Have you tried including HTML5 shiv?
Without that (or similar), IE8 won't be able to style elements that are new to HTML5 (eg. <section>
, <nav>
, etc). For me, selectivizr.js does indeed allow Neat to work with IE8, but if you're using HTML5 elements then even with selectivizr Neat won't be able to style them in IE8 without the HTML5 shiv. (nb. that's not actually a problem with Neat per se - it's a more general problem that stems from IE8 being a pre-HTML5 browser).
Effectively, selectivizr.js fixes the problems with selectors that IE8 doesn't recognise, while HTML5 shiv fixes the problems with unrecognised elements: if you're using HTML5 elements then in order to get everything working smoothly, you'll probably need both.