Member Avatar for LindaJ

Argh!!! I need some help, badly!

My clients site () displays perfectly in firefox and most other current browsers ... except MSIE 7 and 8.

Does this have something to do with the meta tags? I found this code, which is suppose to go into the index.php file (??????)

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7"

I put it in the index.php file, and ... it didn't work. It actually broke the site. So, I tool it back out.

Back to square one.

Can you help me?

How can I make my client's site load properly in MSIE 7 and 8.

I'm using Joomla 1.5.17 on webhost iPage.com and a siteground (free) 2010 template.

Thanks so much for your quick help!

Linda.

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A few practical, low-risk steps that solve most IE7/8 layout surprises — and some ways to avoid repeating fixes across many pages.

As experienced, layout differences usually come from document mode, malformed markup, or missing fallbacks rather than a single mystic browser bug. 's comment about header placement is worth noting: how the browser receives compatibility instructions matters. The simplest, repeatable workflow below helps isolate the cause and apply minimal, targeted fixes.

Validate first and inspect modes. Run the pages through the W3C HTML validator and the W3C CSS validator. In IE use F12 to check “Document Mode” and the console for parse errors — a stray missing character can break layout. Ensure a standards-mode DOCTYPE so pages don’t fall into quirks mode.

Apply targeted fixes, not wholesale separate stylesheets. Keep one base stylesheet (use a normalize/reset such as normalize.css), and add tiny IE-only overrides via conditional comments plus HTML5/CSS3 polyfills when needed. Example pattern to include IE-only assets:

<!--[if lt IE 9]>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="ie8-and-down.css">
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/html5shiv/3.7.3/html5shiv.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/respond.js/1.4.2/respond.min.js"></script>
<![endif]-->

If you need to force a consistent document mode across every page, send the compatibility instruction as a server header instead of relying on per-file markup. On Apache this can be done in .htaccess:

<IfModule mod_headers.c>
    Header set X-UA-Compatible "IE=Edge"
</IfModule>

Prefer feature detection (for example, Modernizr) and progressive enhancement over user-agent hacks. Keep IE-specific CSS minimal and documented — common IE fixes are small (e.g., triggering layout with zoom:1 for older IE). Finally, check for client-side Compatibility View, caching, or proxy behavior that can force older modes. Useful tools and polyfills: html5shiv, Respond.js, Modernizr, and the W3C validators above.

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Member Avatar for drjohn

Adding the meta tag <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7"> to the head will not break your site in IE7 and IE8, nor will removing it cure any fault in IE7. If the site was broken in IE7 with that meta tag, it was also broken without it - because only IE8 reads that tag! And it switches IE8 into IE7 mode. Unless the missing closing > in your quoted code was really missing of course ;)
That would break your page big style...

And when I looked at your site, it didn't look broken in IE7 or IE8, it looked the same as in Firefox.

Oh, and you don't put <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7"> in the index file.

You have to put it in the head of EVERY file, if you are using some css hack that works in IE7 but not in IE8, and wish IE8 to run as IE7.

Edited by drjohn because: n/a
Member Avatar for LindaJ 
Thanks for your help! Both of my sites seem to be working now.

What, exactly, is the best method to use for making sure that my site will render properly in most of the browsers people use? Should I be creating a separate CSS style sheet for different browsers?

Thanks so much for your help,

Linda.
Edited by LindaJ because: n/a
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