x1 pixel image. Try 1x10 it should fix it.