Here is the code from your

Megan — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:24:00 +0000

Here is the code from your web page.

  <!--[if lt IE 8]> <link href="ie7.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> <![endif]-->
  <!--[if !IE]>--> <link href="styles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> <!--<![endif]-->

That stylesheet loads fine for me in IE 8 with compatibility mode turned on. Maybe you need to clear the cache or something? Make sure you have compatibility mode checked if you're using IE 8. The changes you mentioned don't appear to be in the ie7.css file - there's still a background image and the background colour is the same.

Are you really going to serve a completely separate stylesheet to IE vs. other browsers? Usually you would serve a standard stylesheet to all browsers, including IE, and then just add on some fixes for IE where necessary.

Finally, conditional comments aren't really a "hack". They were created deliberately by Microsoft for this very purpose (although they are no longer supported in IE9). Hacks exploit deficiencies or differences in the way browsers interpret certain characters in a stylesheet. They depend on something the browser does unintentionally, which could be fixed at any time. That's what makes hacks a shaky thing to rely on for your CSS.