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I am looking at implementing some of the common CSS3 properties to work in IE7/8.

The CSS properties include;


For the above, I already tried using the following for IE7/8, which do not work;

filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient...

I am really confused if it is even possible to make these work in IE8 even with workarounds..

Also not sure if adding the IE enabling script (html5.js) available online would make any difference to the way the CSS gets applied. Please clarify.

Thank you.

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3 Answers

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These CSS properties don't work in IE7/8 simply because they aren't supported in them; they were introduced much later after their release :)

You can use CSS3 PIE, but that will slow down page rendering (and well, those versions of IE are already pretty slow at rendering), and in addition, not all CSS3 properties are supported, and you'll also need to add some extra properties as set out by the docs.

There's also CSS3 Please, which lets you generate CSS for all browsers including IE, where equivalent functionality is supported. You can get an idea of what works and what doesn't by loading that page up in both IE and another browser.

As for html5.js, it's simply a script that allows IE7/8 to render elements introduced in HTML5 as intended, as they would otherwise ignore the tags completely.

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Thx...So By adding html5.js, we are not making any difference to the browser support like if audio, video, canvas, etc are not supported in IE7/8, they would not work even after adding html5.js ....Just the CSS if we have any would get applied (which would not have applied otherwise)...Pls. elaborate more on this... –  testndtv Nov 1 '11 at 7:52
Basically, HTML5 tag elements like <section> <header> <footer> which are functionally equivalent to <div> (and some others like <time> etc.) are ignored by the older IE versions completely, so by using html5.js you can use those elements. But yep, it won't actually give you HTML5 features :) You could try looking for some JS fallbacks, but that's about it. Hope that helps. –  unrelativity Nov 1 '11 at 9:58
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I think the answer fits in one link!


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Thx a lot...I just tried using the CSS3 border-radius on my page...But it is not working in IE8..I included the .htc file and coded the styles as they have given... –  testndtv Nov 1 '11 at 7:31
Maybe it's an known issue (code.google.com/p/curved-corner/issues/list), however I wouldn't be too concerned by display in IE<9 ^^ –  MatTheCat Nov 1 '11 at 8:15
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No, those won't work in IE 7/8. Give CSS3PIE a look.

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