Let The Finger Pointing Begin

01 Feb 2006 by Carl Camera

Microsoft released IE7 Beta 2 Preview yesterday and I've been checking on how sites are rendering.

It's not pretty.

Nearly every example of the One True Layout is broken. Suckerfish and to a greater degree Nick Rigby CSS Flyout Menus are not consistent with Firefox, Opera, etc rendering. Positioning is messed up on the Vine Type website.

I was under the impression that the CSS positioning and has-layout problems were fixed and that my star-html CSS selector hack was fine to target pre IE7 browsers. I think the only CSS hack I use is star-html.

And of course the knife in the back is that all those bloated table-based sites look oh so beautiful.

Microsoft is providing several feedback avenues including a newsgroup discussion board and email address.

Show 4 Comments

Comments

Just put up a website for Phil(skstarkiller) that had IE6 licked but now IE7 comes in and messes it all up... grumblegrumble

Me thinks they have a LOT of issues to fix before the official release...

Matt Waller 02 Feb 2006

Yes, I know how you feel. I would very much rather be improving functionality then trying to tweak another browser.

I wonder if we're seeing more problems because our sites are not invoking Quirks Mode in IE7. Punsished for following standards. :-)

Carl Camera 02 Feb 2006

I'm pretty sure Microsoft said "* html" was one of the CSS hacks that wouldn't work.

Jeff Atwood 15 Feb 2006

Thanks for stopping by Jeff. I guess I wasn't clear on that point as I could have been. My understanding is that IE7 is promising to (among other things)

Align their box model width definition with the CSS recommendation and the rest of the browser community and
No longer recognize * html CSS declarations

That brings * html to the forefront of required CSS hacks. It will target IE6 and earlier but not affect IE7. So I would encourage the use of * html to adjust width properties for IE5 and IE6 -- IE7 will get the same CSS definitions as Firefox, Opera, et al.

Having the IE Blog suggest that we "Stop Using CSS Hacks" is rather shortsighted and presumptuous in my opinion. It will be years before IE6 fades from the internet landscape. We will still need to deal with its anomolies. * html seems the best route to take as far as I'm concerned.

Anyone disagree?

Carl Camera 16 Feb 2006