When using cflayout tag on coldfusion 8 server you will face a problem with Microsoft Explorer 8 where the action results in cflayoutarea will not appear. The cflayout works fine with Firefox and Chrome, but not with Explorer 8 and also I guess with Explorer 7 as it did not work in compatibility format. Anyway the solution is so simple, just edit the html body tag to the below: <body onload="ColdFusion.Layout.collapseAccordion('accordionLayout','panel01')"> This solution will work in case having one of the below errors: 1) does NOT open collapsed 2) gives a javascript error Message: Exception thrown and not caught Line: 90 Char: 1 Code: 0 URI: http://127.0.0.1:8500/CFIDE/scripts/ajax/package/cfajax.js