IE8 vs My Site

[cpyle0819]

Hi Folks,
I’m hoping to get a little advice on how to get the site I’m developing to be a bit more IE8 friendly.

You can visit my site here: [over-geek.com](http://over-geek.com “Over-Geek”)

I installed modernizr knowing that it has an html5 shiv and that it might have the potential to help me out but I know nothing about it beyond that and I’m open to losing it.

In IE8 I’m losing data- attribute info and block level anchor tags. I think those are my main problems and I’m not sure how to address.

As always, any help is appreciated and thank you!
-Corey

[Paulie_D]

What issues are you having with IE8…you haven’t said.

[cpyle0819]

Sorry bout that, edited.

[Paulie_D]

Losing them how?

Modernizr won’t magically make HTML5 and CSS3 properties work in browsers that don’t support them…all it does (AFAIK) is flag them up so you can provide an alternative experience.

As for block level anchor tags…just add `display:block;` as required,

[djdaniel150]

Why? IE8 is long history. Even if someone has IE8, they will automatically be prompted to update on the spot. IE10 is out now anyway.

[Anonymous]

@cpyle0819 I’m getting a server not found error.

[David_Leitch]

@djdaniel150 IE8 still has almost a [quarter](http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/10/01/internet-explorer-8-falls-25-market-share-firefox-15-passes-10-mark-chrome-loses-users/ “http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/10/01/internet-explorer-8-falls-25-market-share-firefox-15-passes-10-mark-chrome-loses-users/”) of the browser market share. If you were running an e-commerce website, would you like to lose a quarter of your sales due to your website appearing buggy to these users?

And before you say that these users should simply upgrade to IE9/10, consider the many business (each running hundreds/thousands of computers) who are still running Windows XP, which only supports IE8 and below. For many companies, the cost of upgrading to Vista/7/8 would make the exercise impossible. Yes, they could migrate to another browser, but for many companies, this would be seen as unnecessary and financially prohibitive.

As web designers, I don’t think we can design exclusively for a specific type of person who browses the web in a specific way. Would you design a site with no title or alt tags because the majority of users have clear vision? Would you design a website with no responsive qualities because the majority of users still use desktop computers? I think not.

/rant over

Unfortunately, having little experience with IE8 bugs myself, I don’t have anything to add to actual discussion, sorry!

[cpyle0819]

@Davit_Leitch Your rant was appreciated. What you stated was the exact reason IE8 needs to be supported for what I’m doing. If I were doing this for funsies, I wouldn’t care. Anywho, I think I narrowed down my problem to my usage of nth-child/nth-of-type selectors…IE8 chews them up like dog food. Is there a “CSS” way to address that?

[cpyle0819]

Is adding a style sheet with
[if lt IE 9] a non-gross way of handling it?

[Paulie_D]

>Is adding a style sheet with [if lt IE 9] a non-gross way of handling it?

Yes…in fact it’s the perfect way of handling it.

[Senff]

I think you’re using a LOT of things that IE8 doesn’t support (because they weren’t really fully specced when IE8 came out), such as RGB backgrounds, :first-of-type, data icons, etc. Nothing new to you I’m sure, but I’m just wondering if it would be too much work to make everything work in IE8 in the first place now. You might end up with two sites, in a way (one for all browsers except IE8, and one for IE8 only).

Example: the header uses an RGB background, which is not supported by IE8. So you could add a different background (like a PNG with alpha transparency) in an IE8-only stylesheet, and it’d be fixed. However, maybe it would have made sense to use a background that works in all browsers from the get-go, and you wouldn’t have to fix it for any specific browser. Hope that makes sense.

I mean, it’s almost like you created a very modern site and now you want to take out so many of that modern stuff for IE8 again, that I wonder if it would have been smarter to code the site with IE8 in mind from the start, and you could have avoided some of that modern code initially.

Anyways, using an IE8 only stylesheet is indeed the way to go but I think it’s going to end up being a pretty large .CSS file…!

[cpyle0819]

Thanks for comments everyone. I think I have more than enough info now to mark this as solved.

@Senff You’ve given me a lot to think about. I went with a modern site to a) prove to myself I could do it and b) show potential clients that I can do it. I would love to stick with the modern (like many of you I’m sure) and just ignore the old browsers but I can’t bring myself to not appeal to that group of visitors. I think, in the end, I will go with a separate conditional stylesheet. Yes it will slow things down but only for people with the older browsers…who shouldn’t be expecting miracles anyways. While the stylesheet may end up being just as large if not larger than my main one I think it will be worth it.

Cheers,
Corey

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