CSS / Javascript Dropdown Navigation Fix Needed for IE - php

Question

An ex developer of ours when working on one of our first versions of our internal PHP framework integrated the dropdown element of main navigation using javascript and I need to get a fix applied for IE8 which is causing the dropdown to appear offset even though using CSS displays fine in Firefox / Chrome.
The site in question is http://www.benchmemorials.co.uk/
In the event there is sub menu items from the main navigation that use a dropdown, javascript is called to display this I believe (below)...
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function() {
var position = $('#link_why-buy-from-us').offset();
$('.dropdown').css(position);
$('#link_why-buy-from-us').mouseover(function() {
$('.dropdown').show();
});
$('.dropdown').mouseover(function() {
$('.dropdown').show();
});
$('.dropdownstyle').mouseover(function() {
$('.dropdown').show();
});
$('#link_why-buy-from-us').mouseleave(function() {
$('.dropdown').hide();
});
$('.dropdown').mouseleave(function() {
$('.dropdown').hide();
});
$('.dropdownstyle').mouseleave(function() {
$('.dropdown').hide();
});
});
</script>
I'm not too hot on javascript but from what I gather, I presume the above is instructing the drop down to appear below the 'Why Buy from Us' top navigation menu item. As I mention, this is working as expected in Firefox/Chrome.
However, the issue appears to be the fact that somewhere along the line, inline CSS is being generated dynamically for the dropdown class - this is dynamically generating
style="top: 61px; left: 964px; display: none;"
Every file on the server has been searched and nowhere is this specified, my only guess is that the javascript above is somehow creating this line of CSS which is therefore preventing me from altering the position of the dropdown in the IE only stylesheet to fix the display in IE8.
The rest of the code for the dropdown menu from the php file is below:-
<div class="dropdown"><div class="dropdownstyle">
<?php
mysql_select_db($database_config, $config);
$query_sub_pages = "SELECT * FROM `pages` WHERE site_id = '".$current_site_id."' AND menu_location = 'sub' ORDER BY `order` ASC";
$sub_pages = mysql_query($query_sub_pages, $config) or die(mysql_error());
$row_sub_pages = mysql_fetch_assoc($sub_pages);
$totalRows_sub_pages = mysql_num_rows($sub_pages);
$current_sub_link = 0;
do {
$current_sub_link = $current_sub_link + 1;
?>
<p<?php if ($current_sub_link != $totalRows_sub_pages) {echo ' style="margin-bottom: 10px;"';}; ?>><a class="sub_link" href="<?php echo $site_base.$row_sub_pages['page_location']; ?>"><?php echo $row_sub_pages['page_display_name']; ?></a></p><?php //if ($current_sub_link != $totalRows_sub_pages) {echo '<br />';}; ?>
<?php } while ($row_sub_pages = mysql_fetch_assoc($sub_pages)); ?>
</div>
</div>
As you can see, there is no inline CSS applied to .dropdown. All CSS from the sylesheets can be viewed if you inspect element in browser.
Please could anyone advise how or if it is possible to prevent this dynamic CSS positioning from being generated or an alternative / easier method of ensuring the dropdown appears consistently across all browsers including IE?
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The positioning is done by this code:
var position = $('#link_why-buy-from-us').offset();
$('.dropdown').css(position);
It takes the position of #link_why-buy-from-us relative to the document, and adds it to the .dropdown element.
I don't know if you're familiar with jQuery, but the code above is written using that JavaScript library. For more documentation about .offset(), look here: http://api.jquery.com/offset/