CSS not showing or working while emulating IE8

Question

So I have the following stripped down version of my code:

<!DOCTYPE html>
    <head>
        <title>Portfolio Export</title>
        <style type="text/css">
            .mainBody {
                padding: 25px;
            }
        </style>
    </head>
    <body>
        <form class="mainBody" method="post" action="test_action.cfm">
            <p>Is the User Active?</p>
            <label>
                <input type="checkbox" name="userActive" value="1">
                User is Active
            </label>
            <input type="submit" value="Enter">
        </form>
    </body>
</html>

This is the html for a cfwindow pop up modal that works great on Chrome, FireFox, IE9-Edge, and Safari. But when I open the F12 Developer Tools, go to Emulation and change the Document mode to 8, the CSS goes away. It doesn't even show up in the Styles section of the DOM Explorer. Does anyone have any idea why this isn't working?

HTML 4 Strict / XHTML 1.0 Strict requires a block element such as div within the form element. So once you moved mainBody to the inner div, it should work. — Alex
– Alex, Commented May 5, 2016 at 1:07

Adrian J. Moreno · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-04 23:01:47Z

1

It probably comes down to the fact that MSIE 8 doesn't support CSS the way newer browsers do. You'd probably have to add a <div> or other block container around the form and put your padding there.

You need to speak to your bosses and make sure they understand that Microsoft has ended support for MSIE 8, 9 and 10 as of January 12, 2016.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/WindowsForBusiness/End-of-IE-support

Beginning January 12, 2016, only the most current version of Internet Explorer available for a supported operating system will receive technical supports and security updates. Internet Explorer 11 is the last version of Internet Explorer, and will continue to receive security updates, compatibility fixes, and technical support on Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10.

My company does a yearly review of the state of browsers, as well as monitor stats related to which browsers access our collection of sites. We made sure to alert our customers to Microsoft's plans over a year ago, so that they were aware of our plans to end support for those browsers as well. We make sure that QA is aware of the road ahead and they adjust their testing scripts accordingly.

We still support MSIE 9, but only until the one major client using it finishes their migration later this year.

answered May 4, 2016 at 23:01

Adrian J. Moreno

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3 Comments

Alex Over a year ago

Having no more product support doesn't prevent enterprises from still using it. As long as there are still WinXP installations, there will be IE8. Old legacy garbage software and their dependencies don't run on Windows 7/8/10 and acquiring new versions/licenses costs tons of money. So no, there will always be need for the old stuff. Exactly the reason why COBOL developers still find jobs. laughing

Adrian J. Moreno Over a year ago

Actually, no there won't always be a need for the old stuff. Not from an enterprise perspective. You only need to support what your customers are using, regardless of global stats. Globally, MSIE 8 is up to nearly 6% usage (depending on whose stats you view) and MSIE is < 3%.If your client base is 10% on MSIE 8, then you probably have to support it. FWIW, I've worked jobs where DB2 was the database of choice, using COBOL to query instead of SQL for all of the heavy lifting, but we needed SQL queries for the web app. Teaching SQL to COBOL devs is like pulling teeth. :)

Alex Over a year ago

I used to work for a huge hospital complex, where all workstations were running WinXP and the intranet being powered by legacy ActiveX/COM, thus IE. Telling them "screw MSIE, use a modern browser" means rolling out 1200-1500 computers and rewriting hundreds of scripts and Access plugins. Trust me, they care about legacy support. And global statistics have no mean in this.

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