Page rendering changes when I call esri.Map in some versions of IE

DavidRush

I've got a hand-built page layout, using CSS to create a header, left and right sidebars, a footer, and a large main section in the middle out of div tags.

With FF, Chrome, and IE8.0.7600 it works great.

With IE8.0.6001 and IE7, when the esri.Map function is called, the rendering of the page gets all messed up.  The size of the main center section changes, content in the header shows up on top of the left sidebar, and the style color information is lost for the header and sidebars.  Only the footer remains unmolested.

If I use

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8">

then it works fine in both versions of IE8.  Rendering is still messed up in IE7.

The strange part is that the rendering of the page in all above browsers is FINE until the call to esri.Map.

Any suggestions?  I don't like locking in the rendering with the meta tag, and strictly speaking I shouldn't have to use it for IE8, anyway.

Edit: Forgot to say that I get the same results with JS API 2.0 and 2.1.

David