Aug 05
Trash All IE Hacks
Let’s admit it, we all hate Internet Explorer 6. About 80% of our CSS debug time are spend on IE6. We all know that IE6 is outdated and has horrible CSS rendering engine. However, most average Internet users haven’t realized that yet. Why? Because we put our hard work on it and patch the bugs by various IE hacks. Well, it is time to do something…
Common IE hacks
-
CSS Conditional comments
In order for our sites to work on specific verson of IE (due to improper CSS rendering), CSS conditional comments are used to apply special CSS specifications to fix it. If you haven’t realized this yet, read the IE bug articles on positioniseverything.net (warning: you might hate IE more after you read them). -
PNG hack
As mentioned early, IE6 is outdated and doesn’t support PNG alpha transparency. In order to display PNG (with alpha transparency) properly in IE6 or older version, we use this hack.Aleksey asked on "Simple Double Quotes":
"Hello Nick. I see some bug.
The Close button ( X ) don’t transparent. Test on IE6 and MyIE."My response:
"Yes, I know the PNGs don’t display probably in IE6. But guess what, I’m not going to bother to fix it. I’m sick of hacking IE6 bugs. You should upgrade your browser anyway. Why are you still using the outdated browser?"
Why trash IE6 hacks?
I know this is difficult because about 37% (according to w3schools.com) of internet users are still using IE6. But, together we can make a different. Stop using IE hacks on your sites and let them see the ugly side of IE6. Eventually, they will find a better browser (ie. Firefox) or at least upgrade to newer version of IE.
Update:
Agree with the comments below, the statistic from W3schools does not reflect the entire internet. According to TheCounter.com, the global browser stats of IE6 users is 52% in July 2007.
Support me
If you agree with me, please support Web Designer Wall by making a vote and spreading out the word. Let’s trash all IE hacks and code happily ever after…
Loading …Conclusion
85% voted yes
15% voted no
Here are what people have said:
- "My boss will fire me if my sites don’t work in IE6" because 52% of internet users are still using IE6.
- Display a message (in yellow bar), "You are using an outdated browser, please upgrade your browser" to IE6 users.
- If it is a personal project, you can ignore all the IE6 users. But for professional or commercial projects, you can’t live without them.
- Avoid using any features (ie. PNG, CSS selectors) that are not supported by IE6.
Illustrating the Flower Pattern Neil Duerden
Comments
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There are 455 comments (+Add)
Pages: « 46 … 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 … 1 » Show All
225 IamDodo
October 18th, 2007 at 4:00 am
IE has its drawbacks but its not that bad. If you know how to go around the corner you can write up a w3c valid yet IE compatible code…
Altough they really should do something about them PNG’s.
224 Douglas Neiner http://www.pixelgraphics.us
October 12th, 2007 at 2:37 am
I do not see IE6 as a limitation in design… sure it takes a little extra work, but if your programming style is valid, and you think through your project before you start, the problems are limited. You really start to run into problems when you start to clutter up your CSS with this hack and that hack. I much prefer to use IE conditional statements as they are ignored by every other browser.
Also, base your sites on a good javascript framework like jQuery or MooTools, and let it carry the weight of the browser differences.
It is not how bad IE6 is, it really comes down to how good of a developer you really are! Happy Coding!
223 art http://www.webmediacenter.com
October 8th, 2007 at 4:19 am
i agree about it, BTW i hate IE browser, but it’s necessary for our job and our client. Half of them still use it for surfing. actually they complain about IE bug specially about design like border, pixel etc. Unfortunatly that is our mistake (programmer and designer web) not IE bug. So who’s wrong here?
222 Jason Anderson http://www.jasoco.net
October 4th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
You know what this is? Corporations are like the new kid in school being picked on by the bullies, but instead of standing up to them and making them change, they decide to just bring him cookies every day.
I stood up to my enemies in school. And I was a geek. A skinny geeky kid. And they laid off for the remainder of my stay there. If I can do it, corporations can do it. No excuses. This is the 21st century.
221 Carly http://twisted-barfly.co.uk
October 3rd, 2007 at 10:15 am
Agreeing with some of the comments about people who don’t understand what a browser even is, I was behind the bar at work yesterday and I heard a group of men chatting about the internet and one was wrongly informing the others that you have to have internet explorer to go on the internet. I was very close to going over and correcting them but had people to serve, lol
220 Jason Anderson http://www.jasoco.net
September 30th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
I agree whole heartedly. Seriously. I don’t even bother with making IE work right. It’s bullcrap that we should have to break our backs to make one unconforming browser look as good. I say let them see the ugly misordered design. If you want, put an IE only message somewhere saying “Page looks bad? Dump IE and fix that problem.”
We don’t even have an IE6 in our house to test with anymore so screw it.
219 Mohammed
September 28th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
man! my hate toward IE6 is increasing day after day.. i suggest we make a standard icon appears when users open our pages and when they using IE6 to tell them that they have to upgrade their browser. designers can send u suggestions for the icon’s design.
218 Steve Gurasich
September 25th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
“Stop using IE hacks on your sites and let them see the ugly side of IE6. Eventually, they will find a better browser (ie. Firefox) or at least upgrade to newer version of IE.”
No they won’t, that is not true. Like others have said, people don’t understand what a browser is. When I tell people I don’t use IE I get reponses indicating that people are confusing the browser with the ISP (no, I still use Cox, just not IE), or some people just ask me “which internet I use”. If I tell someone I use Opera then I can just watch their eyes cross, to say nothing of Firefox.
People are not going to see a poorly-rendered site and think to upgrade their browser. People are going to see a poorly-rendered site and think that the people who made it don’t know what they’re doing. IE makes web developers look bad. We have no choice but to either hack our pages to work with IE or to not rely on features like PNG transparency and CSS selectors that IE does not support. It will be years and years until people will be able to make general use of CSS3, which is already years old. I can use CSS3 selectors with Opera, but if I make a page that looks good in Opera it’s not going to work anywhere else for years to come.
217 Meef
September 24th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
Well, I dunno why, but I decided to send Microsoft a general email: (hehe)…
BTW, I’m not a new Web Developer….
216 Akram Taghavi-Burris http://www.akramsideas.com
September 22nd, 2007 at 1:32 pm
I really hate IE. As the article says there are just so many issues as a web designer that you have to fix. That’s why on all my sites, I created a banner that is only displayed if you view the site in IE. This banner says that the site is viewed best in Fire Fox and asks why they are using IE when they could be using FF. Then I also provide a link to FF free download. I think it’s up to the educated web designers to push people into using the better browsers.