IE and the truth about comments - Part 1

In draft form

Now you maybe wondering what is happening in IE with this page. Even IE 8 the most standard compliant version of this browser is not coping. The reason is that I have denied IE its rescue.

The Digital Sam Spade

Not being one to wait for proper beta testing I had started reverse testing of IE8 and by the 13th of February 2008 I knew IE8 like it's predecessor IE7 would select comments when using sibling selectors. Even the new hacks created to target IE7 were also seen by IE8. Upon knowing this my test pages template took on a whole new dimension as it dawned on me that IE8 which I expected to have a much improved CSS parser would not use my invalid IE import hack and thus would be denied the style rules it was desperately seeking. This page shows precisely how I though IE 8 would cope but as fate would have it and old friend of the past would return.

/*\*//*/
@import url("test-ie8.css");
@import("test-ie.css"); /* For IE/Mac */
@import test-ie; /* For IE/Win */

You may recognize that has as the old IE5/Mac Band Pass Filter. Within a few days of the release of IE8 for beta testing Ingo Chao had discovered that IE8 would parsed the IE5/Mac Band Pass Filter. I seized upon this with vigor as I realized that IE 8 could be rescued from the abyss. By some twisted irony, IE8, IE7 and IE/Mac are all seeking the same CSS fix which count ordinary HTML comments as elements but each browser had to make it own separate way to my special style sheet.

IE 8 has broken my page

Now that I can now test IE8 first hand I now find that it is full of CSS rendering bugs. Things must improve before the public release of IE8 or I can see this browser joining the long list of browsers called Internet Explorer. Let's crank up the knob now, please proceed to the next test

Created: 21 Mar 2008.
Updated: 13 Mar 2008.