Question about IE 5.5

[paladin]

If I have a CSS only (no tables) site that works in IE 5.0 and 6.0, can I expect that it will work in 5.5? I currently do not have any system running 5.5 to test things on and I was wondering whether this can be expected or if 5.5 might have other things that could cause problems.

[Paul O'B]

Hi,

IE 5.5. does have a few little differences between ie5 and ie6 but generally its better than ie5 so you should be ok.

If you want to download it you can get it from the link below which allows you to run all versions of ie on the same machine. Its a simple installation and I use it all the time.

http://www.skyzyx.com/downloads/

Paul

[paladin]

Nice. Thanks for that link. I will definitely use that.

[paladin]

Oops, I just noticed that conditional comments don't work with that setup. I definitely need those as most of my pages look like crap without custom style sheets to fix IE's non-compliant rendering.

[Johan Dahlström]

If I have a CSS only (no tables) [...]

Despite what many seem to think, "no tables" has nothing to do with wheter the site "is CSS" or not. Additionally, a page cannot "be" CSS. What it can be is CSS valid and/or CSS "controlled" .

[paladin]

Despite what many seem to think, "no tables" has nothing to do with wheter the site "is CSS" or not.

Yeah I know that was probably a bad way to say it.

What I meant was all of the layout was done using CSS and none of it with tables. I generally eschew tables for layout as I find them frustrating and cumbersome.

[Paul O'B]

Oops, I just noticed that conditional comments don't work with that setup. I definitely need those as most of my pages look like crap without custom style sheets to fix IE's non-compliant rendering.

Although the conditional comments do not detect the ie version locally when you have the multiple version installed it will make no difference to anybody else.

Besides you should be able to make ie work without conditional comments for each specific version. there are plenty of filter (hacks) you can use (if needed) and it makes the stylesheet easier to manage if your code is all in one place. Having a different stylesheet for ie5 and ie 5,5, and ie6 is a bit like overkill and harder to maintain.

Using * html is probably the only method you will need.

Paul

[Suzy]

* html is my favourite hack.. but for future proofing I have to say conditional comments might be the safest

Your instinct and a few real world tests and you should learn to trust the multi IE install. Just because it doesn't support the conditionals locally, they still work as intended. So test locally with hacks and use conditionals when live if you like..

We dont know what IE's next browser will bring, better, worse or no different!

Conditional Comments will still be in use. Because unless they "go polar" it seems to be their way, their "get out clause".. they need some way for us to use their way "to keep us sweet". I wish it would be to follow/support the recommendations, but in order to compromise between what is and what should be I think they will remain. Whereas they might just just to lose the extra "phantom" element, so the * html might not work..

I'm not saying you shouldn't use it, it's certainly easier for BMH and so forth but be aware of the conditionals and what they do/might further do perhaps?

From a total design perspective it gives us a way to write 2 x different stylesheets ( IE/win and everyone else ) without browser sniffing.. easier than hacking one stylesheet to death?

IMHO of course

Suzy

[Paul O'B]

Hi Suzy,

Some good points there and I agree with most of them

However, when referring to ie5 and ie5.5. then * html is always going to work as those browsers will never be changed. It will only be the new version that we have to worry about and if we guess that * html is to be fixed then you may as well guess that the reason for using * html is fixed also and then the pages will still work because ie7 (or whatever its called) will get the good styles like other good browsers (it works both ways, you can't say if one thing and not the other - if that makes sense ).

However I suspect that the new ie whenever it arrives will have its fare share of bugs to keep us all busy. I believe I read in one of the IE blogs that it was hinted that some form of doctype switching may be their way of addressing the standards again.

I've never been a fan of multiple stylesheets (perhaps thats just me) and probably because it makes my life harder here on sitepoint. I must open a hundred stylesheets a day and I get sick of the site of them lol. I find it hard to debug code spread across three style sheets as there are often conflicting styles (as you'd expect) and you end up jumping back and forth. I'd much rather go to the style in question and see all the hacks listed underneath. (Well i'd rather not see any hacks at all )

But I appreciate that having separate stylesheets may suit some people and of course does keep the css cleaner in each as the code doesn't have to be hacked etc . However it may cause users to be lazy in just offering different code to different browsers when in fact the correct code may suit all browsers.

Of course thats just my personal opinion and doesn't really mean much in the scheme of things. I think I've started rambling on again as I'm probably not making sense anymore - time for a break

Paul