CODEWITHSUNDEEP
htmlbrowsercross-browser
mamu
mamu

Reputation: 12414

Ie 6, 7 and 8(Compatibility mode) issues

We have a site that works fine with any latest browser including ie8.

But it has lots of issues with ie6, ie7 and ie8(Compatibility mode).

We are using following doctype 

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

So it is not using quirck mode.

Before i start digging into individual issues, just want to known if i am missing something or doing something wrong to go ie in some different mode other than standard?

I tried to find list of known issues with ie6 and ie7 when using w3c standards but didn't find much useful, but found just enough to confuse me.

Any known site where i can find known issues with old ie's when using w3c standards?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1118

Answers (5)

bobince
bobince

Reputation: 536329

To find out whether you are correctly picking up Standards Mode, enter:

javascript:alert(document.compatMode)

in the browser's address bar whilst your page is loaded. If you get ‘CSS1Compat’ you're sorted. If you get ‘BackCompat’, you're in quirks. This can happen in IE when you've put some stray bytes before the <!DOCTYPE declaration, for example a spurious <?xml declaration.

I tried to find list of known issues with ie6 and ie7

It would be quite long. Yes, even in Standards Mode. Anything in particular?

Upvotes: 1

milican
milican

Reputation: 26

By specifying what type of HTML document you are using at the top of your document you are taking the browser out of quirks mode. Now, the newer browsers are much more standards compliant and therefore easier to code with. Here are some tips that might help you out:

  • Use DIV instead of TABLE for layout
  • Watch out for Document Object Model or DOM differences between browsers
  • Here is a site with CSS compatibility info: http://www.quirksmode.org/css/contents.html
  • Run your code through W3C's Validator
  • Instead of W3C's free validator, consider purchasing a HTML validator which you can run on your machine. In my opinion a programmer wouldn't run a C# program without compiling, and web development shouldn't be done without some sort of validation program. It will save you oodles of time.

Sorry I can't post more links. Stack overflow will only allow me to post one.

Upvotes: 1

FinnNk
FinnNk

Reputation: 3265

Here's a good overview of IE related CSS bugs.

Also, if you're not doing it already I strongly suggest you use a CSS reset (here's an example of one CSS reset there are others out there e.g. YUI CSS Reset) - bringing all browsers down to the same baseline and then working up will elminate a lot of inconsistencies without having to track them down individual and hunting for causes if they later appear.

Upvotes: 1

Stefan Kendall
Stefan Kendall

Reputation: 67802

There are more conflicts and non-implementations than one should ever have to know. If you write standards-compliant websites, your websites will not work in IE6 or IE7. Most people special case IE6 and IE7 with special stylesheets to fix the breakage.

The IE6 PNG fix is especially common.

Upvotes: 1

Bryan McLemore
Bryan McLemore

Reputation: 6493

Here is one link that has a few fixes I used to use: http://hublog.hubmed.org/archives/001515.html

Upvotes: 1

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