In the main they all display perfectly OK, but there is one positioning anomaly which has caused me great concern, principally because it spoils the layout of a particular page but doesn’t reveal the reason as to why!

I’ve been struggling with it now for several hours and cannot find the reason for what’s happening, so curiosity (and worry for the future when this browser becomes commonplace) has prompted me to share it here in search of clues to the location of the answer.

The test page below displays perfectly well, with the centre of the crosshairs lined up on the exact corners on the central map image, in over 40 different browsers through which it’s been tested. It also validates perfectly for CSS and HTML through W3C. Yet in IE 8 the layout position is wrong on the central map and the crosshairs appear displaced downwards by about 5 millimetres!

http://lbvfrance.com/test_ie.php

(The significance of the crosshairs is that, in the non-IE8 version of this page, red dots which show the positions of affiliates are displayed on the map and the dots need to be pixel-perfect in alignment. The crosshairs help to check this alignment.)

Removing the DOCTYPE completely resolves the problem in IE8, so obviously it’s a compliance issue, but for the life of me I cannot see which bit of the existing code or CSS is causing IE 8 to shout ‘Non Compliant’ when the Doctype is in place. Furthermore, I can’t get any hint from IE 8 to suggest what is non-compliant, so have no hints at all as to what should be investigated/changed in this or similar pages. Very worrying!

Other than W3C, is there anywhere on the web where one can load a web page and have any non-compliant elements highlighted, so that one knows what to fix in a situation like this? In particular, is there somewhere to check for IE8-specific anomalies like this?

Alternatively, does anyone have any idea what the problem is?

At this stage of the IE 8 release this is all pretty academic, but I thought I ought to get a head start on checking compliance because over 90% of this site’s visitors currently use IE 6 or 7 and that group will slowly migrate to IE8, rendering the graphical section of the site redundant unless this positioning issue is solved at some stage.

Are there any trusted implementations of Standalone IE7?
Would it be advisable to install one and update my current installation with IE8 Beta? Or is it still too early to get into this new browser?

The Tredosoft IE7 download is fine. Personally I wouldn’t want to commit to a full install of such an early beta. It may well be quite solid, but it could also have bugs that potentially effect the way your system operates.

Ideally you need to keep it isolated.

I did a quick run-through of setting up Virtual PC and IE8 in the Design View.

Are there any trusted implementations of Standalone IE7?
Would it be advisable to install one and update my current installation with IE8 Beta? Or is it still too early to get into this new browser?

Microsoft have removed the verification out of the IE7 upgrade, which I presume was a push to get all users, including the less legal types, away from using IE6 for the greater good.

http://tools.veloc-it.com/tabid/58/grm2id/4/Default.aspx

for the IE7 Standalone

Tredosoft have a well established track record, but I’d be very skeptical about downloading and installing executable from sites you don’t know anything about. How do you know they didn’t grab Tredosoft’s IE7, attached their own trojan and popped it up for people to happily install?

Their ‘About Us’ page doesn’t even work.

Steer clear.

http://tools.veloc-it.com/tabid/58/grm2id/4/Default.aspx

for the IE7 Standalone

http://tredosoft.com/IE7_standalone

along with the beta IE8?

Just wondered if it was too early to try such a thing….

Finding problems with the :before and :after pseudo-elements though :(