First sample - text does change wheat and italic, both browsers display exactly same for me. What differences did they display for you?
Second sample - KM doesn't do font: at all and it seems indeed to be a bug with not understanding shorthand notion but this can be fixed setting font properties separately:
font-style: oblique;
font-weight: bold;
As for testing them both in same document then you should put A:active before A:hover otherwise hover overrides active and you won't see active kicking in at all. Thats why they're called cascading, order matters
So this gives me identical results in both KM and IE6:
A:active {
color: wheat;
font-style: oblique;
}
A:HOVER {
background: Aqua none;
color: Navy;
font-style: oblique;
font-weight: bold;
}
But shorthand seems to be buggy, I've never noticed it because I never use shorthand, I always use full porperties.