Call to action: The demise of CSS hacks and broken pages

Article
10/12/2005

We’re starting to see the first round of sites and pages breaking due to the CSS fixes we have made. We would like to ask your help in cleaning up existing CSS hacks in your pages for IE7. It is has been our policy since IE6 that under quirks doctype we will not make any behavioral changesso thatexisting pages will continue to render unmodified, but under the strict doctype we want to change behavior to be as compliant as possible with the web standards. For IE7, we introduced new CSS functionality (see Chris’ blog post for the full list) and cleaned up our parser bugs. This leads now to several CSS hacks failing. If you are using IE7 (you are MSDN subscriber or received a copy at the PDC) you may notice major sites breaking due to the use of CSS hacks and the strict doctype.

Example how easy it is to fall into the CSS hack trap

I was very happy to hear that Slashdot has their page rewritten using clean HTML 4.01 with a full complement of CSS. I immediately opened up IE7 to see how it would look like. It looked very good, but I noticed an odd behavior with their search box being moved into the footer of their page. I opened up the IE dev toolbar started to take a look, and found:

html > body #footer .search { margin: 0; }

#footer .search

{
text-align: left;
position: absolute;
top: 0;
left: 1em;
margin: -1.6em 0 0 0;
padding: 0;
}

It is targeting the following HTML:

As you can see the legend tag is empty. IE6 and IE7 reserve white space for the empty legend tag. The HTML 4.01 spec does not specify what should happen in this case. We just do it differently than Firefox and Opera, who do not reserve white space (since we were the first to implement this HTML 4 element back in the day there was no precedent to do it differently). The legend element is required according to the HTML validator, so Slashdot did the right thing to put an empty element in the page. The site authors wanted to work around the IE behavior by applying negative margins to IE only. Since we implemented the child selector (>) now for IE7 their CSS hack is failing. We contacted Slashdot and are trying to address this issue.

Call to action: Please check your pages

Here is a list of common CSS hacks to look out for (please also consider their variations):

html > body - https://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=ChildHack
* html - https://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=StarHtmlHack
head:first-child + body - https://centricle.com/ref/css/filters/tests/owen/
head + body - https://www.dithered.com/css_filters/css_only/head_adjacent_sibling_body.html
body > element - https://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=ChildHack

We ask that you please update your pages to not use these CSS hacks. If you want to target IE or bypass IE, you can use conditional comments .

Here is a simple example how you would use it in the Slashdot scenario:

Using the existing style block:

#footer .search

{
text-align: left;
position: absolute;
top: 0;
left: 1em;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}

In a new style block underneath:

<!--[if IE]>

<style>

#footer .search

{
margin-top: -1.6em;
}

</style>

<![endif]-->

I would prefer a CSS solution too but currently there isn’t one in the CSS standard. Please help us spread the word so it is an easier decision for us in the future to make improvements to our standards implementation (even if it means breaking customers).

Thanks,

- Markus Mielke

Comments

Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Since it looks like that legend is always empty, shouldn't it be:

#footer .search form>fieldset>legend {
display:none;
}

IE6 will ignore the style because it doesn't understand the child selector, and it won't affect any of the other browsers who apparently have the equivalent behavior.

Actually, the best fix would be to remove the empty legend tag since it's not serving any purpose, or put content in it.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Changing your last code block to something like this:



would make it apply only to versions of IE prior to IE7. Something I've taken to doing more often is something like this:



which supplies an extra stylesheet to older versions of IE if placed last in the cascade.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I don't understand why you would want to use browser-specific code in this case. Since the problem is that the standard doesn't specify a standard behavior in the case, it seems natural to explicitly request a behavior for all browsers. So, wouldn't it work to use something like

#footer .search legend { display: none; }

? Even IE6 should have no trouble with it, and, according to your description, I think it would fix the problem.

Is there some problem with this?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Interestingly if you try to run the W3C Validator against anything from slashdot.org, slashdot returns 403 Forbidden. Whats the matter, do they not want people to see the validation errors for their new design?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Would like to know when IE 7 Beta 2 will be out, please, so we can make such changes AND test them.

Thanks.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@Jim: Spec doesn't say that legend is inline (bit you're referring to says its content is inline). Besides HTML inline is technically completely different thing than CSS inline.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
If the legend whitespace is not specified in the HTML spec, and therefore it's up to the browser to decide how to handle it, shouldn't we be asking the W3C to set a standard? I know MS is heavily involved with web standards, and in the WASP, why not just ask them to decide on something?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
This is good to see. Not only are you folks fixing many of the long-standing issues with MSIE, but you're communicating with developers so they know what's changing.

It looks like you're going to considerable lengths to make the upgrade as painless as is possible for something that breaks compatibility in some ways. I personally don't see what more you folks could do, except freeze MSIE's renderer at the IE 6 level.

Personally this has been very helpful, as I'm currently faced with some rendering issues with IE in an in-house web app I'm working on, and this gives me some very handy information on how best to tackle the problem.

Given that this only applies to the strict renderer anyway, I must admit I don't see what the problem is. Congratulations, folks.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Paul Thurrots site has this date on Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2, Dec 7.
I'm not sure if its 100% correct, but he has been 80-90% correct before.

http://www.winsupersite.com/
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Good stuff, one remaining question though at this point. Will we be able to throw IE in to quirks mode by having a comments tag before the XML declaration or doctype?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Thomas - yes, they have done on both attribute selectors and alpha PNG.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Regarding the legend tag:

The HTML 4.01 spec does not specify what should happen with an empty legend tag. Right. But why do you reserve a white space for an empty legend tag? If a tag is empty your browser should not print anything.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Can't you wait till you release at least the public beta before requesting this....I have no access to IE7 through Microsoft.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Yes, the following suggestion might be blasphemy for Microsoft, but I had to try.

Why not use the Firefox rendering engine, called gecko? It is Open Source, so Microsoft is allowed to use it (and don't even have to pay for it, as it is available for free (as in free bear)).

Every Webdesigner would be happy if the IE 7 renders pages the same way Firefox does it.

Ok, Microsoft would have to open source IE 7 but as it is included in WinXP / Vista Microsoft doesn't make any money directly with IE. I don't think many uses will upgrade vom Windows 2000 (or whatever) only to get a new version of the Internet Explorer. So no earnings will be lost and I don't think that the business competitors won't have much advantages of an open sourced IE.

Also the developers of IE can concentrate on other features like improved phising protection or something like that.

In the end it sounds (well, at least to me) like a good solution. Less work for Microsoft, less work for Webdesigners.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I have wasted a lot of time finding workarounds for your standard-ignorant browser. I had to make a lot of design tradeoffs because your unability to e.g. render PNG properly.

Honestly, I do not care about the issues you got now. I won't remove a single workaround for your buggy stuff again. You messed it up, now it's also your turn to find a solution for it.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
LOL
Microsoft - you made my day.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
where to send all these additional bills for this additional work? to you billiboy?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
If you are asking web developers to clean up their style sheets because of IE 7, you should at least make IE 7 Beta available for them!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Sorry, but I'm just crying because I laugh so much. Not about you, no way! But about all the web designers who were Pro-IE all the time and now see what they did...

Good luck with IE7, make it a good program :)
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The story with IE7 is some kind of ironic.
If i were not a webdeveloper myself, i would laugh.
Learn to stick to the standards from the beginning on, and you save us all a lot of trouble!

Altough i welcome that IE7 will try to follow the standards now. Just took you 7 versions to get there...

sigh
regards
smilingrasta
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I hope this is just a joke! I can't even cout up all the hours I've spent in the past 'fixing' perfectly good code so that IE can render it somewhat. Now you're asking me to recode? Let's put it this way: For the past 1.5 years I've told my developers to code corretly. The browsers that understand the code (Firefox) render it correctly. All others don't to some degree. We also attach a link to www.getfirefox.com.
This time it's up to YOU to get your act together. We don't code for a browser anymore. I don't see the reason to.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Microsoft is doing the right thing in breaking all those sites. Web-developers start looking at WPF, that's the future, not anything from w3c.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
This won't make me popular at MS but it seems this is our chance as designers to stop IE's monopoly.

Let's not fix our sites for IE7. IE7 won't be used by a lot of people in the beginning. Those few people using IE7 will see a lot of sites break and will be very disappointed in IE7 and switch back to IE6 or Firefox.
This way IE7 will never be a succes and IE will lose it's monopoly.

This will probably never happen, but it's a funny though that IE7's standardsupport could become it's demise.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
This won't make you popular but it makes you look stupid...

It looks quite like a designer's hybris to assume that non-support of a major browser would change anything on market share. Web design is about serving customers, not about changing markets.

If your site, or the one of your employer/customer breaks, it's you who's getting blamed and asked to fix it. If you blame it on IE, then this doesn't change a thing. Just fix it or get lost. Contrary to your belief web designers are not the center of the universe.

IE7 already works very well with most sites because it is more standard compliant, and due to security reasons and MS marketing it's share will be relevant pretty soon after release.

Klaus
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
As others have pointed out, it's a little odd to make this request now when most web developers don't even have the ability to test their code on IE7. Release the IE7 public beta and I'm sure many of us will jump on this request.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Play with the sample code that is posted above by adding some background colors to each element. I think you will agree that IE6 (and IE7?) handling of the legend tag is ugly. If you specify a legend in IE, the background color of the fieldset "escapes" the grouping frame and looks very ugly. In Firefox it stays inside the frame. IE's interpretation may be within the spec but it does not yield nice looking web pages.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
See a small css1, css2 and css3 sample test website which works with Geckos and Operas and others. See http://www.aadmm.de/en/index.htm for a comprehensive test website for css, dom, graphics formats (gif-, png-, jpg- and jpg2000, incl. png alpha channel test) javascript, plug ins inquiry (also works with ie), xhtml, xml and xslt. Take a look on the Topic Screenshots and see how MS IE 7.0b (Windows Vista Beta 1) display a XHTML 1.1 and CSS 2.1 website.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Can you not ask your programmers to change IE7, i.e. not to bother the empty legend tags. Isn't that an easy thing to do?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Thomas Tallyce:
It is harmful to use "* html" because you don't know whether the issues - real bugs or simple differences in behavior - you are working around will be removed when "* html" goes away. If you DO know this for the particular issue you're working around, then it is not harmful. If you do NOT know this, then you should use a versioning-capable system like conditional comments, and be prepared that you will have to update your workarounds when the issues are fixed.

Hans: Yes, yes we do, and not really - because I think customer feedback (e.g. the blog comments posted on past CSS posts on this list) is more direct and useful.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
>In the specific example Markus described, a CSS bug (the * html
>selector) was being used to work around a difference in rendering that
>is not specified by the relevant standard (and certainly wasn't specified
>when we implemented legend). In order to not break this page's
>desired rendering, we either have to not fix our CSS bugs, or we would
>have to arbitrarily change rendering of the legend element when its
>content is empty (which I guarantee would break some other site
>somewhere) - and that's just one non-standards-compliance issue
>that's being worked around.

So what you saying is:

"We break some sites the one way or the other.

However, we rather prefer to break sites that support other browsers than the ones that rely on IE6, even if this means that the behaviour in question will still differ between browsers."

You simply don't get it. If you would like me to actively support your browser, then do your part to make our life easier.

To me it doesn't matter much if it's a bug, or a "difference" - it just requires a different solution no matter how you call it.

Klaus
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
It will be a lot easier for me to fix my sites for IE 7 if you give me IE 7.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
My Proposal: Make your web-browsing software fully CSS compliant before releasing it. Then ask again ;)
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I'm using the child-selector to filter out IE's inability to get the "background-position: fixed" style correct. Does IE7 actually get CSS1 right, now? If it does, then the child-selector filter is appropriate.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
"I would prefer a CSS solution too but currently there isn’t one in the CSS standard."

You could add an "@-ie7-only" rule to CSS that only gets interpreted by IE7. In fact it's specifically allowed by the CSS 2 standard as long as it's named correctly with a - or _ in front.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@Jonny fairplay
Total agreement. Fix this BLOG before telling developers to compensate for bad MS code.

I noticed on your post, the one above, and a bunch of posts on this Blog, that there is another bug.

The auto-linking of URL's (cough URI's) is messed up. Standard links don't terminate correctly when a double-quote, or > (>) symbol is encountered.

E.g. These links will not work, but they should.

1.) Visit Google: <http://www.Google.com/>
2.) Visit: <a href="http://www.Google.com/">Google</a>

When MS gets around to fixing this Blog's comment form, fix this while you are at it.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
"Come on. Lets get serious. If you went to the doctor with 2 broken legs and he told you he could only fix the right one, would you say "if you're only going to do a half job, don't bother"?"

Actually, I'd go to a different doctor...

More important than the empty legend tag thing for me (and I agree with the others, here... displaying an empty tag makes no sense), I hope IE7's fieldsets display correctly when a background color is present. If that's intentional behavior, that also doesn't make sense.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Lots of effort to conform pages to buggy w3c standards.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
[ MY OWN OPINION ]
"Gil", Microsoft doesn't own the blog software, it's community server by Telligent.

YWDRYP: Why don't all the other browsers change to be like IE? After all, w.r.t. the legend tag, IE is just as compliant as the others are (since the spec doesn't say what to do with an empty legend tag). And IE has more than 90% of the market share, so clearly the other browsers should be following IE's lead here.

Since this isn't a spec compliance issue (the spec is silent in this matter), they should follow the behavior of the dominant browser, and not be different for the sake of being different.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@LarryOsterman

Microsoft should follow examples by other browser makers because they're already more developed in standards than IE. It would also be easier for IE to change then for all the other browsers makers to make that one change.

I doubt Opera, Netscape and Mozilla etc, would all agree to make a change just to support microsoft's whacky ideas.

IE is also in new development stages, so Microsoft might as well change the 'legend' tag's behaviour while they're at it - As well as everything else.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
"The HTML 4.01 spec does not specify what should happen in this case. We just do it differently than Firefox and Opera, who do not reserve white space (since we were the first to implement this HTML 4 element back in the day there was no precedent to do it differently)."

If the specification does not specify what to render for an empty legend element, why are you rendering ANYTHING for it? Although it seems odd both that useless elements are sometimes included simply to pass validation and that the specification even requires legend elements for fieldsets (instead of allowing them to be optional, since fieldset elements themselves add meaning to markup with or without associated labels), how to handle an empty container element seems obvious: ignore it. Am I missing something?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
in the interest of full disclosure, i'm a firefox tester. and having tested ie7b1 and firefox 1.6a1, ie doesnt even come close to firefox. i hate the way the toolbars are arranged. they are just out of order. a few suggesions:

-i definitely like a previous posters idea of open sourcing ie. perhaps they could run dual versions. standardIE and openIE, a community run project. similar to the regular SUSE versus openSUSE. i think this would make ie a lot better. and it wouldnt take 4 years to come out with a new version. (it was only 1 year between firefox releases)

-i also like mozilla's nightly builds, a new testing build every day. many previous posts on this blog talk about bug fixes, but since there's no build for us to test, theres only the very limited ie dev staff to test it. i enjoy using the firefox auto-update to download a small 500k update everyday that includes bug fixes and new features. it allows for quicker bug filing and fixing. (most major firefox bugs get fixed in a few hours/minutes).

i think with these 2 suggestiongs, testing and development would be better. who knows, maybe ie7 will manage to keep firefox from taking market share away faster than it already is.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
How will the new IE7 hover behavior coincide with the hover.htc file that was written to get around IE6's current lack of the hover behaviour?

For example if IE7 is used to view a page with the hover.htc file attached would IE7's hover behaviour work correctly?

This page explains the particular file I'm concerned about: http://www.xs4all.nl/~peterned/csshover.html
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
It is peculiar that the W3C standard talks about FIELDSET as though it might be used without a LEGEND, in the manner that /. does. However the DTD says that LEGEND is required, although having an empty LEGEND makes no sense.

I think the problem is that the W3C authors did not reach a good consensus on this one, and put

<!ELEMENT FIELDSET - - (#PCDATA,LEGEND,(%flow;)) -- form control group -->

when they really meant to put

<!ELEMENT FIELDSET - - (#PCDATA,LEGEND?,(%flow;)) -- form control group -->

As little use as there is for FIELDSET/LEGEND, it's no biggie, but I think IE should treat no legend the same as empty legend given this irregularity in the standard.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Finally, something I like to hear from Microsoft. "We’re starting to see the first round of sites and pages breaking due to the CSS fixes we have made." Translated from web browser developer, it says "we're making web developers' lives easier." :)
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Most of the problems faced by the broken web sites are due to:
1. Lack of implementation of standards by IE or by the website author.
2. Incompatibilities between the various implementations of the same satandard by the different browsers.
Problem 1 will hopefully be solve as Microsoft implements new standards and as sites are fixed by their authors. Nothing to do here, except careful decisions while designing IE.
Problem 2 however can be solved by the establishment of an alliance between the browser designers. You might say that such an organization already exists. However, let's be honest: There are not many browser in the world only 3-4. Why can't they colaborate on their implementations instead of fighting with one another who will be the most standards compliant. An alliance can be formed which will analyse colaboratively and decide how unclear or confusing standards can be implemented the same across the 3 browsers. And if a browser vendor wants to be more or less standards compliant because of time, money or backward compatibility issues then this will be allowed, however it will be openly discussed amongst the browser vendors and general targets can be reached.
You are only 3-4 players in the browser field. For the sake of your customers, please at least stop having incompatibilities in the implementations of the same standards. People want their sites to be easy to build but also not having to build more than one version for every browser. Even if browsers become fully standards compliant, the problems will continue to exist if you three do not decide to come to an agreement and colaporate instead of fighting!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I personally think that conditional comments within CSS should be discussed more so, than simply pushed aside just because the W3C and others don't agree, as I feel people in support of such a feature have valid points.

However, I don't feel this post's comments section is the place, so perhaps the IE team (or those over at WASP) could start a new post entry, with the aim of ironing out the pro's and con's in one place?

The reason being, I feel that an IE BETA is the perfect place to trial it. If it works out, it should be included in the main build, if not, it can be removed before the final product is released.

I am in complete support of W3C recommendations, but I do feel that just because they reject the idea of CSS CC, that the idea shouldn't be put to bed.

As far as I know, the W3C have no active role in syndication XML mark-up, RSS, ATOM, etc (please correct me if I am wrong here) but look where that has gone.

While it would be great if all browsers supported the recommendations to the full, I think history has shown this isn't the case, nor will it be for a long time coming, be it via lack of support, or just bugs (known and unknown).
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Ops, forgot about the main point of this entry.

I feel that the comments which state 'display: none;' should be used in this case are correct.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Why does IE 7 don't support all CSS 2 specification?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Oh my gosh, you arent kidding...after a quick run around the internet with IE7 in Vista 5231 it looks well.....very broken...you really need to get a public beta of IE7 to developers pronto. Even download.com looks aweful.

It's ashame old versions of IE have ruined the internet for a long time to come.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
"Sorry, we wouldn't have these problems if Microsoft would have done this job correctly from the beginning. So you learned that it's not a good way to ignore exsiting standards.

Hope Ms learned its lesson."

NEVER!

<a href="http://r2000.blogspot.com">R2000</a>

<a href="http://nybathrooms.com">Bathroom Review</a>
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Can someone explain what this means please?

IE6 security (?) alert:

"Entering a non-secure Web site from a secure Web site

The Web site you were viewing was a secure site. A secure Web site provides secure communication and has a valid certificate. Secure communication means that information that you provide, such as your name or credit-card number, is encrypted so that it can’t be read or intercepted by other people. The certificate is a statement verifying the security of the site. A certificate contains information that a specific Web site is authentic. This ensures that no other site can assume the identity of the original site.

However, the Web site you are going to does not use a security protocol, so information you send and receive will not be protected. And since the site does not have a certificate, you cannot be sure that the site is who it says it is.
Given what you know about this Web site and your computer, you must decide whether to view this site.
If you do not feel confident about viewing this site, click No."

It says the site used to be secure, but then goes on to explain what a secure site is. After you've read what a secure site is, it tells you that this site is NOT secure.

Why does it explain what a secure site is if the warning is for an insecure website?

This confused me so much I didn't know what to decide, considering I HADN'T BEEN VIEWING ANY SITES BEFORE I GOT THE WARNING. "The Web site you WERE viewing WAS a secure site."

This was for a Microsoft website too - hotmail.

Please do something about your warning messages, they are useless.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
You made your bed ...
Why don't you lie in it ?
;-)
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
In response to Herbie, if you read what I have already posted and what Ben Buchanan wrote you'll realise that what you're saying is absurd to say the least.

We want to go forward not backwards, please read the other posts as to the reasons we wish to not have conditional comments in our web pages, so we do not have to keep repeating ourselves.

Chris.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I'm not much of a webdesigner, even though I have been trying to come up with something usefull during the last 10 years. No imagination sighs.
Anyway, my question to you IE and other webdesigners is, wont all your pages that works in FireFox/Opera/Safari etc also work in IE7 if IE7 will use the same web standards?
Or did you make sites specifically for IE6 that doesn't really work in any other browser (I have seen a lot of these)?
To me it looks like this, if it works in FF and IE7 will use web standards, then it will just work as normal.
Am I right or wrong? IE team, developers?! =)

I'm happy when my stuff work in lynx. ;)
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I don't honestly see the point - at current Firefox growth rates, it will have a higher market share than IE by the time Vista comes out
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Backwards compatibility is your problem and obviously in your own interests to have older pages render properly. IE6 isn't going away anytime soon.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Really? That's good.
One other thing I'd like to see fixed is IE's rendering of dotted/dashed borders - all broken, when you for example scroll them outside the current window and back
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I still need to know if IE 7 is going to stop allowing poorly formed code. If it is I have to approach my analysis differently than if it isn't. I am hoping for the isn't.. thank you !
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Though I have read most of the comments, I know this may be a duplicate post and if it is I apologize (so much to get thru :) ), but I have a question about properly formed HTML.

I know and understand how IE 7 will implement standards related to CSS, but I have yet to read about how they will handle standards around poorly formed HTML.

For years, IE has taken code that is written with unclosed tags, improper nesting and deprecated HTML. In IE 7, will sites that are written with poorly formed HTML be rendered more like they are in Firefox or will they still render in IE as they do now?

This is important because I work for a company that does not see the need to make our code correct (let alone compliant) because most of our users are IE, so I need to know if our poorly formed code will break in IE7. thanks!!
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
You are suggesting to use condition comments to work around problems with IE. Unfortunately the downlevel-revealed conditional comments as described on MSDN do not validate (if someone should ever feel the need to use them instead of uplevel-revealed).
I found a work-around for this problem using a quite unusual syntax:


...


(more details on http://www.odahoda.de/blog/2005/04/06/valid-downlevel-revealed-conditional-comment/).

Can we expect that this behaviour will continue to work in future IE versions? (I haven't tried it in IE7beta, but it will apply to IE8+ too anyway).
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
With regards to your legend rendering I cannot understand why you are doing it differently than the other 2 browsers mentioned.

If there isnt a set standard by the w3c, then don't create it your own way.

Creating different ways of doing things is what caused all the issues in 5/6/etc.

Standard is 1 way unform amongst all things, not "doing it a different way" beceause it isnt specified.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Sorry, we wouldn't have these problems if Microsoft would have done this job correctly from the beginning. So you learned that it's not a good way to ignore exsiting standards.

Hope Ms learned its lesson.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I give an input button a 1-pixel-solid-border, yet it displays what appears to be a 2-pixel-solid-border. I give the same input button padding and margin of zero, yet there appears to be 20 pixels of empty space on either side.

Tell me this has been fixed already.
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Thomas mentioned, "real bugs" vs. "simple differences in behavior" here: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/10/12/480242.aspx#481630

Does anyone know of any kind of list of behavioral differences that excludes bugs?
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I just hit an IE display bug I hadn't encountered before, and its solution:

http://www.satzansatz.de/cssd/pseudocss.html

I'm guessing that since you're implementing all the CSS 2.0 pseudo-classes in IE7 this will now have been fixed, but thought I'd toss it your way just to be sure.

Chris
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 03, 2006
PingBack from http://www.kk-works.de/2006/02/03/ie-7-beta-2-zweiter-eindruck/
Anonymous
February 12, 2006
PingBack from http://qucho.com/blog/2006/02/13/iexplorer-7-the-stupidity-never-ends-for-ms/
Anonymous
February 16, 2006
PingBack from http://www.martytdx.com/zealot/archives/2006/02/16/ie7-firefoxs-evil-and-inferior-clone
Anonymous
February 19, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 19, 2006
PingBack from http://dontcom.com/2006/02/my-css-methodology/
Anonymous
February 19, 2006
PingBack from http://charlesc.ilovemeow.net/2006/02/20/digest/508/
Anonymous
March 01, 2006
PingBack from http://www.webdevout.net/tidings/2006/03/02/whose-standards/
Anonymous
March 18, 2006
PingBack from http://www.elliotswan.com/2006/03/18/debugging-css/
Anonymous
March 19, 2006
PingBack from http://gopalarathnam.com/weblog/2006/02/01/ie7-beta-2-preview-available.html
Anonymous
March 23, 2006
PingBack from http://www.foliosus.com/2006/03/23/is-microsoft-screg-the-web-community-again/
Anonymous
March 27, 2006
Recently, Microsoft has published the Second Public Beta of the forthcomig and long awaiting <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie7/default.mspx">Internet Explorer 7</a>, addressed to developers and web developers to test
Anonymous
March 30, 2006
PingBack from https://strom.wordpress.com/2006/03/30/ie7-active-x-woes/
Anonymous
April 02, 2006
PingBack from http://adamcaudill.com/2006/04/02/vb-the-dumbing-of-a-great-language/
Anonymous
April 10, 2006
PingBack from http://adamcaudill.com/2006/04/10/ie7-of-time-standards/
Anonymous
April 18, 2006
PingBack from http://www.revolucao.etc.br/archives/conditional-comments-no-internet-explorer/
Anonymous
April 23, 2006
PingBack from http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/css/stop-css-hacking
Anonymous
April 27, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
April 29, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
May 01, 2006
PingBack from http://www.pikkio.net/blog/20060501/arrivera-la-vendetta-del-webdesigner/
Anonymous
May 25, 2006
PingBack from http://www.web2grow.com/web-design-australia/?p=70
Anonymous
May 25, 2006
At the end of January, Microsoft released a public beta of the next version of Internet Explorer [download | readme | tour]. IE 7b2 offers more stringent security measures and other improvements including tabbed-browsing, updated CSS, RSS support and
Anonymous
June 08, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
June 15, 2006
PingBack from http://blog.jagregory.com/articles/2006/06/15/using-ies-conditional-comments-for-targeted-javascript
Anonymous
July 13, 2006
PingBack from http://hyalineskies.com/blog/2006/06/myspace-dev-4-restoring-music-functionality/
Anonymous
July 14, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
July 14, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
July 27, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
July 27, 2006
PingBack from http://webinsider.uol.com.br/index.php/2006/07/27/prepare-seu-site-para-o-internet-explorer-7/
Anonymous
July 28, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
July 30, 2006
PingBack from http://www.phunkadelik.com/blog/2006/07/31/ie7-is-coming-soon/
Anonymous
August 11, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
August 19, 2006
PingBack from http://css.givenfacts.com/css/css-for-ie7.php
Anonymous
August 20, 2006
PingBack from http://www.m3rlin.ws/2006/08/20/ie-vs-firefox-vs-unordered-lists/
Anonymous
September 03, 2006
PingBack from http://www.brunodulcetti.com/blog/2005/11/10/prolog-xml.html
Anonymous
September 22, 2006
PingBack from http://joshhundley.com/2006/09/22/down-with-internet-explorer/
Anonymous
September 25, 2006
PingBack from http://www.bluesaze.com/wp/?p=48
Anonymous
September 29, 2006
PingBack from http://www.standardysieciowe.org/?p=20
Anonymous
October 06, 2006
PingBack from http://blog.visualaid.eu/?p=7
Anonymous
October 11, 2006
PingBack from http://shireweb.biz/blog/2006/10/11/browser-wars-iv-ie7-wreaking-havoc-on-css/
Anonymous
October 14, 2006
PingBack from http://www.rjohnson.id.au/wordpress/?p=4
Anonymous
October 17, 2006
PingBack from http://www.aarronwalter.com/2006/10/17/internet-explorer-7-release-coming-very-soon/
Anonymous
October 18, 2006
PingBack from http://www.pfbot.com/2006/10/19/what-all-web-developers-fear/
Anonymous
October 27, 2006
CSS Hacks sind fr den Webdesigner lebensnotwendig, wenn er anspruchsvolle Crossbrowser-Webseiten entwickeln will. Hier mal ein paar sehr interessante Seiten, die ich ber CSS Hacks gefunden habe. CSS-Hacks am Box- Modell (Thestyleworks) Eine Aus
Anonymous
November 01, 2006
PingBack from http://blog.inserit.com/?p=20
Anonymous
November 06, 2006
PingBack from http://www.phileplanet.com/archives/2006/11/now-in-ie/
Anonymous
November 17, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 17, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 18, 2006
PingBack from http://the-stickman.com/web-development/changes-to-security-ie7-are-you-ready/
Anonymous
December 18, 2006
PingBack from http://the-stickman.com/web-development/changes-to-security-ie7-are-you-ready/
Anonymous
December 22, 2006
PingBack from http://info.rsow.com/?p=32
Anonymous
December 28, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 03, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 09, 2007
PingBack from http://weblog.mindgame.nl/2007/01/09/ie7-zuigt-ie6-nog-meer/
Anonymous
January 19, 2007
PingBack from http://ie7css.info/?p=4
Anonymous
January 24, 2007
PingBack from http://www.csslab.cl/2006/07/28/se-viene-ie7-%c2%a1huid/
Anonymous
January 26, 2007
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/09/02/460115.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/07/29/445242.aspx
Anonymous
February 03, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 05, 2007
PingBack from http://onemorebug.com/blog/2006/12/24/notes-on-getting-png-transparency-in-ie6-with-pure-css/
Anonymous
February 27, 2007
PingBack from http://www.tyndale.ca/~asmith/blog/2007/02/27/how-to-make-square-corners/
Anonymous
March 10, 2007
PingBack from http://pods.lv/blog/2006/01/internet_explorer_7_beta_2_preview_build_5299.html
Anonymous
April 03, 2007
PingBack from http://www.3greeneggs.com/wp/web-dev/tip-whitespace-problems-in-ie7-one-quick-fix/
Anonymous
April 03, 2007
PingBack from http://frodosghost.com/2007/04/04/of-kites-and-coding/
Anonymous
April 10, 2007
PingBack from http://open.info.nl/archief/2006/03/27/ie7-komt-eraan/
Anonymous
April 22, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
April 22, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
June 13, 2007
PingBack from http://lynseyjordandesign.com/lastresort/2007/06/08/in-progress-conditional-comments/
Anonymous
July 04, 2007
It's always nice to see software lining up to work around standards. But when you throw out the accountability issues for not doing this right the first time, its just likely to end up biting end users. And such a...
Anonymous
July 11, 2007
PingBack from http://blog.jagregory.com/2006/06/15/using-ies-conditional-comments-for-targeted-javascript/
Anonymous
August 18, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
August 29, 2007
PingBack from http://www.cynthiaknouft.com/?p=86
Anonymous
September 24, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
October 11, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
October 13, 2007
PingBack from http://www.almashroo.com/articles/%d9%86%d8%b5%d8%a7%d8%a6%d8%ad-%d8%b5%d9%81%d8%ad%d8%a7%d8%aa-%d8%a7%d9%86%d8%b3%d9%8a%d8%a7%d8%a8%d9%8a%d8%a9-css/
Anonymous
October 14, 2007
PingBack from http://www.swalif.net/softs/swalif44/softs209923/#post1522447
Anonymous
November 24, 2007
PingBack from http://alasdairmackenzie.com/index.php/2007/11/24/google-off-google-on/
Anonymous
November 24, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 11, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 24, 2007
PingBack from http://positioniseverything.net.cn/?p=7
Anonymous
December 29, 2007
PingBack from http://cars.oneadayvitamin.info/?p=688
Anonymous
January 04, 2008
PingBack from http://actors.247blogging.info/?p=4507
Anonymous
January 11, 2008
PingBack from http://www.robinsblog.com/10132005/beta-goodies-around-the-web/
Anonymous
January 15, 2008
PingBack from http://www.graphiceyedea.info/wordpress/?p=242
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
PingBack from http://dougal.gunters.org/blog/2008/01/23/ie8-for-better-and-worse
Anonymous
March 30, 2008
PingBack from http://blog.myess.cn/2008/03/rang-ie7zhi-ming-de-kong-ge-427.html
Anonymous
April 08, 2008
PingBack from http://arapehlivanian.com/2008/04/09/when-browser-detection-isnt-a-bad-thing/
Anonymous
April 30, 2008
PingBack from http://blog.designdelineations.com/2006/02/04/internet-explorer-7-beta-public-release/
Anonymous
May 19, 2008
PingBack from http://cssblog.it/2008/05/20/internet-explorer-come-la-mettiamo/
Anonymous
May 19, 2008
PingBack from http://www.kikoweb.org/blog/119/internet-explorer-come-la-mettiamo
Anonymous
May 21, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
May 21, 2008
PingBack from http://trey.clearviewaccess.info/csshacks.html
Anonymous
May 31, 2008
PingBack from http://alexisnews.justfree.com/msdnremoveie7.html
Anonymous
June 06, 2008
PingBack from http://andrewnewssite.site2gb.com/imbrokendontbreakme.html
Anonymous
June 19, 2008
PingBack from http://www.1222north.com/?p=39
Anonymous
June 29, 2008
PingBack from http://kierra.ifarmmarket.com/cssboxmodelie6firefox.html
Anonymous
June 30, 2008
PingBack from http://august.forsexstories.com/willfirefoxcauseproblemsforie.html
Anonymous
July 10, 2008
PingBack from http://jadon.supervidsdigest.info/ieredirectsonceonlyperbrowse.html
Anonymous
July 16, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
July 27, 2008
PingBack from http://noahplace.gigazu.com/cssie6hacks.html
Anonymous
August 25, 2008
PingBack from http://blog.webqem.com.au/index.php/2005/11/15/ie7-is-coming/
Anonymous
August 28, 2008
PingBack from http://miltonweb.wordpress.com/2008/08/28/comentarios-condicionais/
Anonymous
August 30, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
October 05, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
October 11, 2008
PingBack from http://www.codecouch.com/2008/10/how-to-target-specific-ie-browsers-using-just-html/
Anonymous
December 10, 2008
PingBack from http://www.thinkvitamin.com/single/?p=166
Anonymous
December 10, 2008
PingBack from http://www.qasimalyas.com/things-that-annoy-me-in-web-development/
Anonymous
December 17, 2008
PingBack from http://blog.idesign.in.th/archives/577
Anonymous
January 02, 2009
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 20, 2009
PingBack from http://www.hilpers.com/98086-ie-das-kommt-davon-wenn
Anonymous
January 22, 2009
PingBack from http://www.hilpers.fr/534404-w-idth
Anonymous
January 22, 2009
PingBack from http://www.hilpers.org/182198-ot-iev7-screenshot
Anonymous
January 22, 2009
PingBack from http://www.hilpers.nl/152176-breedte-in-ie-anders-als
Anonymous
March 24, 2009
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
April 17, 2009
PingBack from http://web-3.es/2009/04/%c2%bfasi-que-querias-saber-de-css/
Anonymous
April 17, 2009
PingBack from http://web-3.es/2009/04/%c2%bfasi-que-querias-saber-de-css/
Anonymous
May 29, 2009
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
June 01, 2009
At the end of January, Microsoft released a public beta of the next version of Internet Explorer [download | readme | tour]. IE 7b2 offers more stringent security measures and other improvements including tabbed-browsing, updated CSS, RSS support and
Anonymous
June 02, 2009
PingBack from http://patiochairsite.info/story.php?id=28311
Anonymous
June 08, 2009
PingBack from http://jointpainreliefs.info/story.php?id=907
Anonymous
June 08, 2009
PingBack from http://insomniacuresite.info/story.php?id=3743
Anonymous
June 08, 2009
PingBack from http://cellulitecreamsite.info/story.php?id=5913
Anonymous
June 08, 2009
PingBack from http://hairgrowthproducts.info/story.php?id=190
Anonymous
June 10, 2009
PingBack from http://traweq.com/vb/t14.html#post65
Anonymous
June 15, 2009
PingBack from http://unemploymentofficeresource.info/story.php?id=4199
Anonymous
June 16, 2009
PingBack from http://topalternativedating.info/story.php?id=3669

Partager via

Call to action: The demise of CSS hacks and broken pages

Comments

Ressources supplémentaires