IE6 png bug; links don't work?

Question

After many hours I figured out why the links within my pngs in IE6 do not work.
It's because Im using filter:progid:dximagetransform.microsoft.alphaimageloader within my CSS. Yet after many more hours I have not found a solution to fixing these links.

Here is my code...

HTML

<div id="fullwidth-header-wrapper">
  <div id="header"> <strong class="logo"> <a href="#">Google</a> </strong>
 <div id="nav">
   <ul> 
<span>
<span style="color: white;">Prefer</span>
Google? Click
<a href="http://google.com"&gt;here!&lt;/a&gt;
</span>

    </ul>
 </div>
  </div>
</div>

CSS

#fullwidth-header-wrapper {
 height: 120px;
 }

#header {
   background:url(../images/header-bg.png) no-repeat 50% 0;
 height: 138px;
 width: 980px;
 margin: 0 auto;
 position: relative;
 top:0;
}

.logo{
 background:url(../images/logo.png) no-repeat;
 display:block;
 width:500px;
 height:125px;
 position:absolute;
 top:40px;
 left:85px;
}
.logo a{
 display:block;
 width:323px;
 height:85px;
 text-indent:-9999px;
 overflow:hidden;
}




#nav {
background:url(none.gif);
filter:progid:dximagetransform.microsoft.alphaimageloader(src='images/nav.png',  sizingmethod='crop');
display: inline;
position: absolute; 
top: -8px;
right: 30px;
width: 350px;
    height: 75px;
z-index: 150;
} 

#nav ul {
 position: relative;
 top: 18px;
 left: 0px;
 color: rgb(87, 175, 237);
 font-size: 96.8%;
 z-index:200;
}

#nav span {
     color: #fff;
     position: absolute; 
     top: 18px; 
     left: 0px;  
     font-size: 96.8%;
}

#nav a {color: rgb(255, 255, 255);}

How do you fix this issue or avoid this and suggestions re: a possible solution for the above?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Try this: http://www.hrunting.org/csstests/iealpha.html

In short:

What matters is that the element with the filter has no position set and the link within the filtered element has a position set. If that's the case, links within the filtered element will work.

Since your #nav element has position: absolute, you'll need to add a wrapper div around that and absolutely position that instead.

Answer 2

This is often a problem with using a png fix on something that contains links, the Alpha version of the twinhelix png fix has apparently solved this issue. I have used it, its a little buggy still or at least it was a few months ago, but used right on small sites it is production ready http://www.twinhelix.com/css/iepngfix/.

I normally use the twinhelix 1.0 script for all our sites, I include an ie6.css stylesheet with a conditional comment aimed at IE6:

<!--[if lt IE 7]>
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/ie6.css" type="text/css" charset="utf-8">
<![endif]-->

Inside there you then in the CSS you just call it using the 'behavior' rule. IE 7 and 8 do transparent png's just fine. You do need to make sure you have a blank.gif 1px by 1px transparent gif somewhere and update the htc file (which really is just JS) to link to the path of that image.

#nav  {
    behavior: url(/css/iepngfix.htc);
}

I hope this helps

Answer 3

I had a similar problem, I was using a transparent background so I had to apply the png fix. I had a div and a link around it, like this:

<a href="#"><div id="bla"></div></a>

The links were not working at all in IE6. When I applied position: relative to that bla div, it worked! position: relative seems to work wonders on IE6, as well as float: left sometimes... Damn IE6, it's dying too slowly!