If you fix your site such that it works with both IE7 and FF3, then it will
be cross browser compatible in most
browsers, so I would start there. Then there is one more fix that is needed
to get the navbars to render correctly in IE8. So, post the links to one or
more of your websites and we will help you fix the cross browser issues.
In the meantime I will also post my evolving boilerplate answer about the
navbars and IE8, as the 'grouping' issue that affects the navbars, also
affects links in text boxes in FF, and in ungrouping the whole page, you
might fix that issue.
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IE8 is designed to render webpages in a more 'standards
code compliant' mode than any previous version. In general, many websites
built by many different programs including Publisher do not produce
'standards compliant code' and have 'compatibility' issues in IE8. If you
care to read more about the details of these general statements here are two
articles:
Reference: Release Notes for Internet Explorer 8: Compatibility issues with
websites:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/dd441788.aspx
Reference: MSDN IEBlog:Just The Facts: Recap of Compatibility View:
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/02/16/just-the-facts-recap-of-compatibility-view.aspx
Unfortunately this is the price of progress, but luckily the only
compatibility issues with Publisher 2003 and 2007 and IE8 RTW reported thus
far are problems associated with 'grouping'. Any design elements that are
'grouped' together, which includes the Publisher wizard built navbars, do
not render when you view the web page in IE8. The fix in general is to
ungroup the elements. I have found no problems with Publisher 2000 webs that
are produced at the IE3+ settings. While I am hopeful that MSFT will soon
provide a patch that will fix these issues in at least Pub 2007, there are a
couple 'fixes' you can use in the meantime.
I would suggest that you open your original Publisher file and go to File >
Save As and save a copy of your Pub file under a different name. Now working
with the new copy of your Pub file go to Edit > Select All > Arrange >
Ungroup. This will ungroup the text boxes and images that compose the
Publisher built navbars along with any other design elements that might be
grouped together on the page. Now the navbar and the rest of the page should
render correctly when you do a web page preview. Repeat this with each page
in your publication. 'Publish to the Web' from this copy of your
publication, upload those files and they will render correctly in IE8. If
you want to make changes in your web in the future go back to your original
Pub file, make the changes, save, and again do a 'Save As' to make a copy,
etc.
The reason I suggest making a copy of your original Pub file and doing the
'ungrouping' on that copy is that when you ungroup the navbar, you will also
ungroup it from the Publisher navbar wizard. This means that if you want to
add a page in the future the navbar will not be automatically updated and
that change propagated throughout the site.You would have to rebuild the
navbar under those circumstances or manually edit the old one.
If you don't plan on adding any more pages to your site in the near future,
then making a copy and doing the ungrouping on that copy in order to
preserve the navbar wizard would not be necessary. Furthermore you could
also do the ungrouping on the original Pub file, produce your new web pages,
and then close the original Pub file without saving the changes. I just
think that perhaps making a copy is a bit safer, but that is up to you.
While this *fix* is a bit of a pain, hopefully it will be temporary. If you
find any other compatibility issues with your pages and IE8, I would
appreciate it if you would post that information in the web group and tell
us what specifically isn't working, and provide a link to the page where we
can find it.
DavidF
