Simplify your CSS using Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer Web browser is probably the most criticized in the history of the Web. Yet it is the source of some exciting technologies such as “CSS expressions, which could make life much easier for developers if competitors of Internet Explorer were implemented.

Offering a range of practical solutions to simplify your life and expand the possibilities of CSS, the terms of Microsoft are a fairly simple and convenient to use Javascript in CSS.

CSS expressions, what it is?

You did not say that CSS was very limited? It was sometimes necessary to review the entire architecture of your site in order to ensure that the left menu and body always do exactly the same height while remaining expandable? In any case, it had to work the developers of Internet Explorer.

If the idea to run JavaScript from CSS can leave some puzzled many practical applications derived from this idea. Judge for yourself on the following example:

# Menu
{
height: expression (document.getElementById (‘body’). style.height);
}

A small piece of code that will give very short in our menu is the same height as the html element with ID # Corps. Depending on how you designed your design, it may be difficult or impossible to achieve something similar with CSS simple, while ensuring that the height of # body is proportional to its content. Nice, right?

Associated with CSS selectors (: hover,: active, etc. …), expressions can also trigger events JavaScript directly from the CSS. For example, when passing the mouse over an item or when one clicks on a link.

The stylesheets have been designed to allow complete separation of content (the text of your site, etc..) Design, allowing screen readers for blind people to read only the content without being bothered by Design , it is completely separate. In this context, the idea of CSS expressions may appear somewhat incongruous, JavaScript is not designed for that use.

However, a lot of Javascript on this WebPages is now fully intended to design, to provide entertainment, or simply to fill gaps CSS. Note that, for example, impossible with CSS to make a “simple” rotation, text or image. For this reason, many sites use JavaScript to fill these gaps. Therefore, it would be entirely appropriate and logical to place the JavaScript – just for design – in the CSS.

Technology reduced to … hacks?

Despite the many advantages offered by the terms of Microsoft, they are not widely used on the Web, except … to address some of the rendering engine of Internet Explorer? At this point the ticket, I want to reiterate that the terms are understood only by Internet Explorer.

Thus, their use is rather difficult for Webmasters interested in maintaining compatibility between different browsers. However, these terms are still used to fix bugs specific to Internet Explorer, or to emulate certain CSS properties (such as “max-width”) does not support it, unlike its main competitors. The code below has the property max-width “for sailors who know her, and adds an expression to Internet Explorer 6, which does not know this property has a similar behavior.

# Menu
{
max-width: 200px; / *
– This value will be understood by Firefox, Safari, Opera, … * /
width: expression (this.width> 200? “200px”: this.width + “px”) / *
– Expression for Internet Explorer * /
}

You will understand that this expression is therefore understood by Internet Explorer, which she explicitly states that the maximum width of # menu is 200 pixels, while the third-party browsers like Opera, Firefox or Safari, will ignore the property max-width and simply they will not understand. This is the main use of a technology that many utilities, however third.