It's hard to deduce these types of problems without seeing the source or an example. Could you post the code for how you are getting information about the shapefile? You mentioned style issues and one difference between 2.8 and 3.2 is you now need to include an additional css file. Are you inlcuding the css file below on your page? <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://serverapi.arcgisonline.com/jsapi/arcgis/3.2/js/esri/css/esri.css" />