Details On IE7 CSS Changes

writes "IE development team has released a list of CSS changes for IE7. Some of the notable new features are enabling :hover for all elements, and implementing position:fixed, and PNG transparency support. In addition, there is a long list of fixed bugs that plagued previous IE browsers for years. These changes (except for PNG transparency) only work under the <!DOCTYPE> switch to preserve compatibility with previous versions of IE."

PNG Support

[Neovanglist]

It's about damn time. No more having to use crappy file formats to make sure that your websites have to work with IE anymore.

At least, to some extent.

Now if only someone would fix the reverse...

[Channard]

.. which is certain websites requiring IE to work.

is it too much to ask?

[krell]

"In addition, there is a long list of fixed bugs that plagued previous IE browsers for years"

It's be nice if Microsoft provided a list of every single unfixed bug in IE7 as well.

Re:Old News

[masklinn]

Old News.

But, but... old news are sooo exciting

Re:PNG Support

[masklinn]

You'll still have to cater for IE6 or a loong time, especially since IE7 can't be installed on Windows 2000 or Windows XP SP1...

Re:Does this mean..

[NineNine]

Whose fault was it for using a partially-supported standard? Did somebody at MS hold a gun to your hand and demand that you use PNG?

Re:Does this mean..

[EvilMonkeySlayer]

We have a design spec that we're meant to follow, either we do it in flash or we do it in HTML, CSS with a bit of Javascript and some alpha transparency PNG's.

Which site would you rather go to?

I know which i'd prefer.

I was faced with that exact conundrum a couple of years ago, either I can learn Flash and create a site that is unusable in text browsers, unusable to blind users, unusable to non windows and mac os users and an inability to copy text from the website etc. Or code it in HTML, CSS & Javascript (with a few alpha PNG's) which I already knew. Which the MAJORITY of web devs know.

I created it in HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

That said the site which is still up works fine in IE 7 as well as 6, no need to tweak the JS for the alpha png stuff.

Re:PNG Support

[Teilo]

Just as long as you don't forget that IE7 is >= XP-SP2. There are a massive number of W2K machines out there that are SOL for IE7.

Re:XSLT

[Chatterton]

One thing that I'm wondering about is how IE7 handles a malformed XML document.

The question is: If having an XSL transformation working the same in the 2 browsers is difficult, why adding more complexity with malformed XML documents ? Only a broken implementation of an XML parser will support mal-formed XML documents...
It is my point of view. I am an XML wellformedness nazi from the simple fact that XML if for interchange of data. If you are lazy at the way you wrote/generate your XML files, the recipients of thoses files will have huge problems to read, interpret and extract useful information from them.

I am now rephrasing my question: Why wondering about how a system handle malformed documents (except by rejecting them) when there is no good reason to have malformed documents in the first place ?

Re:Does this mean..

[xENoLocO]

Well, you see, when you fix a bug, you, well, fix the bug. All the CSS hacks out there exploit unfixed bugs, so you see by fixing them, they ruin your hacks. That's why you don't hack. Use conditional comments.

Re:PNG Support

[tclark]

They can still run Firefox.

Re:PNG Support

[Teilo]

How elitist of you. Meanwhile, we web developers who actually expect to get paid, have to face the reality of the market. Try to pitch this to the CEO of XYZ corp: "Oh, and by the way, 50% of your potential customers will have to change to a different browser." Get real.

Re:PNG Support

[Anonymous Coward]

Lame approach to the solution. It invalidates the style sheet. It requires to copy-paste nearly the same code for each image. It requires you to write the dimensions manually for each image. It does not work for embedded images (<img src... /> ).

Be virtuously lazy and reuse the IE7 library [edwards.name] instead. (Not related to the topical web browser.)

Re:Now if only someone would fix the reverse...

[Phroggy]

.. which is certain websites requiring IE to work.

Fortunately, some of these sites require IE6 to work, and their browser compatibility tests will fail on IE7. This will motivate some people to fix the problem.

(It will motivate other people to just upgrade their compatibility tests, but Firefox is big enough now that they might as well deal with it...)