Rendering problems with IE8

[tristam]

Just downloaded Internet Explorer 8 and my site looks cr*p, misses pictures and text.

There is a button called "compatability view" if you click this it is ok but in normal mode it's no good.

I have just had a look through the members list at other Actinic sites and found others have similar problems and including this forum (can't bring up the search box).

I have found some sites with dynamic menus that don't work.

Has any one else downloaded this yet and found these problems?

I have Actinic 8.5.1.0.0.0 and my site is www.thepenzone.co.uk

Not many people are using this yet so I may have a bit of time to get it sorted.


Porsche Design Pens
Cross fountain pens
Waterman Hemisphere Pen

[tristam]

just found compatability view settings under the Page menu where you can get all web sites to display in compatability view.

Be better to have a proper cure though!

[RuralWeb]

most sites look crap on ie8. The reason is it's strict standards application - compatabiloty mode turns this off.

Ms know about the problems and even googles site does not work - hence the release of chrome. The problem is that if you change your site to work with the beta then when ms change it again which they almost certainly will as the whole of the web design world is complaining about it, your site will be trashed again.

Best move IMO is to watch and wait until the fin al release candidate and work on your site with that. Let's hope that they don't go live with ie8 just before Christmas !!

[gabrielcrowe]

the best move is to produce cross browser compatible code.

[RuralWeb]

agreed but until ms decide what they are doing with ie8 it's all a. It of a waste of time. One original idea was tagging sites so they could tell ie8 how to render them ie use ie7 but this was dropped last I heard when they added compatabiloty mode.

The problem is what web standards are they going to use for the rendering engine - as we all know w3c is soon to be replaced by a new set of standards so it's all down to how ms interpret the standards. Until the final release nobody knows. Even if you produce a standards compliant site now it still may not render correctly so that why I suggest waiting rather than chasing your tail.

Compatabiloty mode is a waste of time as up average surfer is never going to turn it on so they will see the Internet full of crap looking sites. This is going to be one of the biggest changes on the net for many years.

[tristam]

I turned mine onto compatability mode and it is fine. but you are probably right the average surfer won't know about this. It would be nice to get it looking a bit better but as you say I could be just chasing my tail and hopefully MS will do something about it.

I only found out about IE8 this evening and have been playing around with it for a while. So far only .005% of visits to my site have used it so it must be very new.

[RuralWeb]

It's been about for about a year now but is still in beta so that's why there is a low percentage of users. The problem comes when ms release it it will be an auto update so the whole planets will be swapped from ie 7 as most people have thier pcs set to auto download new updates from ms.

I've not heard much recently so it will be interesting to see what happens. Ms view point is that designers have been asking for a browser that will apply web standards for years and now they are getting it. Unfortunatley there are very few designers who use web standards so that's why it has the potential to trash the whole Internet. Big business is complaining because most of thier intranets were designed years ago and use ie5.5 so it's a real problem for them if they are forced to upgrade.

The new standards are far more relaxed than w3c that was just so complicated that people stopped bothering with it so you were left with the anal few who build sites to standards and complain to ms when they don't work. The new standards accept that sites can be built differently and it's the user experience that counts not how it was coded. Your average user could not care less about standards as long as it works in his browser then that's ok.

[CymraegKev]

This is going to be a big issue, but as MS make the point, the web design "community" having been crying out for MS to make a web standards compliant browser for years. They are about to do that. Actually, when MS removed the "tagging" system, a lot of the community embraced the fact that they are going standards compliant.

Ultimately, the whole industry needs to get a grip in my opinion and the W3C (or Mozilla, or MS, or Google..... I don't care really), needs to create a de-facto starting point that all new sites should adhere too. I think the fact that IE8 has a compatibility mode is great. What were the options? Stay with the flawed tagging system or release another browser that was not standards compliant? I think they have picked the ball up and ran with it and it’s up to the other browser manufacturers now to embrace the same ideology
At the end of the day, if you're a purest designer then you want standards. If you are a (what I call) "working" designer, they you just want all the bloody browsers to show the same thing. Unfortunately, that is never going to be the case with existing browsers and it can only be true if all browser producers choose to adopt the same standards and/or rendering engine, whether that is Webkit or an other, it doesn't matter.

Google releasing Chrome has not helped at all. It does render differently to other webkit based browsers, which is completely counter-productive. There is a strong case for Chrome supporting certain Google apps that other browsers cannot display properly. If they all sang from the same hymn sheet then it would be universal.

At the end of the day, I just wish they would all sit down together and get it sorted. It's a PITA. My clients ask me to have a site 100% standards compliant and accessible - I tell them that will double the cost and the time. They usually change their minds.

Bring back tables – that’ what I say

[Darren B]

Google releasing Chrome has not helped at all. It does render differently to other webkit based browsers, which is completely counter-productive.

I was under the impression the rendering engine was taken from another known browser, so they have not reinvented the wheel IMHO merely increased the use of that engine. Was that not Safari's engine.

But regardless of how you look at it IE has always been different and IMHO ie8 is not going to be any sort of standard you might think it is. MS are not in the business of complying to standards they always try to write them

[Darren B]

Bring back tables – that’ what I say

Jont will have you shot at dawn for saying things like that

[CymraegKev]

I was under the impression the rendering engine was taken from another known browser

They use WebKit which is used as the rendering engine for several other browsers. However, they have tweaked it slightly which introduces [minnor] incompatabilities.

[Darren B]

They use WebKit which is used as the rendering engine for several other browsers. However, they have tweaked it slightly which introduces [minnor] incompatabilities.

No different to what MS do all the time then

[CymraegKev]

Yep - exactly. MS have been doing all the time. Hopefully the compliance mode on IE8 will be just that.

[RuralWeb]

Fun times ahead - it will certainly keep us all busy!

[Darren B]

Yep - exactly. MS have been doing all the time. Hopefully the compliance mode on IE8 will be just that.

I do too, means more work but i have serious reservations. As always it would be their interpretation of the standards