Dale's Weblog

IE7

Well not really. But there is currently a project underway to increase IE’s rendering capabilities.

When I first heard about this project the first thing that came to mind was just a patch for IE that increased CSS support etc. Sure it might be nice but it won’t be used by many people so we’d still have to code in hacks for IE.

But this script is a javascript plugin that increases IE’s CSS2 support. It fixes things relating to the Box-model, Fixed Positioning and Dynamic Pseudo Classes plus a few more.

Pretty much you can get any user to run the script when they visit your site. All that is needed is to upload the files and then add this code to your html.

<!– compliance patch for microsoft browsers –>
<!–[if lt IE 7]>
<script src="/ie7/ie7-standard.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>
<![endif]–>

Unfortunately it is a 30k file (with a 17k lite version) so there will be a speed hit when users are visiting your website. I added this patch to this site but currently I only use a few things that don’t work in IE. Such as the textarea:focus used for the comments section.

The size of the file outweighed the added features to IE so that is a shame.

Although the project is a great idea and I will be following it closely.

Here is the linky: http://dean.edwards.name/IE7/
Here is really what you should be using (or some other standards compliant browser): http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/