Al Sparber wrote:
Conditional comments only validate in the sense that the validator
doesn't recognise them as anything other than comments and hence
ignores the content. So, your page will validate against automated
checking, but technically you are using invalid code
That's a real stretch :-) How about the typical parsing bugs that CSS
geeks tend to use - are those better because they eek through "da
Validator" even though they leverage programming bugs in browsers?
Howdy,
I don't disagree with you often, but I do in this case. I don't see his
view as a stretch at all; I think he is bang on. Conditional comments,
which I do prefer to the more often used hacks, are not part of any
standard, which makes them invalid markup by nature. There is no way to
argue that point validation or otherwise.
Some hacks that "leverage programming bugs in browsers" are
opportunistic (and perhaps overly optimistic), but they remain valid
CSS. Using this method could *possibly* cause problems with browsers of
the future, but then again, so could conditional comments. Also, some
developers ritually abuse conditional comments by adding invalid CSS or
expressions to their IE style sheets because they know the validator
won't catch them. True CSS geeks make sure all of their CSS validates;
not just the stuff the validator can see.
Conditional Comments are a clean and safe way to address IE Windows
issues. Those who use them, who have used them, will have minimal or
no issues once IE7 is released. You can bank on that.
I agree: CC's are /currently/ the cleanest and safest way to deal with
IE Win issues, but they are not infallible or 100% future proof. Allot
depends on factors we probably haven't even considered yet. For example,
(and this really might be a stretch :))there are allot of folks who have
fixed an across the board IE issue by isolating specific CSS to all
versions of IE using just <!--[if IE]>.
In this case, if IE 7 (assuming whatever bug I was using the CC's to
hack has been fixed) gets the primary CSS right, but is still being fed
the alternate style sheet, I'd have to go back and break that CSS out
somehow or change the expression in my CC's. Depending on how things are
set up, that could be allot of work in its own right.
In the same scenario as above, if I used the * html hack to achieve my
goal and IE 7 doesn't recognize * html (I believe that is the rumor),
then I have to change nothing--all should continue to work and be happy.
The truth (at least my version of it :)) is, I can't bank on anything
yet and I won't know how things are going to actually play out until I
have a browser in which to test them. For the most part though, I do
believe those of us using CC's will encounter fewer issues.
Best regards,
Michael Wilson
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