Internet Explorer 8 in Windows XP - javascript

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?

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.

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.

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.

Related

Problems hiding a page for explorer 10

I am developing a website and ending with the graphical interface that it detected that it was not displayed correctly in the explorer 11. With css fix the problem. But it is poorly displayed in later versions of explorer. I made use of a hack <! - [if lt IE 11]> <! [Endif] -> so that from 10 it was not seen. and what is inside the hack keys will be displayed. That case works for me for all versions except for the 10 that the web is displayed with design errors.
It is assumed that by activating the data-useragent from js I can detect that the browser is ie 10 and modify the css but I have tried to emulate IE 10 from various sources (IE development tools, online emulator (netrenderer) and ietester (desktop application)) and since neither allows me to use JS I use jQuery.
As for the hack I have tried the different conditionals (lt gt!) To see if it takes version 10 but does not do it in any case.
Two known pages (pencode.com, twitter) crash the browser. But both when the tests in the different emulators have different behavior.
Could it be blocked from the server?
Thank you and sorry for the billet. I am somewhat blocked. I cannot put the url because it is in development.

Debugging UC Mini browser

I am doing a web application. While trying to open the webiste on UC mini browser in data saving mode from my mobile device the css styles are not getting compiled.Is there any way to debug?
Thanks in advance.
There are no very good ways to debug it. UCMini (or UCWeb in light speed mode) is a remote proxy browser. As far I know, there is no debug console for it. The only thing you can do is throw JavaScript alert()s to try and debug various JS breakage issues.
But if you are concerned about a very weird layout. Keep in mind that you will never see a normal CSS in those modes. UCMini is not a normal browser. It's a Firefox 10 proxy engine that will shrink your content into a single column, in a similar way Opera Mini does in single column view mode.
A couple good other helpful things to know about that browser's context:
The target screen size is 800x600. So in portrait, it shrinks it all to approximately 600px (in one column), and 800px in landscape. And due to the Firefox 3-10(ish) engine, CSS support is limited.
I could say about our experience (FareCompare.com). Nodejs consoles + Frontend (Dojo) alerts. That's all we could find for our few bugs.
P.S. Pay attention that UC is working in one page mode. As far as I know, it is impossible to open new tab there. window.open() works the same as location.replace( url ).

IE javascript issue fixed by chanding document mode?

Im maintaining a site that I didn't build. It works fine in all browsers except IE where im running into an issue which is quite hard to debug.
I have a modal overlay that you click to close. In my IE 11 browser it wont close. When I have the document mode in the IE dev tools to Edge or 10 it works fine, but 9 (Default) and 8 both don't work.
I cant provide a link to my site or share the code here. I know this isn't very helpful for solving my issue, but what types of issues could be solved by changing the document mode? Could IE's quirks mode be to blame here?
I know this is quite an open ended question but presumably there are a limited amount of issues that apply to my situation?
could quirks mode be to blame?
If you're in compatibility mode (ie doc mode is 10, 9, 8 or 7) then by definition you're not in quirks mode (which is doc mode 5), so the short answer to that part of your question is No, it isn't quirks mode.
However, compatibility mode can cause itself cause issues. The whole point of compatibility mode is that the browser pretends to be an older version of itself. So in doc mode 8, you have IE11 pretending to be IE8.
That pretence isn't hugely accurate (so don't think that you're seeing your site the same as a real IE8 user would see it), but it does mean that IE11 will switch off various browser features in order to make itself work more like IE8.
Therefore, if your code is relying on a browser feature that was introduced after IE9, then that would indeed probably break your site in doc modes 9 and below. But without seeing any code, it is absolutely impossible for me to speculate any further about which particular aspect of your code would be causing this.
The only thing I can suggest is that you might get some clues by checking the console for error messages, but in reality if you want help, then you're going to need to need to swallow that "I can't share code" issue.

Does IE9 have browser mode down to IE7 and does this mean different version of Javascript

I'm having some trouble setting up virtual machines for testing IE versions (I use a mac) and have noticed on IE8 it has a browser switching mode.
Does this mode do a full switch for CSS and Javascript, I need testing to be 100% reliable.
Also does IE9 have a similar feature going down to IE7?
It's not going to be 100% reliable, I can tell you that right now. The only way to really test on IE7 is to test on IE7. For most layout checks, using the newer browser in emulation mode will be fine, but there are definitely bugs and oddities in the actual older browsers that the newer browsers don't mimic faithfully.
When you change The browser mode from the IE developer tools, IE renders the site according with your selection.
IE 9 also has this option, and if say you pick IE7, you'll get pretty much the same expercience you would get in that browser (from a layout and functionality point of view), but it's not completely reliable, some Javascript quirks are not the same (I can't remember any specific ones)
If you really need to test in IE7, get IE7 :D
More info here!
Press F12, and in the developer tools toolbar change browser mode to IE7 and Document Mode: IE7 (if you change the browser mode, then doc mode automatically changes also).
As for whether you get a different Javascript API? I don't know.
I agree with #Pointy, though. Realistically you actually need to run IE7. A VM is often a good way to do this if you don't want to muck about getting the different versions running side-by-side.

Site is reacting bizarre on a netbook (divs not completely displayed)

When I'm testing my website on a normal notebook, I have no problem with my website but when I'm testing this website on a Netbook (mini laptop) it has a strange behaviour.
You can see the website here:
http://www.benskesblog.com/projects/frontend/project/index.htm
(it works on IE9 and other modern browsers).
When I try it on my netbook the images aren't displayed completely. When I scroll I see another part of the images. Very strang. I've tested it on another netbook (and on other browsers) and I have the same problem. You can see it here:
http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/5168/titel1.jpg
http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/374/titel2k.jpg
Does someone now what's going on?
Thanks!
For starters, IE9 isn't "modern" - it's "bleeding edge".
Also, your page doesn't work at all in IE6 - which is arguably the most common browser out there.
So you've really got two questions you need to ask:
1) What is the minimum browser I'll support (for example, IE9+FF7+Safari5 #1024x768 truecolor resolution)?
2) How will I degrade gracefully for users who don't support my minimum requirements?

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