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IE6 CSS bug

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22 Apr 2003

I’ve heard people complain that Microsoft has stopped innovating with their browser. What’s worse is that they’ve become so complacent in their market share that they don’t even fix browser bugs unless they are security related.

Internet Explorer has several well-documented browser bugs, the most commonly seen being the CSS scrolling bug. On some pages that use CSS layout, the browser won’t display scroll bars unless you reload the page.

The latest CSS bug to bite me is that IE6 refuses to render the background colors or images of block elements unless they are relatively positioned. The header of a new site that I was working on wasn’t being displayed in IE6 unless the browser was in full-screen mode. Adding .header { position: relative; } to the CSS fixed it.

This is inexcusable. Microsoft knows about these bugs and should be releasing patches to fix them. I’d love to use CSS layout for more of my client sites, but every time I try to do something innovative with the layout I find myself bogged down in workarounds and ugly hacks. The Web’s been around for nearly a decade. Isn’t it time that the tools grew up?

Rachel
April 7, 2006 4:04 AM

Couldn't agree more. Lets move away from table based layouts - Microsoft what say you? It is very frustrating when a page that renders perfectly in Firefox, Opera and Netscape does wierd things in IE. It's a great browser in danger of being 'left behind' - maybe it no longer wants to play.

Mauricio
December 11, 2006 12:21 PM

Well, IE7 has corrected some of bugs. Anyway they continue being CSS properties that do not understand very well. Mauricio

Jehzeel Laurente
April 15, 2007 8:03 AM

I've encountered does bugs too. IE6 really sucks! But IE7 was improved a little bit. Still FireFox is better than IE nowadays... Who knows IE8 will be more better... I really do hope so :)

Mark Kempton
May 17, 2007 11:13 PM

Here's a way to include javascript libararies to make ie6 perform like a compliant browser: http://www.grumpycoder.co.uk/how-to-fix-ie6-for-w3c-standards-compliance-using-javascript-libraries/ ;D

This discussion has been closed.

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