2 Problems in IE: No night mode and can no longer write posts

In the Internet Explorer 8 on Vista I have two problems at the moment: I can no longer write posts and topics since about 1.5 hours, because the field for text input is no longer displayed. Below I uploaded a screenshot of the problem. Then I deleted the cookies and emptied the course, which caused the second problem. In the Internet Explorer now the setting is missing, with which I can activate the night mode. Mistakes and knows how to fix them, or is it just the case with all IE users? I just downloaded Firefox 3.0.17, so both works without any problems…. would still like to switch to IE again.