Personally I hate IE6, and never wanted to support it. Unfortunately, a percentage of internet users still use IE6. Sometimes even customers get insistent about how their page should look in IE6. Anyways, let’s hope IE dies soon!

This post is about 10 commonly used css properties that were impossible to implement in IE6. While redesigning ProductiveDreams, I came across a few css compatibility issues with IE6 and had to spend hours searching the solution for each issue.

So I just thought of putting them together to save your time. These css hacks (I would rather call them ’solutions’ since, not all of them are purely css based) solves the major compatibility issues in IE6.

1. Rounded or Curved Corners

As you would know, all modern browsers support border radius. Curved corner is something that was merely impossible to achieve in IE6. Recently I came across an htc file (especially for IE) developed by Remiz from HTMLRemix.com, which solves this issue.

The first thing to do while using htc is to add the correct MIME type for htc behavior on your server. This is REALLY important before you proceed. The following are steps:

1. Go to your cpanel and click the MIME Types link
2. Under MIME Type, add text/x-component
3. Under Extensions, add htc
4. Restart Apache Web server

For more details on how to add MIME type visit Microsoft Support

All you need to do is download the htc from HTMLremix or Alternate Link and include the following code in your CSS.

CSS
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.div_class_name{
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behavior:url(border-radius.htc);
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}
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Jquery Alternative: jQuery Corner a jQuery plugin that creates crossbrowser compatible rounded corners!

2. The popular PNG transparency issue

Every designer would have faced this issue, obviously! Though there are a number of javascript based solutions, I couldn't find anything that supports background position. As far as I know all JS based solutions end up with the same result. This is something that worked flawlessly for me. All other solutions are based on this filter.

CSS
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.class_name{
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_background:none;
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filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader (src='image_name.png', sizingMethod='scale');
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}
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HTC Alternative:If the solution above doesn't work for you, you may try this htc alternate.

Known Issues:
1. Doesn't support CSS Sprites: If you are using sprites, then just forget this hack. Background positions doesn't work with PNG hacks .

If you need background-position support for PNG, then go for DD_belated

The best solution is to use a .gif or png-8. Check out the best way to do this without using hacks!

3. Opacity

This is pretty much straight forward and easy to achieve compared to the other hacks.

CSS
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.opacity_div {
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  filter: alpha(opacity = 50);
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}
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4. Fixed position

All browsers support the css property 'position:fixed', but not IE6. I had to find a solution for this since the social icons in this blog are having a fixed position.

CSS
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* html .fixed_div{ 
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position: absolute; /* position fixed for IE6 */ 
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top: expression(104+((e=document.documentElement.scrollTop)?e:document.body.scrollTop)+'px'); 
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left: expression(15+((e=document.documentElement.scrollLeft)?e:document.body.scrollLeft)+'px'); 
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} 
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Just change the top(104) and left(15) values, to position the element.

This method works very well, but you would notice a jerk while scrolling the page. So here goes a fix for that.

CSS
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* html { 
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background-image: url(image.jpg); 
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} 
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All you need is a 1px x 1px image. This might sound weird but it works!

5. Min-width & Max-width

This is simple as well and was already posted on ProductiveDreams

Min-width:

CSS
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.div_class_name{
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width: expression(document.body.clientWidth < 1000? "1000px" : "auto");
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}
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Max-width:

CSS
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.div_class_name{
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width: expression(document.body.clientWidth > 1000? "1000px" : "auto");
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}
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Jquery Alternative: This is an alternative solution for the hack above. JQminmax is a cool plugin which allows you to set minimum and maximum values for both width and height.

6. Hover for non anchor elements

Unfortunately, IE6 supports :hover, only for anchor tags. That means css based dropdowns would not work in IE6. CSShover.htc is the best solution for this. You may download the htc file from xs4all.nl

CSS
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body { 
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behavior: url("csshover3.htc"); 
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} 
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As I mentioned previously, don't forget to add the correct MIME type for htc behavior on your server. This is the key.

7. Min-height & Max-height

Minimum height:

This is not really a hack since it uses valid css.

CSS
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.div_class_name{
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min-height: 140px;
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height: auto !important;
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height: 140px;
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}
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Maximum height:

CSS
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.div_class_name{
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 height: expression( this.scrollHeight > 199 ? "200px" : "auto" );
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}
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8. Bicubic scaling for images

One line code that solves the image scaling issue in IE6 and 7. Hats off to Chris Coyier for coming up with this solution.

CSS
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img {
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 -ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic; 
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}
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9. Negative text indent for input buttons

Negative text indent is normally used to hide the text value inside buttons, which lets you use custom background images for them. For some reason, IE doesn't support negative text indent for input buttons. For more details about this issue check out this post

CSS
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input.button {
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width:114px;
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height:37px;
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border: none;
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background: transparent url(images/button_image.gif) no-repeat center;
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overflow: hidden;
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text-indent: -999px;
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}
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10. Text shadow

The shadow filter is one of the useful filters for IE.

CSS
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.text_shadow{
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filter: Shadow(Color=#999999, Direction=135, Strength=5);
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height: 1%;
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}
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A few days back while working for a MAJOR client (sorry, can’t mention their name), I discovered something new (I hope it’s new ) – A pure CSS based image replacement solution for IE. This method is helpful especially to solve the PNG issue in IE6. I know there are many CSS hacks available out there to solve the PNG transparency issue, but this method doesn’t need any hacks!! Interesting isn’t it?

Step-1: Let’s review the HTML part first.

HTML
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<html>
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<head>
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<title>ProductiveDreams</title>
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<link href=”style.css” rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css”/>
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</head>
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<body>
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<div class=”bg-image”></div>
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</body>
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</html>
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The following are the images that I've used for this tutorial. The image without saturation is a .gif and the colored one is a .png. You may right click and save the image.

Step-2: The stylesheet

I included the following code in the stylesheet

CSS
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body{
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background:#000;
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text-align:center;
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}
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div.bg-image{
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background:transparent url(images/pd.png) no-repeat center !important;
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width:134px;
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height:134px;
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}

Let me walk you through the CSS. The first part simply applies a background color to the body and center aligns the div element. In the second part, I've specified the width and height of the div (134px) based on the image dimensions and have given the .png as the background image. Everything works fine?

Step-3: Solution for IE

This the most interesting part that does the magic.

I added another line of CSS code just below
background:transparent url(images/pd.png) no-repeat center !important;
and the following is the code
background-image:url(images/pd.gif);

Check out the result in IE! Awesome.... isn't it? In all other browsers except IE you will see the colorful png image.

Consolidating the entire thing

So. the final css would look like:

CSS
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body{
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background:#000;
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text-align:center;
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}
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div.bg-image{
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background:transparent url(images/pd.png) no-repeat center !important;
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background-image:url(images/pd.gif);
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width:134px;
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height:134px;
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margin:0px auto;
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}

For your ease, I have attached the sample files as a zip. Feel free to download it and do let me know your feedbacks.

This is something for those who care for IE6 and not W3C Standards. Recently I worked on a project, for which the layout was liquid and one of the requirements was to use a minimum width of 1000px. Is that a problem? Not at all.

The problem was to make it compatible on all major browsers, including IE6 !!!!!. I wonder why people still use IE.

As usual, I started searching for the solution on the right top of my Firefox window (yes, google!) and found a few websites which had discussions on the same topic. Most of them had lengthy posts and not the real solution. After going through a couple of sites, I concluded with the following solution. I hope this would help those who come across the same problem.

CSS
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.div_class_name{
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width: expression(document.body.clientWidth < 1002? "1000px" : "auto");
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}

Just add the above line in your CSS. Replace 1000px with the min-width value and replace 1002 with a value slightly greater than the min-width. To define the max-width, just replace the "<" with ">".

Known Issues:

• Only works with JavaScript enabled browsers
• Not W3C valid

That's all! I don't want this post to be lengthy like the others I went through