Ie Not Rendering CSS Properly When the Site Is Located at Networkdrive

IE not rendering CSS properly when the site is located at networkdrive

This sounds like that problem - where IE switches rendering modes depending on where the page is located.

It's insane.

See this answer.

http://127.0.0.1/mysite/mypage.php  <-- IE8 by default (updated!)
http://localhost/mysite/mypage.php  <-- IE8 by default (updated!)
http://machinename/mysite/mypage.php  <-- IE7 by default
http://192.168.100.x/mysite/mypage.php  <-- IE7 by default
http://google.com/  <-- IE8 by default

So, because you're accessing your site via "network drive", IE is going into IE7 mode, and IE7 does not support inline-block properly, hence your site does not render properly.

You can request IE8 to render your page in IE8 mode by adding this to your page:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />

Or, to request IE8 to use the most recent version of it's rendering engine (think IE9), you should use this:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=Edge" />

Or, to use Chrome Frame instead if it's available:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=Edge,chrome=1" />

Problems loading some CSS styles with Internet Explorer accessing from computer name

See: IE not rendering CSS properly when the site is located at networkdrive

Add this:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=Edge" />

Will targeting IE8 with conditional comments work?

It worked for me – both in quirks mode and in standards compliance mode. However, it does not work when switching to IE8 compatibility mode.

Same HTML gives Different Layout on Different Hosts

It's possible that a server module is messing with your output and confusing IE. For example, mod_pagespeed does this for optimization purposes, although I haven't heard of a problem with IE. I would run diff on the source code that IE is reading (not the saved file themselves).

If they turn out to be identical, I would suspect an issue with Quirks Mode (which the other answers address more thoroughly than I could).

IE8 standards mode meta tag

You could set X-UA-Compatible as a HTTP response header, instead of as a meta tag.

This is a much cleaner solution than placing it above the <html> tag.

A ~~confusing~~ useful blog post concerning X-UA-Compatible and its many intricacies:

http://farukat.es/journal/2009/05/245-ie8-and-the-x-ua-compatible-situation

Ie Not Rendering CSS Properly When the Site Is Located at Networkdrive