A new technical paper posted to Apple’s developer site outlines some of the problems Mac users of Microsoft Internet Explorer encounter with Web sites that utilize Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). The documentation is written to help Web developers better understand what’s happening and how to work around the issues.
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Apple’s documentation suggests that the Mac version of IE sports more rigid standards compliance than the Windows version does, and “is way ahead” of the Windows version in terms of CSS support. This doesn’t mean that CSS use is a walk in the park for Web page developers aiming to make their sites appeal to Mac users, however.
Apple noted that the Mac builds of IE running on OS 9 and OS X have “significant bugs” related to position: relative; creating extra margins for elements; and in the implementation of the overflow declaration. Apple’s documentation outlines these three types of bugs.
Information is specifically provided on how to work around these issues using a useful CSS hack involving the commented backslash. Plenty of screenshots and examples of the problems and how they can be manipulated are given. Alas, there isn’t a cure-all, as the documentation readily attests. “Let’s hope for the speedy release of Explorer 6, and hope that it makes things better and not worse,” it concluded.