Beginning CSS: Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design, Second Edition

Chapter 16. Using Dean Edwards's "IE7"

In this chapter, I explore some very useful solutions for getting CSS to work in most browsers in use today. In this chapter I discuss the following:

• Dean Edwards's "IE7" JavaScript (not the browser from Microsoft), an open source pack-age used to implement CSS standards in IE 6 and less without upgrading the browser itself

• Installation of an HTTP server, the software used to transmit web pages from server to browser, which is required to use the "IE7" package

At the time of this writing, IE 6 exhibits more problems than any other browser in terms of support for CSS standards. This chapter focuses on techniques that web designers use to bring IE 6 up to speed with its competitors, and its successor, IE 7. This discussion is necessary because the majority of Internet users are using Internet Explorer for Windows in one form or another.

Bugs are an unfortunate fact of designing web pages. In a perfect world, no hacks or workarounds would be necessary. Unfortunately, this isn't a perfect world. A couple of years ago, designers were grumbling about having to support Netscape Navigator 4. Today, use of Netscape Navigator 4 is virtually nonexistent, and the browser designers are complaining about IE 6.

In the upcoming sections, you learn about a few of the most important bugs you may encounter when rendering a web page for IE 6, and I show you how to smash them. Although other browsers, such as Mozilla, Opera, and Safari, have their share of bugs, the ...