Internet Explorer 8 beta: blank pages fix

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

I've complained before about the issue that on many web sites IE 8 just shows a blank webpage or blank portions of the page, including interestingly the results section of certain (but not all) Google search results pages!

Here's a tip. The solution is actually quite simple - no need to spend more time trying to troubleshoot this:

When you get a blank page or partially blank page on viewing a website in IE8 beta 2, just click the "Compatibility mode" button (at the end of the address bar, outlined in red below) to display the page properly, as it's shown in IE7 and other browsers:

Somehow I'd thought before that this button would only fix minor issues like alignment, but in fact it'll also solve the "web page doesn't display content at all or has partial blanks" problem or bug. (My bad - the issue is in fact mentioned on the Microsoft IE 8 beta 2 release notes page, under "Site compatibility".)

Or you could of course uninstall IE 8 and go back to IE 7... until I found out that the Compatibility mode button would sort it, I'd just viewed the site in Firefox or Opera browser instead.

If you use IE8, you may also be interested in some tweaks to speed up IE 8 beta.

Labels: browsers, tips, troubleshooting

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8 Comment(s):

I get this issue in IE7, hows that for lame.

(By Anonymous, at 14 April, 2009 17:13) Edit Comment

I'm not surprised. Did the same fix work?

(By Improbulus, at 14 April, 2009 17:57) Edit Comment

Didn't work for me.
It's an intranet helpdesk site.
Says Done in the bottom left corner, no errors anywhere.
Just a blank page.
Even compatability mode is a blank page

(By Anonymous, at 18 May, 2009 01:58) Edit Comment

Anon, as it's an intranet, why not ask your internal intranet support team?

(By Improbulus, at 19 May, 2009 09:00) Edit Comment

Same for me; in all modes a blank page appears. When using the zoom button the page does appear. When hovering a link on the page it disappears again.... wierd !

(By Anonymous, at 10 July, 2009 08:50) Edit Comment

This should be rectified immediately and all those used as guinea pigs (having the beat version) should be give an updated version of IE8.

(By Anonymous, at 22 August, 2009 07:20) Edit Comment

Using compatibility mode is not a "solution", it is a "work around" - big difference!

(By Trixmoto, at 25 August, 2009 11:09) Edit Comment

Bit late, but came across this post and probably have a solution to the author of this post (and people having similar issues).

I doubt if any page will ever be completely incompatible with IE8. If your page remains empty, check if your page HEAD contains a conditional tag for IE.

Check the source code and see if you can find a piece of code that looks like this:

Most likely, in the case the page remains blank, the closing tag is either missing or it contains an error. In that case it will tell IE8 that everything on the site is only for IE 7 and IE8 won't show anything.

So check if the closing tag is properly typed and (at least some of) your page should be visible in IE8.

That's it. Best of luck!

Jerry

(By Jerry, at 23 June, 2010 17:31) Edit Comment