Victor,

Today may be your lucky day.  I spent numerous hours this week dealing with the same issue.  Here is the fix:

You need to remove the  " " between the search textbox and the search anchor !  (You will have to create your own search skin control using the DNN one as a base)

This:

<div class="searchContain"><span id="dnn_SEARCH1_ClassicSearch">
  <input name="dnn$SEARCH1$txtSearch" type="text" maxlength="255" size="20"  id="dnn_SEARCH1_txtSearch"  class="SearchTextBox" onkeydown="return __dnn_KeyDown('13', ' __doPostBack(%27dnn$SEARCH1$cmdSearch%27,%27%27)', event);" />
&nbsp;
    <a id="dnn_SEARCH1_cmdSearch" class="searchFont" href=" __doPostBack('dnn$SEARCH1$cmdSearch','')">Searcha>
span>
div>

to this:
<div class="searchContain"><span id="dnn_SEARCH1_ClassicSearch">
  <input name="dnn$SEARCH1$txtSearch" type="text" maxlength="255" size="20"  id="dnn_SEARCH1_txtSearch"  class="SearchTextBox" onkeydown="return __dnn_KeyDown('13', ' __doPostBack(%27dnn$SEARCH1$cmdSearch%27,%27%27)', event);" />

    <a id="dnn_SEARCH1_cmdSearch" class="searchFont" href=" __doPostBack('dnn$SEARCH1$cmdSearch','')">Searcha>
span>
div>

That should take care of your problem.  (It worked for me, though I am using an Image button instead of just an anchor)  As I said, I spent a lot of time fighting this issue so I can appreciate what you are going through.

Robert

What you can do for a quick fix is this:

Open up the file:  admin\skins\search.ascx with notepad. (make a backup copy first just in case)

remove the " " from the end of the line: (located in the first span)

<asp:TextBox ID="txtSearch" runat="server" CssClass="NormalTextBox" Columns="20" MaxLength="255" Text="" EnableViewState="False"></asp:TextBox>&nbsp;

Save the file and test it out.

No, you don't need to create a new skin.  The probelm is in the Search skin object code.

Robert's fix didn't work. However, I decided to use relative positioning instead of floats and that way I was able to get IE 8 and Firefox to line up pretty much the same, with IE 7 lining up only slightly lower now than the other two. Probably as close as I can get. I think I can solve the problem totally by using a "conditional stylesheet statement"... however, I just don't know where to inject one into an ASP.NET user control file. I could find a google hint on how to do it in my HTML file before I upload the skin. However, is there a way to do it after the skin parsing has already occurred? 

Please advise!