Is there a good repository of IE 6 considerations?

Question

I've been lucky to develop websites for the past 3 years for companies that don't need to support IE 6 in any way.

I've just accepted a development job with a company that works exclusively with IE 6 customers in the financial field. These people may be hemmed in by corporate IT departments or haven't upgraded, or whatever the reason is, we have to support IE 6 (and JUST IE 6).

I have no background in supporting this browser and I used to happily skip over SO questions that dealt with IE lte selectors and all of that. But now that it's going to pay the bills, I want to know as mch as I can about the CSS selectors that work/don't work, how JS may be quirky, and anything else that may help me catch up in the new job.

Is there a good respository of the "quirks" that make up the lovable IE 6 experience, or is it spread piecemeal across the 'tubes?

Answer 1

Is there a good respository of the "quirks" that make up the lovable IE 6 experience

quirksmode.org is an excellent resource for browser compatibility questions. It has great, nicely designed compatibility tables that give you almost everything you need to know. Be sure to take a look.

Answer 2

Quirksmode is an invaluable source of information for this sort of thing.

In particular, take a look at the compatibility tables.

Answer 3

"QuirksMode.org is the prime source for browser compatibility information on the Internet." Specifically, to your question visit the CSS2 page there, and look at the IE6 column on the table.

Answer 4

At hasLayout is an excellent overview of all known IE CSS bugs, most of them complete with solutions. This site is imo better overviewable, a real bug repository. All is summarized in short instead of spread over 100s pages like Quirksmode, which in turn is however excellent as a general reference.

Answer 5

My clients use IE6. The repositories listed above may mention these, but nevertheless I write them here.

• If you use https, avoid mixed content messages by avoiding javascript:void(0) and similar constructs.
• If you use https, avoid mixed content messages by ensuring all iframes have a valid src attribute.
• Find a copy of Microsoft Script Debugger and learn to love it. It stinks, but it seems to be the only game in town.
• Ask your company to let you develop using FF and FireBug (I did), develop using these, and test very often in IE6.
• I use the following URL to dump the DOM: javascript:'<xmp>%20+%20window.document.body.outerHTML%20+%20</xmp>'

Answer 6

This is a nice article about the 9 most common IE bugs and how to fix them.

Answer 7

Good suggestions... a couple of things that might help:

• "Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition" is much better than the old "Microsoft Script Debugger": http://www.microsoft.com/express/Web/
• There's also Firebug Lite: http://getfirebug.com/firebuglite
• A compatibility library for browsers that lack full support for JavaScript 1.6: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Gadget-JSL.js
• MSDN will help too: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx