Are you having problems with parts of your web site since Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) was released? I’ve been seeing chatter around the web about parts of web sites all-of-the-sudden not working even though they work in other browsers. The menus on our own Business to Business site quit working when customers upgraded their browser to IE8.

The problem stems from how IE8 processes JavaScript. I’m not up on all the technical details, but I do have a fix – albeit a temporary one: add the web site in question to the Compatibility View list. Here’s how to do it -

• Open Internet Explorer
• Click on “Tools” in the menu
• Click on “Compatibility View Settings”
• Enter the web page’s address in the “Add this website” box
• Click on the “Add” button
• Click on the “Close” button.

You may have to close and then reopen IE8, but once you add the web site to Compatibility View list, the site should work properly.

We put a note on the home page of our B2B web site to let our customers know about the fix. As I noted above, it’s meant to be a temporary solution.

The long term solution is to figure out why that part of your web site doesn’t work in IE8 and find a fix for your code which will work in IE8 as well as other browsers.

It all goes back to testing your web site in as many browsers as you can to make sure it works in all of them.