IEX8 Page Rendering Issues?

[mcneely]

I received a note from a client recently that had to do with the page view as presented under IEX8.

It appears that the site shows gaps/gapping (maybe 15-20px) of white space both toward the top and the bottom portions of the pages that can only be seen under IEX8.

As it happens, the site was built by us, and eventually passed on to the client after a period of time. At the time of the build, everthing was XHTML Compliant, and there were no known coding issues.

The site viewed best under FF3, with IEX7 and Opera9 placing second equally.

I have had reservations about upgrading to IEX8 however, in not wanting to have to go through too many possible bugs or work arounds with regard to the browser itself as they might relate to the html/site coding we do. FF3, IEX7, and Opera9 have been our mainstays for testing purposes. (Chrome hasn't been around long enough for us to consider it for use under site test views)

I've looked for documentation online with regard to IEX8 rendering issues and have come up a bit short on the subject.

Since the site was built under compliancy and still shows as such, I wrote back to the client and suggested that he downgrade from IEX8 to IEX7, as this is the most common browser version in use at this time.

As far as I know, the site owner hasn't messed about with the html at all (can be a good thing) and he has said as much to that effect.

My question would be;
Are there known issues with the IEX8 rendering that I need to be aware of? Or are we going to have to stop relying so heavily on the web 2.0/XHTML verification processes that we are currently using?

[dbartholomew]

IE8 will settle down and render older pages as if they are in IE7, if you add this meta tag to each page:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />

Thanks Microsoft...!

[swa66]

I did see extra padding/margins on one site with a beta release of IE8, make sure the tests are in the actually released version.

I've not seen any deviant behavior yet of IE8 in real world situations (and I've seen tons in legacy IE versions), esp. not for standard compliant designs.

Downgrading from IE8 or using that Microsoft "hack" to get it to stay in IE7 aren't a future proof ways forward IMHO.

What I'd check:
Make sure your legacy IE CSS hacks and workarounds are all in conditional comments only targeting legacy IE versions. Validate the CSS as well as the (x)html.