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Got stung by IE8-B2 again yesterday.

I wrote a 'contact us' webform for a customer, for which most content was normal flow, some contained floating elements and a there were a couple of absolutely positioned divs.

Nothing extraordinary, no hacks, and FFox, Safari, Chrome and even Opera all dealt with it exactly as I expected, without any problem.

IE... a blank page... WTF ??

After much screwing about, I managed to resolve the display of the normal flow content, by setting the containing div display types to 'inline-block' - which meant that all the other browsers were immediately unhappy... so I worked around that by forcing IE7 compatibility mode and using expression(‘inline-block’) so that the other browsers all continued to work.

**EDIT: A bit more time with it, and I realised that this is the age-old 'has-layout' problem of IE, as the divs have position:relative and width/height settings of auto... so IE fails to display them. The 'inline-block' for IE is a trigger for 'has-layout' which allows them to be displayed. Once I recognised the problem, I realised that I could eliminate the stupid expression() hack, and instead implement the trusty old 'zoom:1' hack... to give IE it's required 'has-layout' status, while using display:block... and not bog down the page with expression() scripts.**

However... the AP’d divs were still missing... so more experimenting and sleuthing ensued... and after many MANY wasted hours and banging of head on the desk... I finally found that when IE encounters an AP’d div that has a sibling which is not AP’d and which contains a float... it just doesn’t display it. What clued me into the problem was that when inspecting the html with the developer tools, and clicking on the AP’d node, it would suddenly appear on the screen... like it needed a wakeup call. Anyway, more experimenting and I found that putting an empty <div></div> in between the two gave it the smack up the side of the head required, and IE finally looked the way all the other’s looked on first try.

I then did some hunting about on the internet, and found that this mess has been around since the olden days of IE and is *still* not fixed... so I went back and check the original problem against IE7 and IE6 and, sure enough, they has the same issues and required the same solution.

Much as I’d love to believe MS are going to sort this all out before IE8 is released, I'm already starting to resign myself to 4-5 more years of IE-Work-arounds, as these are both problems we've been living with in IE since V5

littleguru said:

Could Microsoft still be innovative in Windows? I mean everything that they add might open a new case, right? This kind of attitude does also kill innovation, doesn't it?

But's nice to have a cashcow... fresh money each year. This crap should be settled once and all...

po134 said:

esoteric said:

*snip*

I personally like to have a webrowser already installed in my OS, just to go to opera and ff &  get all of them. I don't want to carry a usb drive to install a webrowser

I recognize the importance of offering the choice to customer with a web browser provider feature like the one in the search bar, but forcing windows to remove a free software from their product is a bit overkill ... if I wanna give you something free why couldn't I ? Guess I'll never understand the EU.

I'm still waiting for the EU to charge apple for monopole over their mac os x for iphone as they don't allow software vendor to publish a product that apple already sells/offer.

@ esoteric > IF you like cloud storage I suggest you try live mesh !

Bad and all as the EU action is, it would be more acceptable if it were not for the pathetic whining of Opera.

Honestly, they have less than 1% of the market, and blame MS for that ??

Chrome has captured more market-share in a very short amount of time, simply by producing a half-decent product.

Perhaps Opera should look for other reasons as to why people don't like their product... like...  IT SUCKS!

And while ever Opera's abysmal support for DOM and Javascript continue, along with their quirky CSS support (their hype is nothing like the reality) then their accusations of MS perverting all web development, is so hypocritical as to be laughable.

IE's market-share is sitting at 68%, and FireFox at 21%... hardly a monopoly position with their browser.

Moreover, if IE8 continues to be the same mess as it is now, more people will simply install FireFox. or Chrome.

I just don't see the issue with MS bundling free IE with their OS, because at the moment, that's about all it's worth anyway.

I suspect that the problem with the EU thing (and DOJ thing for that matter) has much to do with having a large bunch of people who earn their living by pursuing high-profile cases, and needing to keep coming up with reasons to justify their own existence.

This is an unfortunate reality of public service... the constant need to generate "busy-work" so that they are seen to be doing something of significance, and thus allowed to continue dining from the public trough.

Of course, in the case of the EU, it doesn’t hurt that there is a large bit of EURO-v-USA argie-bargie in the mix... which helps maintain a lunatic level of rage where common sense would say that it’s time to stop.

ZippyV said:

What is "the Vole"?

The company perimeter firewall is a W2003-R2 server running IsaServer-2006.

As always, it downloaded and installed the latest updates, and promptly stopped talking to the DMZ domain controllers (that run on a private maintenance LAN in the DMZ) and refused all RDP connections (presumably because it wouldn't authenticate).

Fortunately, the IsaServer is configured with a local configuration database, so it's not totally reliant on the DC and still operated, albeit not accepting any changes.

Much futzing about, I eventually tried backing out the latest update, just in case, and... bingo! everything starts to work again.

I believe that this is an SMB vulnerability, and this service is not exposed to the internet, but I'm now in two minds... play it safe and apply the update but not be able to access it except from the server room, or wait to see if there is a fix and/or workaround.

Anyone else have trouble with it, or is it just me ?

OnlyJack said:

Ion Todirel said:

*snip*

I wish I could but I am participating only in the public beta, I didn't apply for the private beta on connect. I can use only the pretty useless send feedback tool whose reports are most likely dumped to > nul.

I think there are some people here who can report this for you ??

But, if it's widespread. then perhaps it's already been reported.

Really only posting this because it appears in the INQ, and they are normally such a rabid anti-MS site.

Of course, there is always an agenda at the INQ, and this time it might well be to stir up the Linux and OS/X fanboys... but it is nevertheless very surprising to read something that doesn't just outright slam a product because it comes from "the vole" as they like to put it.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/review/392/1050392/windows-7-is-enough-to-kill-linux-on-the-desktop

Anyway... it got me thinking... what is the consensus so far with reviews of Windows7-B1 ??

I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, and I do hope he proves to be an exception to the rule but...

Facts are that he was diagnosed and treated, surgically, in 2004 for pancreatic cancer.

The 5-year post-diagnosis mortality rate (from the stats I've gathered) is... 95%

Unfortunately, he is right on track.

God that "reply-to" thing is annoying... I always forget to set it to "Reply to Root" when posting a general comment.

Anyway... the other thing I've noticed about IE8 printing is the sheer size of the output.

As an example... printing a particular webpage I visit with FireFox generates about 1.5MB of PCL output... big, but expected.

Printing the same page with IE8-B2... OMG... 16MB... and then I have to kill the print job, because my LaserJet will take all day to grunge through that lot.

This means that, at the moment, any time I want to print a webpage, I fire up FireFox.

Again, I suspect that the problem is that IE8 is printing background images regardless of the tools setting (which I have set to NO) and when people don't use a specific media CSS to disable it,  IE8 prints stuff like body-backgrounds, and presemably uses PCL graphics.