Comments on: Code for IE's eyes only

By: Bob S

Bob S — Tue, 07 Sep 2004 15:27:53 +0000

Valerie,

The tendency is that IE works one way, while Everything Else supports W3C standards. So don't think in terms of what you want to do in Mozilla, but try to focus on Web standards, and use this trick to fix IE-specific problems.

Remember, nobody designed this trick; it's a rare instance in which Microsoft's lax ideas of how broken HTML should be interpreted can, by total coincidence, be used to make pages work on both categories of browsers (i.e., IE and Everything Else).

If I understand CSS correctly, what you can do is define your normal (W3C-compliant) stuff first, then use this trick to supply the IE CSS, which will override whatever preceded it.

By: Bob S

Bob S — Tue, 07 Sep 2004 15:11:58 +0000

I just noticed this trick used on Wikipedia. Checking the Wayback Machine, I see they've been using it since at least July. I heard it here first, though!

Must resist temptation to show IE users picture of Goatse Bob. ("If you weren't using IE, you wouldn't see this". Ooooh, soooo tempting.)

By: Valerie

Valerie — Mon, 06 Sep 2004 15:04:33 +0000

Okay so what about css? If I need it to do one thing for Mozilla and another for IE, what do I do? I know this is a bit unrelated, but I can't find this anywhere else so far…

By: J.A.S.O.N.

J.A.S.O.N. — Fri, 03 Sep 2004 14:36:34 +0000

For IE users
If you point IE to my website, you'll notice a special little message specially designed for IE users.

Thanks to Scripty Goddess for the code.

I can't wait to hear about what people come up with. I can't say "see" because I NEVER user IE.

By: GG

GG — Fri, 03 Sep 2004 12:46:58 +0000

Yeah, this is excatly how we get the Firefox logo to show up on the top of the page for IE users over at RepTIDE.

By: Frank

Frank — Fri, 03 Sep 2004 10:57:30 +0000

The problem with Toothpaste Addict is that probably a double minus sign was automatically converted in a single mdash by a text parser like Smarty.

In fact, this is probably the least hacky and most optimal way to send the buggy IE browsers an alternate stylesheet. You can also target the different IE browsers individually, like send IE5 a separate stylesheet from the one you send to IE5.5 or IE6. Check out this write-up.