Is it possible IE8 will render CSS differently in Windows 7 vs Windows XP

Question

Totally confused. At work, I have an older Windows XP machine (I have no choice) and on it I have IE8. My boss has a laptop with Windows 7 and IE8.

I have a working prototype website with an IELegacy CSS that does some tricks to the CSS to make some things work in my Windows XP IE8. These tricks are small, mostly spacing issues. (Yes, I know, I don't like still resorting to doing this, but sometimes you have no choice.)

However, all the things in the ielegacy.css plus some other spacing issues go all wrong and totally wonky on my boss' Windows 7 IE8 machine. (like data blowing out of its containing cell in a table! how is that even possible - its a table).

I have no idea how to fix this.

So I ask the collective... is it even possible that IE8 can be doing different things on different versions of Windows? or is something else going on here?

If so, any ideas on how to adjust for that?

Also, if so, just kill me now :)

Thanks JD

PS - I have no comparison screen grabs.. I will try to get some.

Update - thanks all - Compatibility View was the culprit. I totally forgot about it. (I only use IE for testing). Everybody had excellent troubleshooting ideas, and I agree, I did not provide enough info. (FYI fonts are standard MS Arial because I need full UTF-8 and I don't need pixel perfect...). I appreciate it! Now I just need to get Compatibility View and non-Compatibility View to match up - which shouldn't be too hard. I just needed to understand what was going on. Cheers!

Answer 1

Have you checked to see if one of the browsers are in compatibility mode while the other isn't?

If you used the internet explorer developer toolbar (I believe the shortcut is F12) you can also change the engine your IE is using to render the site, making it render differently.

Answer 2

After reading the rest of the comments/answers:

You fix it by:

• Making your site work in IE7, because that's what Compatibility Mode is "simulating". Your site should ideally work in Internet Explorer 7, as it's still used by a smallish percentage of users.
• Figuring out why your site is arbitrarily sometimes in IE7 mode. Your site should be in IE8 mode all the time in IE8.
• It's rather complicated, see: http://hsivonen.iki.fi/doctype/#ie8modes

• A simple fix would be to add this meta tag:

  <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge,chrome=1" />
  

  This should (almost) always force the most up-to-date IE browser mode, and Chrome Frame if it's available.

Answer 3

All other things being equal, IE8 should render the same on XP and Windows 7. It's more likely that accessibility settings, caching, missing fonts, screen resolution, and/or plugins are causing the difference.