Vertical scrollbar issue in IE8

[petela]

Hi,

I am building a website and I recently upgraded to the IE8 browser.  I noticed that for short content web pages, the vertical scrollbar does not automatically show up in phantom form on the right of the screen, as it did in earlier versions of IE.  I did some research, and my findings lead me to believe that this is by default with IE8.  I have no problem with this except that when I built a web page that has long content, the page shifts to the left to accommodate the scrollbar (16 pixels, I think).  Is there a workaround for the page shift when you navigate between web pages of differing lengths?  - or does it even matter?

Thanks,
petela
 

[ak732]

Other browsers - mozilla for instance, exhibit the behavior your describing w/IE8 by design.

In my opinion, it doesn't matter.  I actually find IE7's (and under) insistence on displaying the scroll bar even when unneeded more annoying than only adding it as needed.

[Ben Amada]

I fall in the "doesn't matter" category.  Even though the page shifts when the vertical scrollbar appears, everything gets re-centered.  Also as Andy mentioned, other browsers like Firefox have pretty much always worked this way.

As an aside, I do remember one time when I was trying to figure out in Firefox why the content on one page I was developing was not aligned the same as the content on another page in the same site with the same master layout.  As you can guess, one page was longer vertically and had a vertical scrollbar ... the other didn't.  I spent way too much time clicking Back, Forward, Back, Forward, Back, Forward in my browser trying to see what was causing the difference.  I was focusing too heavily on the center of the page instead of the right side where the vertical scrollbar was appearing and disappearing 

[petela]

Thanks for the replies.  I am definitely in the "doesn't matter" camp.  I'm guessing that at some point, more content will be added to the short content pages,
automatically causing the scrollbar to appear, and the page shift will disappear.

Thanks again for the feedback.

[Steve Herold]

  I spent way too much time clicking Back, Forward, Back, Forward, Back, Forward in my browser trying to see what was causing the difference.  I was focusing too heavily on the center of the page instead of the right side where the vertical scrollbar was appearing and disappearing 

LOL!!  Been there....done that....more than once!

Steve