Sidebar not showing IE8 / White bg instead of gradient

[koenvn]

Dear all,

First of all, what a great CMS! I am using it now for a while, usually everything is working like a charm!

A couple of weeks ago I built a website for a local event: http://www.zelhemalive.nl. But I am facing two problems, which I couldn't find a solution for on the forum.

Question 1 - sidebar not working
Unfortunately today I found out that the sidebar aint working(or not showing) in Internet Explorer 8 (IE8). It is working in Safari, Chrome, etc and the latest IE version, but not in early versions.

The strange thing is, that once I start searching for words which should be there in the sidebar, in the upper part of the sidebar the information appears. I have been looking through my css files for a 'wrong' height but couldn't find it.

This is how it should look like (in safari)

I have to be honest that I am not programmer, but with copying and editing I am just fine (usually). Maybe some of you can find where the things are going wrong in my css files?

Question 2 - gradient / background
Normally the background of my website is a gradient (the content block in front of the background), but in this IE version it is just showing a white background, which is rather ugly (see pictures above). Do you know a solution for this?

I hope that one of you can help me.

Regards,
Koen

[polyfragmented]

Koen,

from quickly checking out your site markup with the W3C validator (and validator.nu), there's two errors along the lines of 147 and 157. Those errors concern tags which apparently have not been closed. Maybe IE8 screws up because of those.

Check this out: W3C validator result

[koenvn]

Those errors concern tags which apparently have not been closed. Maybe IE8 screws up because of those.

Polyfragmented, you are the hero of the day. Indeed it was one of the closing tags. Thanks for the useful website!


Does anybody know something about gradient backgrounds?

[yojoe]

Does anybody know something about gradient backgrounds?

It depends on what you ask for.
Best online css gradient tool I've found long time ago: http://www.colorzilla.com/gradient-editor/

[polyfragmented]

Koen,

I am pretty much sure that the IE8 background problem doesn't stem from a background image, because you don't have one set for the wrapper (which stays white in IE 8). Instead, you've set the background color a bit transparent with

Code:

background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.746094);

so the background-image shows through.

When I check out the CSS for the wrapper in IE 8 (actually using IE 9, but set the rendering to IE 8), the development tools show me

Code:

background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);

Have you set some background color fallback for IE below 9, because it seems that IE8 doesn't support rgba().

I don't have the time right now to check out your CSS further, but I bet it's got to do with rgba(). Check out this older article in which proprietary CSS filters are being used to coax IE into submission. Maybe you can use that to make it work.

Good luck!