On my website, IE7 seems to be ignoring certain CSS attribute selectors. The strange thing is that it only happens when the page comes from the production server. If I have the
I just played around with the code on your personal server (eliasz.net), a file served through the file:// protocol, and served on a local server.
Your personal server and when rendered through the file:// protocol are both rendering correctly as they are rendered in 'edge' mode (the latest, rather than compatibility mode). However, on your production server and on your development server, they are rendering in compatibility mode. As BoltClock said, intranets do this by default. Obviously, this would apply for your development server (on a local IP like 10.1.10.34).
I think the production server is also on your local network, although it has a public static IP. In other words, when you are on the local network, the production server is served through the local network, not the internet. Hence, IE7 still sees it as an intranet site. Use nslookup
to check how IE7 is resolving the domain name.
To get round the issue, you can add this to your header:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=9" >
and then turn off the setting in your IE that causes it to render intranet sites in compatibility mode.
Be aware that certain conditions can force Internet Explorer to display pages in a document compatibility mode different from the one specified in the webpage. These include, but are not limited to, the following situations:
Compatibility View is enabled for the page.
The page is loaded in the Intranet zone and Internet Explorer is configured to use Compatibility View for pages loaded from the Intranet zone.
Internet Explorer is configured to display all websites in Compatibility View.
Internet Explorer is configured to use the Compatibility View List, which specifies a set of websites that are always displayed in Compatibility View.
The Developer Tools are used to override the settings specified in the webpage.
The webpage encountered a page layout error and Internet Explorer is configured to automatically recover from such errors by reopening the page in Compatibility View.
Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288325%28VS.85%29.aspx
From this we can derive your running a site on your local intranet, ie 7 can't turn off this of the rendering as in ie8 you can stop local intranet sites being rendering in compat mode.
10.x.x.x ip address production server
file:// essentially local host
http:// through your local server
UPDATE:
Okay apologies IE has numerous problems running on the intranet, IE8+ is the issue above as you mentioned IE7 doesn't use compat mode it has quirks and standard. Knowing microsoft though they may have messed it up in one of the ie7 patch updates but I hate assumptions so if someone knows please let me know.
To resolve the issue I am afraid I can't give you a software level solution or a hardware change. If its always going to be an intranet site then I recommended upgrading network browsers to ie8 minimum.
I do have a html, css fix however(i know this is not what you want):
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<head>
<title>IE display test</title>
<style type="text/css">
#buttons {
}
#button {
display:block;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id="buttons">
<input id="button" type="button" value="Button 1"/>
<input id="button" type="button" value="Button 2"/>
<input id="button" type="button" value="Button 3"/>
</div>
</body>
</html>
It doesn't seem to like [type="buttons"]
using display:block;
.
I get a feeling it has something to do with the server (Based on the apache/coyote I guess you're using tomcat?) and either something to do with whitespaces, or BOF, or improper utf-8 setting (i've heard of issues where header claims to be utf-8 but isn't). If you have any whitespace before the html declaration, that might also trigger it to go into quirks mode. While I may be wrong, I get the feeling that your problem is similar to this one Why is ie7 always in Quirks mode?
I don't think the answer is which server it came off but more a case of adding double quotes around the value in the CSS selector.
Try this:
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html><head>
<title>IE display test</title>
<style type="text/css">
[type="button"] {
display: block;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<input type="button" value="Button 1"/>
<input type="button" value="Button 2"/>
<input type="button" value="Button 3"/>
</body></html>
I see that one page is .html and the other is .php. It might be possible that your php page has some character (maybe hidden) before the doctype. It could make a difference on how IE accepts HTML and CSS.
As discussed in the comments, according to this answer by thirtydot and this answer by scunliffe, it seems very likely to be the effect of a security feature in Internet Explorer. Your production server lives within your intranet, and is being accessed via a private, class A IPv4 address (10.*.*.*
), which I suspect basically causes IE7 to render pages in quirks mode (and IE8 and newer to render pages in Compatibility View).
All this is just a guess, though, I'm afraid — I haven't been able to reproduce your problem in any IE browser on any system, at least not on your personal server or with my own files. If your production server is open to public access, not just technically, perhaps you could provide a link to it so we can debug further, as the problem is obviously localized to just your production server.